Chapter 1

There are places in every city where a person can take part in every kind of sordid act their dark hearts' desire. I have been to hundreds of these places over the course of my twenty-five centuries of life, and very little about them has changed. They are all dark holes tucked away in forgotten corners, populated by criminals and the desperate. The good citizens lie to themselves about these repugnant realms, pretending that there is no filthy underbelly, full to bursting with putrid disease and social cancer.
In Atlanta, that place is the Cellar. Carved from the granite foundation of the city itself, the Cellar is the place where every punk and player of Atlanta’s seedy dark side comes to fence stolen goods and purchase the tools they need to complete their dastardly deeds. Located far beneath Underground Atlanta, and reached by a single entrance through the Little Five Points train station, The Cellar began as storage space for goods waiting to be transported out of the city. Over the years, it had been hidden by the efforts of the local government as it raised the street level to improve the city’s infrastructure.
An enterprising criminal whose name was long since forgotten, discovered the Cellar and expanded it from its original demure size into a vast, uneven cavern. He used the space for prostitution and bootlegging and those early successes quickly expanded into every kind of crime. Such activities attract the most brutal and conniving men and women, but there are a few who come for kicks and to brag to their friends that they knew dangerous people. Almost anyone is allowed to come and go as they please, so long as they pass the scrutiny of the guards hulking near the entrance.
I stood before two extremely large men and tried to look harmless. The first guard was one of those enormous black men with tons of muscle hidden under a thick layer of fat. To look at Baja you would think that he was just one more punk fresh out of the ghetto, but when he glared down at you with his flat, dead eyes, you knew that he could curb stomp you into a red smear and not lose a moment’s sleep. Nothing and no one ever made a fool of this man, not if they wanted to live out the week.
The man standing next to him was one more piece of white trash that the Deep South is thick with. Kootch was as mean as he was stupid, though there was very little he couldn’t do with duct tape, including murder. Otherwise, he was a typical example of his species, from his violently racist and sexist language to the threadbare, second-hand castoffs he wore. Kootch kept his arms crossed over his massive, muscled chest so that a swastika peeked out under the sleeve of a t-shirt depicting a Confederate flag and the slogan; “The South will rise again!”
I’m not entirely sure how these two men were able to work together, what with Kootch’s personal views and Baja’s tendency to squish anything that pissed him off. I suspect that their common denominator was money. It’s surprising how often it makes the best of friends out of the worst of enemies.
“What are you doing here?” Baja asked me with a frown. Even behind the dark sunglasses, I could feel his eyes drilling murder into my brain.
“I’m picking up a special order.” Because cops are notorious for popping up at the most inconvenient moments, acceptable visitors to the Cellar are supposed to refer to business in vague terms. Anyone who says they’re here for specific things like sex, drugs, or gambling are automatically searched, and then beaten within an inch of their lives on the assumption that they are police officers or too stupid to be allowed in. Then they are left, shivering and bleeding, in a ditch far from here. As far as I heard, the guards rarely killed anyone. It’s bad for business if your vendors thought they could be killed at the door.
“You got a gun on you?” Kootch’s dull brown eyes glittered with lust as they slowly crawled along the length of my body. I bristled at his obscene scrutiny, but I otherwise let it slide. There were only three ways a creature like him saw women. Either we were objects of lust, incubators for sons, or personal servants. His attention wasn’t any more personal than the way I eyed a piece of meat I wanted for dinner.
“Of course not, I know it isn’t allowed.” The rules of the Cellar are simple. A visitor was required to conduct business in a manner that would not draw the attention of law enforcement. That meant no stealing, no killing, and no fighting outside the ring. Since criminals are not known for their adherence to rules, everyone is allowed to bring personal weapons into the Cellar, as long as they didn’t use guns. It’s assumed by the powers that be that a man with a knife or bludgeon couldn’t kill many people before he was taken out. It isn’t always true, but then very few people are able to commit mass murder with their bare hands anymore.
“I still have to search you.” Kootch chewed his words like he chewed his food, slow and sloppy. The Southern accent made it hard to understand him clearly, and it dropped my perception of his intelligence by a couple of dozen IQ points. But he was still smart enough to kick my ass if he wanted to. However, the threat of a good beating was not deterrent enough to let the man touch me.
“Step off, bubba,” I snapped. My hand went to the leather wrapped baton tucked into my belt to show that I meant business. Kootch froze with a scowl contorting his ugly face as his sluggish brain struggled to decide whether or not I was capable of backing up my threat. At five feet six inches and slender besides, I am not the picture of intimidation. A man like him could easily overpower me and do whatever he liked. I have lived a very long time, and I have learned many things, the chief of which is that size doesn’t always matter as long as you have skill. And I have lots of skills.
“Who’s your friend, Rebecca?” Baja asked suddenly. Aside from speaking, he didn’t move as he stared over my head into the tunnel behind me.
I looked over my shoulder in time to see a man’s figure take a shuffling step behind the corner in the exit. I had seen him on the street as I was walking toward the train station. He was a Hispanic male in his twenties, of average height and weight, and he wore clothing that was common among men his age that thought they had something to prove. If he had hung back and waited until I had entered the Cellar, Kootch and Baja would have let him through with hardly a pause. But he made a mistake by skulking around, and now the guards were suspicious of him.
“I don’t know.” I lied. I don’t know the man’s name, but I know that he is a member of the Children of Orpheus.
Named for that lovesick bard Orpheus, who had once traveled the paths of Hades to rescue his dead wife from her nasty fate, the Children of Orpheus are convinced that they can learn the method of my immortality by following me around. I’ve tried to tell them that I don’t know how I got this way. As far as I know I was born like this.
The Children are also certain that I know the pathways of the afterlife, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I have never known death, much less glimpsed the paths that lead from this life to the next. Still, they insist on going everywhere I go, and doing everything I do. It amuses me to let them, and so usually I leave them be. Unless, of course, I’m up to something I don’t want them to know about.
“You don’t think he might be a cop, do you?” I suggested innocently. Of course that’s what they were thinking. Neither of them had seen the man before, and the way he was trying to stay out of sight made them think all kinds of things.
Gee, I hope they don’t kill the poor slob. This Child of Orpheus was fairly new and he was already good at following me around without drawing attention to himself. However, I was in the Cellar on personal business, so I had planned to lose the man in the crowd. But I knew an opportunity when I saw one, and so I took it. “You aren’t going to let him in are you?”
“You mind your business, and we’ll mind ours,” Baja snapped. He unfolded his massive arms and smacked Kootch on the shoulder to pull his attention away from my chest. “Go get that guy and drag his ass back here for questioning.” The way Baja said it made me think that the interrogation was going to be a rough one. I sure hope that the Child of Orpheus was a fast runner; otherwise he was going to be toast.
“Go on,” Baja told me as Kootch jogged off to retrieve my shadow. I heard his footsteps snap like machine gun fire as he ran after the man speeding down the tunnel in the opposite direction. Baja gave me a look that meant that I’d better move on unless I wanted a share of the violence. “You have a good evening now.”
Because I know what is good for me, I entered the Cellar without another word. There was a strange taste to the air, as if a hurricane was about to break. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end and my skin tingled. Visually, there was nothing out of the ordinary. I saw all the same kinds of scum and villainy that loiter in a place like this, along with all the goods and services that they could desire. There was music playing, loud and pulsating, but that wasn’t the reason why the air was vibrating. No, the breeze that trickled past my skin felt strange and harsh, as if a chemical had been sprayed into the room.
I watched the dirty, angry faces around me. Their features held dead, spiteful expressions and their hunched shoulders were more stooped than usual as they shuffled heartlessly from one place to another. Even their voices, lifted so that they could be heard above the music, felt muted and weak. It was as if they were all drugged and struggling to get through the evening. Something was going on.
If there is a true constant among the criminal community, it is that change is bad. Any time there is a shift in power, whether it is a new scheme to make money or a new leader of a random group, it always causes trouble. Even if the change was welcomed, it can leave dozens of mutilated bodies in its wake.
I didn’t worry that a fight would erupt. I was in a place where that sort of thing happened all the time, and I am very efficient at self-defense. However, in a place as closely crowded as the Cellar was tonight, I stood a very good chance of getting stabbed in a place that mortals didn’t survive. That could put me in a position where correct assumptions would be made about what I am, and that would be bad. I had to hurry and get what I came for then get the hell out before the shit hit the fan.
“Rebecca!” Harry Cervantes greeted me with a broad smile and open arms. Harry is an interesting man. In the legitimate world, he is a successful antiques dealer with an auction house that made him a fortune. He was well known in all the best social circles and he gave thousands in charities. But he found that world small and boring, so he had turned to dabbling in crime, buying and selling small arms and stolen art and artifacts. I don’t know what he does with the money he makes from his secret career, but I suspect that he gives it to the causes he seems to love so much.
“Hello Harry. You called and said my order came in.” In my first few centuries, I had a tendency to dispose of my things whenever I changed lives. It wasn’t until I reached my thousandth year that I began to regret the habit when I recalled some object that held sentimental value. Since then, I have been looking for those things that had been precious to me. I quickly learned that most of what I had lost had been destroyed by time, and so I am forced to settle for things that were as close to the items I had as possible. The item I had ordered from Harry was illegally obtained and that’s why he had called me to the Cellar instead of meeting me in his office.
He snapped his fingers and his bodyguard picked up an item from the table behind him and handed it to Harry. Harry held out a beautiful box, lacquered in black with a green and white jade inlaid on the top. Forgetting about the strange tension in the air, I took the box from Harry and opened it. Inside was exactly what I was looking for. It was a bronze blade gone green with age, and the soft metal had been corroded by time. The Chinese sword smith had forged the blade and handle from one piece and attached a large ring at the end. Some eighteen hundred years ago, when the blade was new, the grip had been wrapped with sharkskin that had long since rotted away.
“I would have cleaned it up for you, but the pieces are so delicate now that I don’t dare do touch it very much to it,” Harry explained, swelling with pride. I wondered what he had done to recover the dagger to get that kind of emotion from him. I didn’t ask though. The Chinese were going to be pissed when they figured out that one of their artifacts had left their country. If they traced it to me, which is unlikely but not impossible, I didn’t want to be able to tell them how Harry had pulled it off.
“That’s fine. If I wanted a perfect blade, I would have bought a reproduction.” Carefully taking the brittle metal in my fingertips, I lifted the dagger from the velvet cradling it. Despite its delicacy, it was wonderfully preserved and I saw the four straight lines etching the bronze at the point where the long blade met the handle. Breathless, I stared at these little engravings and searched for the hooks that I thought might be there. I nearly squealed with delight when I found them.
Unable to believe my eyes, I laughed out loud and all but wept in joy. This blade had been truly mine once. I had carried it during the Han Dynasty when the Chinese countryside had been ravaged by wars between the Emperor Wu and the Xiongnu. In those years I had made some very dear friends who had been slaughtered by bandits who had defected from both armies. It was with this very blade that I had extracted my vengeance, drawing the lines in the handle as I tortured and killed the men responsible for my murdered my friends.
“You did perfectly. It is more than I could hope for,” I told Harry with a joyful grin. Harry didn’t understand the why my reaction was better than what he had expected for a job well done, but he accepted it with grace. And he jacked up the price of the item by fifty percent. I was so happy by the trick of fate that had returned my property to me that I paid the outrageous sum in cash without question.
While I had been marveling at my good luck, the air of the Cellar had turned. A fight had begun in the small arena set against the Western Wall where two large men were facing each other with their ham-sized fists raised and their broken lips curled into vicious snarls. Both men dripped blood down their faces and their features were obscured by dark bruises and swollen flesh. All around them people were screaming and goading them on, waving their fists and shoving violently at each other in their fervor. There was the stink of raw meat and feces, as if someone nearby had died violently and no one had bothered to clear the corpse away.
I turned to warn Harry of the danger when a white pamphlet with black writing was thrust under my nose. Frowning, I followed the hand and arm holding it to the round, smiling face beaming into mine. The man’s skin was waxy and coated in a greasy sweat that dripped from the end of his bulbous nose and bulging jowls.
“Have you found Jesus?” he asked.

Chapter 2

“Why? Did you lose him again?” I asked, giving the religious nut my standard response to this dumb assed question. If I had followers like Jesus does, I’d hide too. The man’s smile was frozen to his face. He was shocked and irritated, which was bad because I meant to piss him off so that he would leave me alone.
“I would like to invite you to hear the word of our lord, Jesus Christ,” the man persisted through clenched teeth.
“I’ve already heard it,” I replied. And I have too. I listened to Jesus as he spoke of his Heavenly Father on a street corner in Jerusalem as I slowly walked by. The Christian Messiah had been a nice man who had tended the sick and catered to the poor like a proactive hippie without any of the marijuana. It was a shame what the Romans had done to the guy. Of all the spiritual gurus I’ve encountered over the centuries, (and I have met many) he was one of the very few who felt truly sincere. I often wonder what the world would have been like if he had been allowed to live another thirty years.
“Then you know the importance of worship,” the man continued as if I wasn’t frowning at him or that he was surrounded by a hundred people who would beat him to death for saying ‘church’ to their faces. “Our faith is unique among other Christian religions. We do not discriminate, we honor our congregations, and we don’t judge.”
I nearly laughed in his face. Everyone discriminates and judges. It’s part of what makes us human, and what keeps us alive as a species. The habit allows us to determine right from wrong, choose the types of people we want to spend time with, and it keeps criminals in jail and the good people in the suburbs. Obviously it isn’t a perfect mechanism, anyone who follows politics can tell you that, but it is a necessary function. But I wasn’t going to argue the point with the nitwit. I have better things to do than talk sense into the senseless. “Go away little man.”
The Happy Christian shook the pamphlet so fiercely that I thought he was having an epileptic fit. He was still smiling, though his lips were pressed into a broad, manic line. Worried that he was going to get violent, I pulled a baton from my belt and stepped back. I bumped into a man standing behind me and made him spill his beer down the front of his shirt. I paid no attention to the man at my back. He wasn’t the most immediate threat. Instead, the spastic Happy Christian was quickly becoming the most dangerous person in the Cellar.
He threw the pamphlets violently to the floor then barked and snarled wildly. All around us, people turned to see what the ruckus was about and then shrank away in alarm. No matter how big and bad a criminal might be he will avoid contact with a crazy person. Such people care little for their own safety while they try to tear you to pieces and are convinced that killing you is entirely justified. Those kinds of people are notoriously difficult to reason with.
Happy Christian foamed at the mouth as he bled from his eyeballs. I wondered what filthy disease he was dying of as he flopped on the floor like fried convict. Then he burst into dazzling orange flames that shifted to blue and green, and then a flaring, hot white. The fires whipped upwards like a living thing, dancing and twisting wildly. The Happy Christian screamed in agony that faded away deliberately and excruciatingly into a dwindling gurgle.
The fierce heat drove the crowd further back, and the witnesses decided now was a good time to leave. They stampeded toward the door, shoving and trampling each other in their attempt to get away. Within seconds, the Cellar was vacant save for a few curious souls who wanted to see what would happen next. Nothing clears a room like an inferno.
One of the big bonuses of immortality is that I won’t burn to death. I can roast as easily as the next person, but the toxic fumes and scorching heat have no effect on my status of life. It hurts like hell, and I bear a few ugly scars earned during the Spanish Inquisition, but other than that, it’s not a threat. I sat back on my heels and watched his death throes while everyone around me flinched in horror.
As the fire slowly dwindled I realized that I wasn’t alone. The man I had bumped into was still standing behind me holding a folded handkerchief to his nose and mouth. Harry had come around his table and was watching the scene from a safe distance, while Baja and Kootch were muscling their way through the dregs of the fleeing crowd to investigate the abrupt evacuation.
Happy Christian let out a last gurgling sigh and became Dead Christian. The fire danced a while longer until all that was left was a charred pile of black ash with a pair of chubby calves and feet jutting from the bottom. The men around me let out cries of disgust and dismay and turned away from the horrendous sight and the smell of burnt pork.
“What the hell happened?” Baja demanded from a safe distance.
“I think it was spontaneous combustion.” I hadn’t smelled any chemicals on his skin and he had gone up so hot and fast that there was no other explanation. I have seen a couple of people go this way before, and it always puzzled me. One minute the people were fine, and then poof, they weren’t. For the longest time I thought it was the product of magic or the punishment of the gods, but I have long since stopped believing in such nonsense. I have never experienced anything that had proved the existence of such characters.
I grimaced at the roasted smell of the remains as I touched his crispy flesh gingerly with my fingertips.
“Don’t touch him with your bare hands. We don’t know what made him burn. Use these.”
The man offered me a pair of latex gloves. Wondering who he was, I took them. There are few people in the world that use these things regularly. Cops and medical professionals used the gloves in the legitimate world, assassins and narcotics dealers in the criminal world. The man was too healthy for a career mixing Meth in a basement and he didn’t look mean enough to be a smuggler. It was possible that he was an assassin, but I wasn’t getting the strange twitch and crawl along my skin that happens when I meet people sociopathic enough to do that job. He might have been a doctor coming into the Cellar to purchase illegal organs or drugs, and he could just as easily be an undercover cop as a corrupt one. I really hoped he was a strung out doctor. It was the least ominous of the choices.
“Thanks.” I slid the latex over my fingers and searched the Dead Christian quickly. I didn’t worry about fouling my skin with whatever chemical that had incinerated him. Whatever it was had burned away before the fire went out. There was fragment of charred yellow from the shirt the Dead Christian had been wearing, and the lower half of his legs had bits of white linen slacks stuck into the burnt spots with white canvas shoes stretched over feet too big to wear them comfortably. Under ash where the hips had been was a thick wallet that had barely managed to survive the blaze. I peeled it open and found that the credit cards had melted into a single lump of plastic, and the driver’s license was barely visible behind the sleeve that held it.
“His name was Charles Abernathy,” I said.
“Are you sure?” Harry was suddenly standing on the other side of the body, bending over so he could stare at what was left of the corpse. I held out the wallet so that he could see the ID. He let out a sharp cry and staggered back in disgust. “Oh my god. I knew him.”
“He a friend of yours?” Baja asked him.
“He was a client. He buys art work from my auction house,” Harry replied. “His sister reported him missing a month ago. What was he doing down here?”
“Recruiting,” I answered. I had heard about the disappearance on the news. The cops suspected that Charles Abernathy had met with foul play, and was looking at his wife as a suspect for his murder. Obviously, the woman was innocent. I wondered if anyone would tell the cops this.
“What was he recruiting for?” Harry asked, aghast.
“He was handing out pamphlets for his church.” A light bulb went off in my head. The pamphlets could have been impregnated with a flammable substance that could be transferred to the skin and clothes. Once Charles had enough on him he burst into flames, or so that was my theory. But I have never seen any chemical that started a fire that quickly without everyone in the room smelling it first. Whatever had killed Charles had been fast and odor free.
I picked up the pamphlet that Charles had been holding and examined it. It looked ordinary enough with black ink printed boldly across cheap paper. There was a generic image of a church across the front with the stylized Star of Bethlehem hovering over the steeple. ‘Immortal Church of God’ was written in aggressive letters across the top and hours of worship were written in small letters across the bottom. Inside was a list of services the church provided, along with the names of the church officers, and a few quotes of scripture about peace, love, and forgiveness.
I closed the pamphlet and held it close to my nose without touching my skin. I smelled the usual odors of ink and paper with a delicate undertone of a sharp chemical. The foreign substance had a kick to it. It bit at my sinuses and created a sharp stabbing pain at the back of my skull. I tossed the pamphlet away and stood up. “Whoever killed him put a flammable chemical on the pamphlets he was handing out. Then they sent him into the Cellar to die, knowing that we won’t call the police and just get rid of the body for them.”
Baja made a disgusted sound and pulled a cell phone from the pocket of his jeans. “I’m calling the boss. Kootch, call the cleaner and get rid of the mess.”
Both men wandered away in opposite directions to make their phone calls. Harry’s bodyguard spoke urgently in his ear. Harry nodded emphatically and both men returned to the table to prepare to leave. The other vendors were moving fast to get out of the Cellar. No one wanted to meet the kind of men that would come here to get rid of a messy corpse, and no one wanted to know what they did with it.
I didn’t want to meet those kinds of people so I was getting out of there too. I slid my baton back into my belt and tucked the jade box and dagger under my arm. The man who had given me the gloves was kneeling over the corpse’s legs.
“You don’t want to be here when the clean-up crew arrives,” I said.
Unconcerned by my warning, the man grunted to acknowledge my words and remained where he was. Clean-up crews are not known for being polite, and if the man was so curious that he had to be here when they showed up, then he could suffer the potentially fatal consequences. Baja hung up his phone as I drew near him. “Tell the crew to take the pamphlets and dump them near the body. That will give the cops a lead to his killer without involving the Cellar.”
“You want them to bust whoever did this?” Baja was surprised. No one he knew cared about the death of one religious nut, no matter how bizarre and horrible their death had been. Baja didn’t know the dead man and he didn’t care why he had burned to death. As far as he was concerned, it would cease to be his problem once the ashes were swept away.
“I figure that the killer won’t stop with one victim, and he’ll continue to send people into the Cellar to die. Let the cops do their job and catch the lunatic. It will save your boss time and money trying to figure it out,” I explained.
“I’ll pass the advice along.” Baja said it like he didn’t think that the people who gave him orders would listen to me. A criminal organization did not go to the police for help. Either they were strong enough to deal with their problems on their own, or they perished.
I emerged onto the Little Five Points train platform and started walking to the street. My car was parked a few blocks away in a lot on Wall Street, and I was eager to get home before the sun came up. My little, silver sports car was parked under a street light so I had no trouble seeing the figure sitting on the hood. My first reaction was to be annoyed about someone’s butt denting the metal and scratching the paint job on my fifty thousand-dollar vehicle. Only then did I bother to wonder why someone would be sitting on a stranger’s car in the middle of the night. A couple of ideas occurred to me, none of them friendly, and I fingered my baton as I approached.
I sauntered to my car like I was the biggest bad-ass in the universe. If it were a random street punk, then he would move along as soon as I arrived. If someone was waiting for me specifically, then I would find out what they wanted and be on my way. Regardless, I wanted to get out of here without a fight. Acting like I itched to break a skull would go a long way to making that happen.
The figure turned at the sound of my footsteps and exposed his face to the harsh streetlight. He might have been handsome, but it was hard to tell around the bruised and swollen flesh around his left eye and the bloody mess made of his lips. After a moment I recognized the man as the Child of Orpheus who had followed me to the Cellar a few hours ago. This was new. None of the Children had ever approached me before. They preferred to lurk in my shadow. I wondered what had changed.
“Looks like Baja and Kootch beat your ass good.” I smirked as I opened the car door and put the dagger on the passenger seat.
“You told them I was a cop,” the man said angrily. “I’m surprised they didn’t kill me.”
“Baja must have been in a good mood.” I shrugged. “Are you here to bitch at me for getting your ass kicked, or do you have something more interesting to talk about?”
The man sighed and slid off of my car with a long squeak that sounded like my paint job was being gouged.
“I’m not here to bitch at you,” he said. I was willing to wait a few seconds to let him consider his words, but if he didn’t tell me what he wanted soon, I was leaving. Immortality does not mean I have an infinite supply of energy. I need to sleep like anyone else if I want to function properly. When the man didn’t continue, I opened the driver’s door and moved to get in.
“My name is Alejandro Reyes,” the man said. “I am from the Children of Orpheus.”
“I know. Do the Children know that you’re breaking the rules to talk to me?” I asked. Alejandro glared at me and shuffled his feet uncomfortably. The Children were under the impression that I wanted to kill all of them. I don’t know where they got that idea. I swear I didn’t threaten them.
“How do you know about the rules?” Alejandro was surprised.
“I sneak into your safe houses when I get bored. I read your records, and I put clear plastic wrap around the toilets to screw with you. I find it amuses me.”
“That was you? I got blamed for it the last time you did that!” Alejandro cried, outraged. I smiled sweetly at him. What was he going to do about it, leave flaming dog poop at my door? He ground his teeth, jumped when he hit a raw nerve in a freshly chipped tooth, and then groaned with pain through fingers clapped to his mouth. His fingers hurt him too, and he made another round of painful dance moves.
Finally, he got a hold of himself and glared at me with cold, dark eyes. “You saw the man that burst into flames tonight.” It was a statement instead of a question, so I didn’t say anything. “Did you figure out the cause of his death?”
“He was coated in some kind of chemical. So what of it?” I didn’t see anything so unusual about it. People were killed in a lot of different ways for a lot of different reasons. The likelihood of such occurrences increased when you were in a place filled with violent men like the Cellar was. Sure I wondered why someone wanted to kill a millionaire gone zealot, and I suspected that there was a substantial life insurance policy involved.
“Do you know what chemicals did it?” Alejandro was loosening up as the pain became less. He even took a step closer to me.
“No, but the victim had to have been coated in it. It’s probably something new cooked up in someone’s basement. Why do the Children care, and why are you talking to me about it?”
For most of their history, the Children of Orpheus were a secret society who had lived like monks under a strict vow of poverty. They kept their activities limited to following me around and ignored everything else. Then a few decades ago, their fortunes started to look up. My stalkers became better dressed and well fed. I’d assumed that they managed a few wealthy recruits, or they had finally stumbled across one of the secret caches of gold I had stashed all over the globe.
I didn’t worry about the last too much. I have nearly a hundred of such hiding places, plus several hundred million in modern currency tucked away in banks. Along with that, I hold enough real estate to keep me very wealthy should I lose everything else in a market crash or a plague. I can afford to take it easy whenever a lucky farmer or archeologist absconds with my treasures.
No matter how their fortunes turned, the Children always operated under the assumption that I am dangerous to them. When they could afford it, they invested in armor and they created severe consequences for anyone who made their presence known to me. That particular rule has brought me hours of high entertainment. I’ve spent whole years chasing them around and watching them freak out when they realized that I knew they were there. Members have been kicked out of the society because of the things I did. Ah, good times.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed that there have been a lot of things happening in the world lately,” Alejandro began. Actually, I hadn’t noticed. There is always some natural disaster or atrocity being performed on large group of people. That has been true since I was a child. If I didn’t ignore it, I’d get paranoid, and forever is a long time to be afraid. The fact that the Children thought that I was paying attention meant that they were giving me way too much credit. “A few decades ago, the Great Bard decided that we should expand our interests beyond figuring you out. That’s what brings me here.”
“Get on with it, Alejandro. I’m tired and I want to get to bed.” Alejandro seemed surprised that I could get tired, which showed how well they paid attention.
“I’ve been sent to tell you that your life is in danger.” Alejandro was frustrated and it gave him an accent that was Spanish by way of Mexico. The words came out faster and faster, leaving me without an opening to say something that would piss him off and make him go away. “The man who was killed tonight is part of a cult that has learned of your existence. They have declared you an abomination and an enemy of God. A month ago they decreed that anyone who destroys you are blessed and will receive unconditional salvation.”
Wow. There have been a lot of contracts for my head over the years that guaranteed astonishing sums of money to anyone who killed me. All attempts failed for the obvious reason, but no one had ever promised a free moral pass to take me out before. Of course, this was the first time that anyone wanted me dead because I couldn’t die. It felt a bit oxy-moronic, with an emphasis on moronic.
Most religions deny that I am a possibility, unless you count the Biblical story of Cain. God made him immortal as a punishment for killing his brother, Abel. And no, I’ve never met him. If he does exist he stays well out of my way.
It also seems that another important question has been neglected by this murderous cult. How does one go about killing a person who is incapable of dying? Gods know that I have made a few good tries in my time, and I repeatedly failed.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I told Alejandro and opened the car door to get in.
“Aren’t you worried?” he asked.
This is what bugs me the most about mortals. They can’t seem to grasp that immortality is a literal term. There isn’t a thing under heaven and above hell that make my soul fly from my flesh. I have been diseased, assaulted, stabbed, poisoned, shot by bullets and arrows, impaled, set on fire, drowned, buried alive, dropped from great heights, crushed, and decapitated twice. While all of those experiences sucked in a great and profound sort of painful way, none of them have ever killed me. It simply cannot be done. Even my one trip into an erupting volcano had failed to do me in. It had been agonizing and extremely disorienting, but I managed to survive. Why can’t the Children of Orpheus get that?
“I’m not worried about it.” That isn’t altogether true. Murder attempts hurt, and it bothers me a lot that someone wants to come along and cause me severe pain. Pain is bad.
“The Great Bard thinks that they can do it,” Alejandro insisted.
“They can’t. Who is this Great Bard?” I demanded.
“Our leader.”
Oh. So they had managed to organize. Good for them. “Tell the Great Bard that I’m grateful for the warning, and that I’ll stop putting clear wrap on your toilet seats in return for his concern.” The clear wrap gag was getting old anyway. I needed to plan something better to freak the Children out. Maybe I’ll put porno into this Great Bard’s stuff where other people can find them. That might be good for a laugh.
“Look, we’d like to send someone over to protect you. We have a couple of members who specialize in personal security, so you won’t have to worry about your secret getting out.” Alejandro held a card out to me. I ignored it. I know where to find the Children of Orpheus if I want them. All I have to do is look behind me.
“You guys know where I live?” I growled.
“Of course. We follow you everywhere.” Alejandro gave me a look that implied that I might be stupid. Damn, I was going to have to move. I didn’t want to find another apartment. I liked where I was living.
“Don’t send people to my door. I already have enough privacy issues with you guys.”
“I think you should take the protection. You don’t know what the cult is capable of.” Alejandro was still holding the card out to me. I had just watched one of the cult's members burn to a crisp because his friends coated him with an unstable compound. I think I have a pretty good idea of what they are capable of. My eyes were burning with fatigue. It was time to go.
“No. Tell the Great Bard that I don’t need or want the Children’s protection. If I see the guards, I will make life very difficult for all of you.” I got into the car and quickly drove away before Alejandro could do anything about it. He was still trying to give me the card as he jumped back to keep me from running over his foot.


Chapter 3

Someone was banging hard on my door at ten the next morning. I was fuzzy from sleep when it began, and it had taken me a moment to realize that the noise echoing through my apartment was not my upstairs neighbor chasing his kid. I also sleep in the nude; a habit I had developed during my first marriage and never grew out of, so I listened to another round of banging as I put my robe on and tied it closed. Grumpy and griping under my breath, I flung the front door to nothing.
I looked up and down the empty hallway. I was about to close the door and go back to bed when a strange noise caught my notice. It was soft ticking sound, soothing in its rapid rhythm along the late morning silence. Looking down, I saw a white post box. It was ordinary enough with its postage paid stamp across the top and the clear tape stretched across the flaps holding it closed. Inside such innocuous packaging, the ticking was deadly ominous. I remembered Alejandro’s warning that a cult was out to get me, and I jumped back.
All the thing did was tick, so it felt silly to be afraid of it. I thought about leaving it for the maintenance staff to deal with. Then I heard a child’s laughter bubbling out of the door across the hall from mine. Mrs. Atwater had her granddaughter over today. I would never hear the end of it if the box turned out to be dangerous. Atwater would be at me all the time, nagging and harping about how close her precious granddaughter nearly met her death. The tiresome woman wasn’t nearly old enough for me to want to spend the rest of her life listening to her bitch.
I left the thing where it was and got a pair of scissors from my kitchen. I used it to tear through the tape and folded back the flaps to expose a small device cradled in Styrofoam peanuts. It was black, square, and it had plenty of wires and do-dads sticking out of it. Under a digital timer counting down the remaining seconds was a little spout. What was that for?
I lifted the box and brought it into my apartment, making sure I closed the door behind me. The numbers began to flash as soon as it counted lower than twenty. Flashing numbers is never a positive indication of anything, and I began to run. I rushed through my apartment at breakneck speed to my enormous shower stall. The space was a shining example of modern luxury, with marble walls, ceramic floors, and stout plumbing beneath. If there was any place that might contain an explosion that was it.
I was through my bedroom, past my closet, and into the vanity area when the bomb went off with a piercing alarm. I screamed and flinched as the device made a loud pop and I was heavily doused in cold water. Shocked, I waited for something more to happen. When my skin didn’t start falling off my body in big blobs and my insides didn’t try to rupture, I relaxed.
Puzzled by the unbelievable turn of events, I put the box on the vanity counter and took out the bomb. It had been built into the case of a car battery, with the space where the acid usually went converted into a holding tank for the water. I pried the top off of it, and found a simple device that served to force the water out of the reservoir and through the spout. Whoever had built the bomb had glued silver crosses all around the interior and the bottom.
Dumbfounded, I tossed the whole thing into my bathroom sink and noticed a bit of white paper jutting out from underneath the timer. It was a handwritten series of words in an ancient dialect of Hebrew that I hadn’t encountered in over a thousand years. It took an effort, but I managed to remember enough of it to understand that the note was a magical incantation, begging angels to destroy the creature the bomb was intended for.
I can’t claim that I wasn’t warned. Alejandro had told me that a religious cult was out to get me. But I had been right to deny the protection the Children were so eager to offer. Cults tend to be a bit loony so I had expected them to come at me with guns and knives, or if they were very cowardly, poison and incendiary devices. The holy water bomb was preferable to any of those things so I supposed I should simply be thankful and get on with my day, but I wasn’t. I was annoyed. The cult was full of idiots. Only the insanely devout would think that something like holy water would do anything but soak my clothes. Did they think I was a demon?
Now that the assassination attempt was dealt with, it was time to get ready for the day. I threw the bomb into the trash compactor in my kitchen with its cherry wood cabinets and stainless steel appliances. Then I hurried back down the hallway with the closet that contained my washing machine and dryer, then into my master bedroom. I moved past my four poster, king size bed and went into the massive master bathroom. I stepped into my walk-in closet and contemplated the wealth of clothing and shoes I held in there.
I can admit I am a clotheshorse. I love the soft fabrics, vibrant colors, and styles that were available in this modern era. In the past, I was restricted to long skirts and dresses, sometimes with a low cut bodice and other times I was forced to cover myself from neck to toe. Now I can wear trousers like a man and no one ever looked at me twice. I was also allowed to wear tank tops and shorts that exposed my long, slender arms and legs and no one cared. So long as my nipples and genitalia were covered, I could go around wearing any damn thing I wanted. I am a whole lot more comfortable in these modern styles.
I chose a pair of low rider jeans that flattered my perky butt and slim hips and showed off my legs. Underneath, I put on a thong because the jeans were too tight and panty lines are tacky, and I wore a matching bra that pushed my boobs up and forward as if they were on display. To avoid looking completely trashy, I donned a long, lilac boyfriend t-shirt that hugged my torso and ended just past the low waste of my jeans. I slid a pair of brown, leather boots with a cute high heel on my feet, and felt good about myself.
These days, women go out of their way to appear as if they did nothing to make themselves beautiful. They use an assortment of curling irons, flat irons, gels, hairsprays, and a strange thing called putty. I never saw the point in all of that unless I needed an elaborate hairdo. So I simply ran a brush through my long dark brown hair and left it alone.
Since no respectable woman within the social elite I had infiltrated ever left the house without make-up, I had to wear that too. The trick is to wear tons of the stuff without looking like I wore any of it at all. I had a mineral powder that matched my olive complexion and a blush that was soft enough to return the rosy glow to my cheeks that the base covered up. I applied a thin line of black eyeliner over my thick lashes and applied black mascara to enhance my purple eyes.
When I say purple, I don’t mean the kind of purple eyes that are actually a very dark blue. I mean the color that was once the exclusive right of Roman emperors. The shade of my eyes had once drawn all kinds of trouble to me when some priest decided that they marked me as an inhumane creature that needed to be destroyed. However, thanks to advances in modern medicine, my eyes rarely drew much more than raised eyebrows. People today assume that the purple color was the result of contact lenses, and believe that my eyes are a more mundane color like brown. I’m fine with that. Twenty-five centuries of hearing about my eyeballs was more than I wanted to endure.
Once I was minty fresh and pretty, I straightened my bathroom and went across my apartment to my study. There were a few stocks I wanted to check on, and then I would begin a new search for another item I wanted Harry to find for me. As I moved past the kitchen, I heard something pound on my front door three times before it exploded inward in thick pieces of wood. Surprised, I stared down the length of my entryway and saw Baja and Kootch crossing my threshold carrying a battering ram and pistols.
Put out because I was going to have to buy a new door if I wanted to avoid eviction, I glared at the men stepping into my home. “You could have just knocked you know.”

Chapter 4

Kootch snarled as he threw the battering ram into the wall beside the door and left a big hole in the sheetrock. His hand went behind his back and drew a pistol. Baja lifted his own gun, holding the 9mm sideways in the badass gangsta grip. I never could understand why punks hold their guns like that. If the weapon had a hard recoil, the shooter ends up punching himself in the face and breaking his nose and looking like a fool. Baja should have known better than that. Kootch had more brains when it came to his weapons. He held a semi-automatic pistol in a two-handed tea cup grip with a wide stance for balance. Perhaps Kootch had been a military man once upon a time. I wonder what happened there.
“The boss wants a word with you,” Baja said evenly. He wasn’t angry which is good, but that wouldn’t stop him from shooting me, and that is bad.
“Yeah… I don’t think so.” I replied. If there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that if someone else’s boss wants to talk to you, you generally don’t want to talk to them. Baja and Kootch were talking instead of shooting, so there was a chance that they had express orders to deliver me unharmed. I liked the idea that I could beat the crap out of them to my heart’s content and they would have to take it. I took a step back toward my bedroom where I keep most of my weapons.
“We are not here to debate with you,” Baja said, interrupting whatever semi-coherent comment Kootch was about to make. “You just come along with us now.”
“Why would I do something as stupid as that?” I took another step back. The men followed me. “People who go off alone with you two have a nasty tendency to reappear dismembered or full of holes. Tell your boss that if he wants to talk to me, he can call me on the phone, or knock on my door once I get it replaced.”
Neither man answered. They simply continued toward me, guns aimed and ready. I shouldn’t have tried to reason with them. Everyone knows that good flunkies always follow orders to the letter or else they didn’t live very long. Kootch and Baja were survivors and very good flunkies indeed, so if I wanted to avoid meeting their boss, I would have to kill or cripple them. I didn’t mind those options.
My favorite weapons are batons and I kept those in the bedroom when I’m not using them. I have guns, but I don’t like to use them unless I absolutely have to. Fighting and killing are intimate things, and should never be done when the enemy’s health could be left to doubt. When I kill, I do it up close and personal so that I know with certainty when they die. Projectiles also make it much easier to kill by accident. Bullets tend to breakup or ricochet inside the body, causing a lot of damage that the shooter might not intend to do.
If I cannot have my batons, I prefer edged weapons. My swords were currently in storage or on loan to museums. Most of them were more ornate than functional and all of them were valuable. Those are not pieces I wanted in my home as a beacon of temptation to thieves. I did have various daggers and switch blades but they were stashed next to the batons. I glanced into the kitchen and saw the wooden block holding my cooking knives, and decided that they would have to do.
Both men yelled angrily as I vaulted over the island counter between kitchen and hallway and they opened fire. Bullets whistled over my head and banged about as they hit the pans hanging from hooks in the ceiling and ricocheted off of the metal. My kitchen cabinets spat chunks of wood on me as I yanked my knife block to the floor and crouched behind the counter. After a few seconds, silence filled the air and I heard the harsh metallic sound of clips being ejected from the guns and new ones inserted. I pulled two blades from the block and prepared to counter attack.
“The boss wants you alive, but he was not specific about how healthy you had to be,” Baja called. “Don’t make me hurt you Becky, ‘cause I will if I got to!” Kootch followed the statement with high, wicked laughter similar to a hyena cry. He muttered maniacally, and I thought I could make out words that implied that he looked forward to doing unforgivable things to my body.
Baja usually controlled those impulses in Kootch, but today he let the redneck work himself into a hideous frenzy. Baja wasn’t bluffing. If I fought them too hard, he would find a way to get me, and then he’d let Kootch do whatever he wanted, so long as I didn’t die. So much for my theory that the men weren’t allowed to hurt me.
I contemplated my defense strategy while I listened to their shoes moving across the carpet, making soft crunching noises whenever they stepped on broken wood. They had guns and I had knives, and no matter what Kung Fu movies claim, you cannot win a gunfight with blades. Besides that, both men were heavier and stronger than I was and no amount of time spent lifting weights in the gym was going to make a difference. I could have overwhelmed them simply because it’s terrifying to face an opponent who refuses to lie down and die. But Kootch and Baja are prolific gossips and I don’t want my immortality to become common knowledge.
“Listen to me Baja. You broke my door down and shot my apartment full of holes. This is a rich neighborhood full of panicky white people. How long do you think it will take the police to arrive? And who do you think the cops will believe when I tell them that you’re random thugs looking to commit a little rape and pillaging?” Crouched as I was behind the kitchen counter, they couldn’t see what I was doing, giving me a small opportunity to surprise them. I was fairly certain that Baja had seen me bring the knives down and he wouldn’t get too close. But Baja wasn’t my initial target. He knew how to behave himself when he wanted to.
Kootch was the real problem. That guy was six kinds of cracked and none of it was good. There is no telling what a guy like that would do if he had me at his mercy, and I doubted that even Baja could control him once he was on a roll. I was going to take out that crazy-assed piece of trash before I did anything else.
Blessedly, police sirens sang softly through the air, growing louder with each passing second. Baja swore violently and both men threw caution to the wind and charged my position. Baja appeared on one side of the island counter with his gun aimed directly at my face. I stared calmly at it, unafraid of what would happen next. Either he would shoot me or he wouldn’t. The end result would be the same. I would live through it. Whether I was pissed off about it was entirely up to how many holes he wanted to put into me.
“Kootch, take the knives away and grab her. We got to go,” Baja barked. The sirens were loud enough that the police had to be roaring into the parking lot and rushing the stairs. I wondered how Baja planned to get me out of here without getting busted. I certainly wasn’t going to help him.
Kootch put his gun behind his back and reached for me. I watched him get close, his narrow face leering at me with sadistic lust as he bared rotting teeth stained yellow from chewing tobacco. Most of his lower front teeth were gone, leaving ugly pits in his gums. My revulsion showed on my face and he scowled at me as he reached for one of my hands to wrench the knife away. I let him seize my wrist, and then I brought up the knife in my other hand and plunged it into his flesh.
I have bad aim. Half the time I try for one spot of the body, I end up hitting something else entirely, leaving my enemy either unintentionally dead or badly crippled. I usually feel bad about these inaccuracies but I simply couldn’t summon empathy for Kootch as he howled and clutched at his groin. I’d gotten him right in the crotch when I had intended to get him in the thigh. Whoops, my bad.
Baja swore violently and rushed up to me. I had just enough time to look up and see the butt of his gun descending toward my face. Then stars flashed before my eyes and I felt my body flop against the floor. He hit me again, and I lost consciousness.
I awoke stretched out on a leather couch and wondering how in the hell Baja got Kootch and me past the cops. I had been certain that they were all but upon us by the time he knocked me cold, so I should be staring up at the ceiling of a hospital. Instead, I was trying to make my eyes focus on a slowly revolving fan in a dimly lit room. I could make out a massive painting hanging over the couch I was laying on. It was a portrait of some random nobleman circa the Renaissance done in muted colors against a black background. I didn’t make the effort to take in the rest of my surroundings. My head hurt and my nose and left cheek throbbed painfully. Turning my head would only make it hurt worse.
“You’re awake. Baja had worried that he had killed you.” The voice was low and melodious, the kind of voice that was most often used by actors and pretentious assholes. “Kootch, on the other hand, prays that you experience a long and agonizing demise. He is quite angry that you had stabbed his testicles.”
“Yeah well, shit happens when you bust through people’s front doors. Maybe he’ll remember that next time he decides to do something stupid,” I replied calmly. “Of course he would have been spared a great deal of pain if you had just picked up the phone, or told them to knock first.”
“I would not have had to send them if you had not called the police to report the demise of Charles Abernathy.”
At those startling words I sat up gritting my teeth against the pain that sang through my skull. I was in an office, which was better than the dungeon or torture chamber I could have found myself in, but still not good because I didn’t know where I was. I was at one end of a large room preferred by high-powered corporate types who sat behind giant desks with tall windows at their backs. The man had the desk, but no windows. Instead there was another painting hung on the wall, this one a blur of red and black with figures contorting in hideous ways as blue demons ate at them with wide fanged mouths. There was a pair of simple chairs before the desk, and the walls embraced a bookshelf and a couple of framed objects that looked older than I was. Across the floor between the desk and the couch where I was sitting, was a very large, antique area rug woven into geometric designs. It all screamed wealth and power obtained through acts of corruption and murder.
“I didn’t call the cops,” I snapped. I squinted at the man behind the desk. The light in the office was so dim that I couldn’t make out any of his features without getting closer.
“Really? So it is coincidence that the police came upon my cleaners dumping Abernathy’s remains into the Chattahoochee River?” he sneered.
“Maybe your cleaners aren’t very good at what they do,” I suggested. I touched my cheek and jaw where Baja had hit me and was delighted to discover that he hadn’t broken anything. But the skin felt tender and swollen and my brain felt as if it had been rattled around inside my skull. If I didn’t have a bruise yet, I was going to have a nasty one soon. I wanted a mirror. “Who are you anyway?”
“Come closer and see for yourself.”
I gazed at him from across the room and felt the thin darkness filling the space like a heavy screen between us. There was something strange about it, as if the lack of light was tangible, and if I stretched out my hand I could have touched it. It was unnerving, and made me reluctant to move from the couch where the nearby lamp pooled its weak light around me. “You come closer. I’ll stay right here.”
The man laughed as if I’d told an outrageous and filthy joke. “You are an immortal creature. What have you to fear?”
There are few sensations as profound as the feeling of blood freezing in your veins. It is the ultimate ‘Uh-Oh’ moment when you know that you’ve been cornered and the only options left to you are the unpleasant ones. I leaned back on the couch and crossed my arms over my chest and glared at the man as hard as I could. I doubt it impressed him very much. A girl has to be very big and ugly indeed to intimidate any man, and then she was rarely able to do it from across a room. I don’t have any of the necessary qualities to pull it off. However, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t try. “How did you know?”
“Your lovely eyes are a key indicator of what you are. Nothing human has eyes that shade. Tell me, how did you achieve it?” The man leaned forward as if he was about to receive a profound secret. I have none to give.
“I don’t know. I think was born this way,” I shrugged, assuming he was talking about immortality.
“All things that are born can die, that is a universal truth for all life great and small, except for you. Surely you can recall some potion, spell, or act of god that stripped you of your mortality and left you eternal. What was it?” He shifted in his seat, and the lamplight caught his eyes just so, making his retinas flare a pale blue. I stared at the strangeness of it and wondered. Normal human eyes flash red or green if they are blind.
“I don’t know,” I repeated. As the man stood, the air in the room thickened into a cool primordial soup, like the atmosphere of the British Isles before the Romans arrived and Hadrian built his silly wall. It smelled of brackish water and rotting vegetation that had not been experienced since the Picts and Celts did battle over every patch of rocky earth. It crawled across my skin and made my muscles jump in terror even while my brain was suddenly teased into curiosity. I have traveled the world for more than two thousand years and I thought I had encountered every kind of creature and people the planet had to offer. This man was a new thing and that alone was enough to drive away any fear I had.
“Have you truly believed that you were unique in the world?” The man moved around his desk with an alien grace that was beautiful and frightening at the same time. Fascinated, I watched him and knew that he wasn’t human, not in the way I understood it. He was tall, no big deal in this day and age and in this country. Everyone here was well fed and enormous compared to some other places I could name. But his arms and legs were a little to long for his torso, and his spine and neck bent in lines that were lovely to look at and would have paralyzed an ordinary mortal. He wore loose clothing tailored to fit his strange physique, and his big feet were bare upon the plush carpet. I strained my eyes to look upon his face, but the strange shadows covered his features no matter how he moved.
“The thought had crossed my mind.” I sat up straighter on the couch and watched him move toward me. His feet touched the rug and he moved across it with hardly a whisper of sound. It was as if he glided softly across the surface without pressing his weight into the delicate fabric. Watching him, I continued speaking, “But I stopped caring about it after five hundred years.”
He smiled then exposing long, white, even teeth that glowed against the darkness cloaking his face. It was like I was looking at a bipedal version of the Cheshire cat. “Why would you stop looking?” he asked.
“There was no evidence to prove otherwise.” My voice had gone weak and breathy with wonder. What was this man? What could he do? Was I about to discover that I am not alone in the universe after all?
“Perhaps you were too close to the mortals to be allowed to find us,” he said. Us? There was more than just this guy? The man had ordered Baja and Kootch to break down my door and kidnap me. He was the guy who managed the Cellar. If there were more like him, did I really want to know about it? I knew the answer was a disappointing no. People like this are always up too no good, and if I got involved in their plots, I would never escape. I like to do my own thing without having to consider how other people would react. Getting sucked into this man’s creepy activities would give me nothing but drama. No thank you.
“You’re probably right,” I conceded. “I like mortals way to much for things like you to want to have anything to do with me.” I gave him an amiable smile and shrugged. “Now that we’ve established that I was not the one who called the cops on your cleaners, I’ll be on my way. Rest assured I will do everything in my power to never see you again.” I stood up, took a nanosecond to acknowledge that the move didn’t make my headache worse, and looked around for a door. Then I swore loud and violently when I discovered that there was no obvious exit. How did I get in here?
“We have not established anything,” the man said coldly. “You will sit down. We must discuss how you will compensate me for the loss of my men.”
“Like hell I will,” I growled. “It was your incompetence that got them nabbed in the first place. I don’t have to compensate you for a damn thing. Now let me out of here.”
I felt a rush of wind upon my face and suddenly I was sitting on the couch once more, blinking up at the man’s face in open astonishment. For the first time I saw him clearly, and I wished I hadn’t. His skin was smooth and flawless, stretched like marble across long, perfect features that resembled a human, but wasn’t. His large eyes were as green as the finest emeralds, and his long hair was the rich color of fine bronze. He was beautiful and terrible and utterly inhuman. Confronting this thing, I felt terror like I had not experienced since the first time someone tried to kill me. I opened my mouth to speak, and no sound came out.
“Be still.” Though the words were spoken softly, they clanged through my head like a mighty bell, compelling me to remain motionless. “You will not leave until I grant you permission to do so.”

Chapter 5

I watched open-mouthed as the man banished the shadows with a casual flick of his long fingers. Suddenly, the room was filled with a warm, golden glow too bright to be supplied by the small lamp on an end table near the couch. I sat as still as I could, ignoring the throbbing of my face and skull, and doing nothing to draw the creature’s attention to me. For the moment he seemed content to amuse himself with the various vines and mossy plants that decorated the office. With his thoughts elsewhere, I examined the walls for any crack or indentation that hinted at a secret doorway through which I might make my escape.
There are those who believe that once immortality is achieved that there is nothing left to fear. That is not true. There have been times when I knew I would survive a situation, but I was still a quivering lump of terror, unable to think or defend myself. As I watched this creature lovingly murmur to his plants, I knew that I might be facing such a moment soon. I wanted to get away by any means I could.
“I am surprised that you haven’t recognized me yet,” the man said casually. He was behind his desk again, with his fingers steepled beneath his chin. A small smile played upon his full lips, making his beauty menacing.
“Why would I recognize you? We have never met,” I answered. He frowned and leaned back in his chair, unhappy with my answer. He fell into a sullen silence, like a petulant child who had not been praised enough for some small trick or deed. “So who are you then?” I asked, irritated that I had to stroke this jackass’ ego. Suddenly, he wasn’t so scary anymore. He was just another man with an over inflated sense of self.
“I am Eochu Breas,” he announced loftily now that I had finally asked. “But I am simply called Bres now.”
“Huh.” I knew the name from my early travels.
I left my home in what is now Budapest, Hungary near my fortieth birthday when my neighbors began to comment on my obvious youth despite my advancing age. Leaving my beloved first husband behind, I started walking west and eventually found myself in Ireland. According to local legend and folklore, Eochu Breas was the half-breed king of the Tuatha De Danann Faerie. He had favored his father’s people, the Fomorii with gifts of lands and titles, during his brief reign. He was quickly overthrown by his outraged Tuatha wife Brigit and then left to bitterly stew in exile. If this man was who he claimed to be then he was a thousand years older than I am, regardless of his rumored claims to mortality. I doubted very much that he was a faerie king. My money said that he was some new breed of delusional mutant. “Good for you.”
Bres’ face darkened at my lack of excitement. After a moment of glaring daggers at me, he slapped the top of the desk with his hand. “You are arrogant in your years.”
“Hazards of the lifestyle,” I growled back. He opened the drawer of his desk and withdrew a vial full of red fluid. He held it in the tips of his long fingers, dipping it up and down so that the liquid contents flowed back and forth in the glass container. I watched him for a moment, taking in the smile teasing at his sculpted lips as he played. I knew he wanted me to ask about the vial, but like any self-respecting hostage, I was reluctant to give him what he wanted. Finally, his play grated on my nerves and I snapped. “What is that?”
“This? Oh, it’s nothing. Just some blood.” Bres was the most petty and juvenile criminal who has ever kidnapped me. And I have been kidnapped by a lot of people. I ground my teeth in frustration.
“Whose blood is it?” Of course it was my blood. He wouldn’t be showing it to me if it weren’t. He took his sweet damn time answering the question, even though he had been dying for me to ask it.
“It’s yours.” Thank the gods; he was in too big a hurry to gloat to wait for me to ask why he had taken it. “I had it removed while you were unconscious. It occurred to me that there are a few hematologists who would be very interested in the blood of someone like you.”
People have been nabbing my blood for centuries, using it in potions and spells in the hopes of gaining my immortality. It was gross, but didn’t do me any harm, and it did nothing for the thieves. However, since the mortals began to develop science and were growing more and more sophisticated in their technology, I was given cause to worry. On one hand it was now possible for me to discover exactly what it was that made me eternal, but on the other hand it also gave everyone else proof of what I was. I am aware of what people will do to learn the secrets I carry in my bloodstream, and I am painfully aware of what it means to my personal freedom and quality of life. So far I had been unable to find the courage to risk ending up in a secret laboratory in order to get the answers I wanted.
Bres was going to resort to blackmail to make me his puppet. I guess it was better than some of the things people have tried over the years. It was definitely a lot less painful strategy that was for sure. I did wonder why Bres didn’t just glamour me within an inch of my life if he was the faerie he claimed to be. Not that I’m complaining. It would completely suck to be under some crazy person’s magical control, so I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
I let out a long weary sigh, and made my voice as sullen as possible. “Fine. What do you want?” I would agree to anything that Bres wanted if it would get me out of the room. Whether or not I actually did it was a whole other matter. Bres glared at me as if he didn’t believe that I was relenting. I guess he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He palmed my blood sample, and stood up from his chair, unfolding his long body like a puppet on strings. Unnerved, I watched him move toward me with a nefarious gleam in his green eyes until he stood very close to me. I had to tilt my head back to look in his face.
“You will infiltrate the group that sent the man to die in my Cellar, and you will kill their leader.” There was no pretense to the statement, no uncertainty that I would obey. He was speaking to me as a master to a slave, with the full knowledge that I would do as I was told, whether I liked it or not.
“Sure, no problem. Can I go now?” I snapped. There was no way I was going to do that. In my head, I began to make elaborate plans to torment the ass-face for centuries before culminating his pain in a slow and agonizing death. I almost laughed at the ideas scrolling through my brain, but managed to suppress it. It’s stupid to let the insane kidnapper know that you are plotting against them. It makes them cautious.
Bres gave a smile that contorted his face into a terrifying mask. Unable to help myself, I shrank away from him as he wet his fingertips from the vial and reached for me. He grasped my shirt tightly in one fist while he painted my forehead with strange runes and chanted in some language I’d never heard before. It was full of rolling syllables and musical vowels that slipped from his lips like poisoned honey. As he spoke, the blood tingled upon my skin and burned like acid. I squealed and fought, clawing at his wrists with my fingernails. I tried to kick him, but he slung me hard from side to side whenever I lifted my foot.
Finally, he shoved me away from him so that I fell to the floor and lay there gasping from pain. “What did you do to me?” I gasped. Tears of pain were streaming down my cheeks. I touched my forehead and found that my skin was smooth. The only blood I found there was the thin film that Bres had traced on me.
“Just a geas to make sure that you can’t talk about this, and to make sure I can keep track of you,” Bres replied casually.
I pressed my palms against my head and tried to process what had happened. To my knowledge, a geas is a kind of magical binding, compelling the person under its control to do exactly as they promised. In the old days, no magic was required to make someone hold to his word. The old codes of honor and valor kept most people in line, but there have always been tales of magic being applied to some unsuspecting mortal, forcing them to commit acts they wouldn’t otherwise do. I had blown off those stories as cautionary tales designed to make a person stop and think before they promised something they couldn’t deliver. Now I’m not so sure of that opinion.
Bres leaned against a corner of his desk and gave me a smug grin as he watched me try to suppress my agony. Then he twisted in place and touched something on his desk and spoke. “Please have Baja come in and escort Miss Calden out. Make sure a cab is waiting for her.” He released the button before there was a reply. “You may go now.”
Baja showed up a few seconds later and hauled me off of the floor by the collar of my shirt. He kept one heavy hand on my shoulder and escorted me outside to a waiting taxi. He paid the driver to take me home, and he walked away. He had not spoken to me the entire time, not that I was in the mood for chitchat. My eyes were still heavily tearing so that I was all but blind, and my head throbbed so that I was not inclined to talk. I ended up sitting in the back of a cab that smelled thick of tacos and curry, and waited for the pain to stop.
The cabby dropped me off at home with an offer to take me to the hospital instead. I refused and began the long, painful walk up to my apartment. My neighbors were crowding the hallways with eyes a little too wide and making fearful whispers as they hunched together in little clumps. They fell silent and gawked at me as if I was returning from the dead as I slowly appeared on the landing. Mrs. Atwater, my neighbor across the hall, broke from the herd near her door. She was a middle-aged woman with bleach-blonde hair and a brand new facelift that made her look like she was perpetually caught in a wind tunnel. She was immaculately dressed with a thick layer of careful make-up painted on her skin. She flapped her hands frantically as she hurried toward me with an expression of intense relief on her face.
“Miss Rebecca!” she exclaimed, engulfing me in her arms and the heavy scent of her sickly sweet perfume. “Bless your heart, we thought the worst! What happened to you?” She had taken my face in her manicured hands and touched my bruises. I flinched and pulled away and continued to my apartment. All I wanted to do was overdose on pain relievers, take a hot bath, and then get some sleep. Mrs. Atwater kept up with me, continuing her diatribe of concern driven by her need for juicy gossip.
“Everything is fine,” I told her. “It was just a misunderstanding.”
“That was quite a misunderstanding! I heard gunshots and the police are saying that you were kidnapped! You need to go right on in there and tell them what happened to you.” Mrs. Atwater seemed to think I was a lost soul who needed a mommy and she was bound and determined to fill that role for me. I wished she would go have a tawdry affair and leave me alone.
“There are still cops in my apartment?” I asked. That was weird. I could have sworn I’d been gone for the better part of the day at least, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been much longer. “What time is it?”
“It’s noon. Oh bless your heart, do you need a doctor?” Again, Mrs. Atwater had to touch my swollen face. I think she was trying to hurt me. I scowled at her and pushed her away. She didn’t take offense to it. If anything, it worried her more. She turned to the group watching us a few feet away. “Ed, go call for the paramedics.”
“Don’t bother Ed,” I called to the aging man moving toward Mrs. Atwater’s door. “I’m fine.” Mrs. Atwater immediately contradicted me and threatened Ed in a loud and creative way. Caught between his fear of his wife, and his respect for the personal space of his neighbors, poor Ed froze like a deer in headlights and waited for one of us to win the argument. Luckily, one of the cops who had been lurking inside my home heard the commotion and stuck his head out to see what was going on.
At the appearance of the uniform, Mrs. Atwater forgot about forcing medical care on me and focused on the police officer and why he was there. She grabbed me by the arm and hauled me toward the man and called to him in a loud, shrill voice, “Officer! She came back! Rebecca Calden is back!”
A plain-clothes detective appeared at her shouts and watched open mouthed as Mrs. Atwater brought me forward. He waved me inside and closely followed me, disappointing the annoying woman by not inviting her along. She stood at my threshold staring after me with big eyes and a promise to look in on me later. Since my front door was still lying on the floor of my entranceway, the detective led me toward my living room for privacy from nosy neighbors. In the kitchen there was blood pooled on the floor where I had stabbed Kootch, and a couple of technicians were digging slugs out of my cabinets and walls. Moving carefully around the mess was a photographer, meticulously documenting evidence before it was gathered into plastic baggies and taken away.
Cops stopped what they were doing to watch me go by. I think that they are so accustomed to victims of violence turning up dead days or weeks later, if they turned up at all, that it shocked them to see me hours later and alive. Stranger things have happened though, and they usually did when I’m around.


Chapter 6

There are two kinds of cops in the world: the competent and the criminally lazy. The lazy ones are usually corrupt, cruel, and capable of great acts of self-interest. My life is easiest when law enforcement is burdened with a plethora of these apathetic, slovenly louts. For the most part they leave me alone, and when they do have to deal with me, a thin stack of cash usually makes them forget that they ever met me.
It’s the competent cops that are bothersome. They are smart, ambitious, and relentless while their pesky ethics keep me jumping through hoops to avoid their suspicions. Those individuals see too damn much and draw conclusions that come uncomfortably close to the truth. I think the only thing that has saved me from discovery every time is the detectives’ pragmatism. Immortality defies the logic of reasonable men, and they tend to discard the evidence that contradicts their assumptions of reality. A few have come close to accepting the impossible, but I’ve always managed to disappear before they could talk themselves into altering their perceptions.
I stared at the broad back of the detective leading me toward my living room and I prayed that he was lazy. But as I studied his appearance and bearing, I knew I was screwed. From the top of the man’s clean cut brown hair to the bottoms of his polished shoes, Philip Shaw screamed anal-retentive competence. Even the precise length and grooming of his fingernails proclaimed his obsessive attention to detail. He offered me a sympathetic smile that warmed his pretty blue eyes and opened up the even features of his face. I gave him a weak smile in return and knew that I would have to choreograph a pretty tap dance to stay off of this guy’s radar. Why was it that there was never a dirty cop around when you wanted one?
At least he was handsome, that always made interrogations easier to endure. He was average enough at first glance, but once his personality animated his features, he was suddenly striking. He wore a blue tie and white shirtsleeves that hinted at a strong body underneath. He moved with a kind of gentle grace that said that he was strong and aware that if he wasn’t careful, he might hurt someone. I found myself pondering what he looked like underneath his clothing and wondering how difficult it would be to convince him to let me see. It’s always astonishing how time has done nothing to diminish my interest in an attractive man. Philip Shaw made me consider the wisdom of badge bunnies, those women who perpetually hang around cops and firefighters in the hopes of getting the attention of one of these men. If more public servants looked like the detective, I might join the bunny ranks myself.
There was a black evidence case sitting on my dining room table with various bagged samples tucked inside of it. Shaw paused beside it and pulled out one of those cold gel packs that people use as compresses and to keep their lunches cold and offered it to me.
“For your face,” he told me gently. “It will help with the swelling.” I thanked him politely and pressed the smooth plastic against my cheek, flinching a little as the chill soaked into my tender skin. With a comforting hand on my shoulder, he led me to my living room where he asked me to sit down and inquired if I would like something to drink. I told him I was fine, and settled back into my comfortable couch and waited for the questioning to begin.
I admit that I didn’t pay much attention to what Philip Shaw was asking me. I was too busy thinking about how pretty he was. I did focus enough to tell him a story that covered all the evidence that was already in front of him. Other than that, I played dumb and lied through my teeth. He seemed to buy it. There were no long pauses while he scribbled on his pad of yellow legal paper, and he didn’t give me any penetrating looks that meant he thought I was full of shit. He did ask me questions about details, and I either answered them, or I lied. It didn’t bother me to do it. I’ve been lying to people for a very long time and now it was just one more thing I do to get by. The trick is to stick as close to the truth as you can, and to stay consistent.
My real trouble lay with Eochu Breas, the geas he had put on me, and what it meant. I was fairly certain that I was going to be pushed around for decades to come, and that pissed me off. I’ve already done the slave thing four times, and I do not like it. It made me angry enough to go on a bloody rampage; nothing I haven’t done before, and eliminate anyone who wanted to keep me on a leash. The moment I thought of cutting down Bres, I felt sharp agony streak through my brain. I gasped in shock and pain, pulling Shaw’s eyes up from the notes he was writing.
He swore under his breath as he jumped from his seat and reached for me. “Call an ambulance!” he shouted at my kitchen. A passing patrolman spoke rapidly into a microphone attached to his shoulder.
I scowled at Shaw as he leaned over me, pulled the ice gel pack from my cheek and took my face in his hands. “What is wrong with you?” I snapped, pushing him back. He fell off balance and hit the edge of my coffee table with the small of his back. A red film covered my vision and all I could think was, ‘Oh crap, I just assaulted a police officer’. He didn’t seem to take offense at it. He looked frightened as he reached for me again.
“Are you okay? Do you feel any pain?” he demanded. What was wrong with this guy? He was entirely too close. He was good looking, but I hardly know the man. If he had been some random pretty boy I didn’t have to deal with on a regular basis that would be one thing. But Shaw had been questioning me about a crime thirty seconds ago, and I wasn’t in the mood to get frisky. I tried to tell him to back off and stop touching me, but all that came out of my mouth was “Ava bah auuugh!”
Ah shit, now what? Shaw was well and truly frightened, and he forced me to lie down on the couch while he shouted at the men crowding into the room. I could feel blood running across my cheeks and jawline and I rolled onto my side to avoid letting it clog up my sinuses and choking me. Shaw helped me move, touching me delicately as if he thought I would stroke out at the slightest jolt. I lay there calmly, watching cops cluster around me to watch me die, and silently cursed Bres and his damn geas. It had to be the source of the blood, since Baja had not hit me hard enough to make me hemorrhage.
I got to go to the hospital in an ambulance whether I wanted to or not. The downside was that I had become an unresponsive, floppy, puddle of flesh. I couldn’t speak or respond in any way when paramedics showed up and completely over reacted. They started an IV and pumped me full of fluids and medication that made feel giddy. Not that I could laugh. Something had happened in my brain that made me unable to respond to anything. All I could do was lay there and stare at the ceiling while I plotted slow and horrific ways to kill Bres. On the upside, Philip Shaw rode in the ambulance with me and held my hand the entire way with a look of sympathy on his handsome face. What a nice man.
After I freaked out emergency room doctors who scratched their heads and wondered why I was still alive, I ended up in a CAT scan. I was settled onto the scanner bed and slid into the machine while I prayed that the radiologist was a blind moron, and my doctor was strung out on morphine. Otherwise, I was going to have to try to explain why I had blood leaking out of every orifice in my skull without showing evidence of death. I didn’t have to worry about this kind of issue in the Third World. They didn’t have the money for the CAT scans, and half the MDs still believed in magic. Perhaps it’s time to make a move.
I walked out of the hospital after signing an AMA (Against Medical Advice) paper and agreed not to sue the hospital should I die once I left their care. Needless to say, the doctors were unhappy about it. They had diagnosed me with a severe brain aneurysm that killed or crippled anyone else, and they wanted to know why I was recovering. I wanted to know why too. I’ve had aneurysms before, and while any potentially fatal damage is repaired with blinding speed, the rest healed mortal slow. I should still be lying in a hospital bed and staring blankly at the ceiling as the doctors predicted my imminent demise.
Alejandro had pulled up at the curb as the nurse pushed me out of the exit doors. I stood up and thanked her politely as he jumped from the driver seat and hurried around the front of the car to open the passenger door for me. I gave him the fierce look he deserved, noting that much of the beating that Kootch had given him was still apparent on his face. The nurse made one last attempt to convince me to go back inside with her, and for a moment I was tempted to do it. I didn’t want to deal with any of the Children, and I certainly didn’t want to accept rides from them. But I also wanted to find out what was going on inside my body, and that meant a conversation with Bres. I was certain that he had something to do with it, and I doubted that I could get him to explain anything if my stalkers were around.
I started to refuse the ride Alejandro was offering me, but his bruised face darkened with a scowl, and I knew he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The nurse had paused in her retreat to give the man a suspicious stare. To avoid a scene, I got into the car. The last thing I needed was another visit from the police. This much trouble for one person was unusual by normal standards and the cops would want to get involved more deeply than I was comfortable with. Although, if the cop in question was Philip Shaw I wouldn’t mind so much, provided that he didn’t put me into jail at the end of his investigation.
Alejandro waited until we were on the freeway headed north to my apartment in Buckhead when he finally spoke. “You should have let the Children of Orpheus send the body guards. It would have saved you a lot of pain and trouble from the cult.”
“The cult didn’t put me in the hospital,” I muttered angrily. “If any of the Children had been there when it went down, they would have been killed.”
“What went down then?”
I remembered Bres and his geas and I didn’t answer. While I could trust Alejandro enough to keep me out of a hospital if I had another brain aneurysm, it didn’t mean I wanted to have another one for talking. “It wasn’t the cult.”
“I heard that they planted a bomb on your front door,” he said flatly.
“It wasn’t a bomb.” I stared out of the window and saw my exit go by. “Hey, you passed the off ramp.”
“I’m not taking you home,” Alejandro answered.
“Why the hell not?” I demanded. I didn’t need this. My head still ached and all I wanted to do was prop my front door back into place, take some aspirin, and go to bed. I did not want to go on some adventure or quest cooked up by Alejandro and the Children of Orpheus.
“I’m taking you to the safe house.”
I was already closer to these nut bars than I wanted to be, and I certainly didn’t want to shack up with them. I eyed the temporary concrete median that was erected for roadwork, and I thought about grabbing the wheel and driving the car into it. That would sufficiently incapacitate Alejandro, if not kill him, and allow me to escape. Unfortunately, rush hour traffic was congesting the lanes, and my odds of making a break for it without getting hit by a speeding car were bad and getting worse. I was once struck by a vehicle doing eighty-five while I was hitchhiking along the Pacific Coast Highway in the 1960s. That Manson guy was a real bastard with a lead foot.
“If you grab the wheel I’ll knock your damn teeth out,” Alejandro growled, interrupting my thoughts. He took his eyes off of the road long enough to throw me a mean look and gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white. I could only sit in stunned silence. “I mean it. I will kick your damn ass.”
There was a strange pause in his speech pattern, as if he wanted to use filthier language, but didn’t dare. What did I care if he dropped an f-bomb? I’ve used them plenty myself ever since I saw those crazy fornication plaques on the doors of houses in 13th century England. It was fun to say.
“How did you know what I was thinking?” If there were faeries in the world, why couldn’t there be mind readers as well? I believe that science fiction writers call them telepaths. In old times, we called them witches or prophets of God, depending on where I was living at the time. I always wondered how those people always managed to get themselves caught by the Inquisition. After all, if you knew what other people were thinking, wouldn’t you know to get out of town? And people wonder why I don’t believe in psychics, although I’m willing to change my belief system in light of recent revelations.
“The Children have an extensive library about you. There is a story from the 1920s where you were taken hostage in a bank robbery and you grabbed the wheel and hit a tree while running from the cops.” Alejandro explained.
Oh yeah, I remember that. The bank robber had flown right through that windshield. The cops had swooped down on him and kicked the poor crook within an inch of his life before they hauled him away for another nasty beating at the police department. I had escaped during the one sided battle, taking the loot with me.
“Why are you taking me to the safe house?”
“The Great Bard wants to meet you and ensure your safety while we get the mess with the Immortal Church of God sorted out,” he explained. He took the Turner-McDonald Parkway exit and sped us further away from Atlanta and into Roswell. Before the Civil War, Roswell had been a wealth of cotton plantations and mills, until the Federal army commanded by General Garrard captured it. Under orders from good ole General Sherman, the city’s mills had been burnt to the ground in an effort to force the Confederates to fold under economic pressure. Most of the homes and grand plantation manors had been left standing and a great many still remain, dotting a modern city with elegant symbols of old and brutal southern elitism.
“What if I don’t want to sit around the safe house and talk about a crazy cult with the Bard?” I demanded. Technically, this was my second kidnapping of the day and it was getting tedious. I couldn’t remember the last time so many people were this hot and bothered over me. If it hadn’t already proven so inconvenient, I might have been interested enough to go with the flow.
“You aren’t being given a choice,” he replied in a low, angry voice.
“How are you going to stop me?” I snapped.
Alejandro remained silent, letting the tension fill the car until the air stank with it. He wasn’t going to talk to me about it anymore, leaving me to ponder his words until I was ready to scream at him. However, if there was anything twenty-five centuries of life had taught me, it was patience. There is some comfort in the knowledge that the people who annoy me today will be dead sooner rather than later, whether I was what killed them or not. I glared at Alejandro and wished a slow death in very old age upon him. Mortals seem to think that this is the best of all outcomes of life, but I don’t believe it. I’ve seen what ninety years or more of life does to the human body, and I’m glad that I never have to endure it. It looks like an undignified and annoying way to live, where the mind can clearly recall what it was like to feel good and run like the wind, while the flesh sags and decays with time and gravity.
As the sun was beginning to slide behind the horizon, Alejandro pulled in front of an old white house with a curving driveway and a carefully manicured lawn. It had a colonnade of tall pillars that stretched from the floor of the porch to support the broad eaves just below the roof. There was a glittering chandelier lighting the front doors and pretty furniture set out in neat clusters. A group of tall, broad figures emerged from the deepening shadows to stand menacingly before me as I got out of Alejandro’s car.
They were like clones; each man was the same height, wore the same thick layer of hard muscle, and a uniform of black trimmed with white. Even their close cut hair was the same shade of yellow blonde over blue eyes. With their stoic expressions they looked like an odd result of Hitler’s breeding program without the menacing, genocidal vibe. They felt more like an honor guard, standing formally by until someone with a high enough rank called them away.
“What’s all this about?” I asked Alejandro, gesturing to the odd squad. He gave me a somber look and climbed the porch steps to the house. He paused long enough to hand over the car keys to a blonde who had stepped forward, and then he disappeared behind the line. I waited beside they car and wondered what would happen if I turned in the opposite direction and walked away. Only one way to find out.
“Please, come into the house.” I glanced over my shoulder to find that three of the big blondes had separated from the line to follow me down the driveway. I snorted in contempt of them and kept going. I didn’t care why the Children wanted me here, and I had better things to do than humor their delusions of grandeur. I was going to call a taxi as soon as I found a phone, and I was going to go home.
A heavy hand slapped down onto my shoulder and strong fingers squeezed the muscle and bone painfully. I glared at the man, tilting my head back to stare into his cool blue eyes. “I must insist that you come with us, Madame.”
“Oh really?” I sneered, feeling the first pricks of rage along my spine. “How are you going to make me?”
Chapter 7

Well, the son-of-a-bitch made me go with him. In my defense, I had been having a rotten day. I’d been beat up, kidnapped, and endured a massive brain aneurysm. Even with the fey magic working wonders with my injuries, I was exhausted and in no real condition to fight. I did get my hits in though. I broke his nose and knocked out two of his teeth in the scuffle, and he will have to have an ear reattached. In the end, he shot me in the chest and tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I really hate that bastard.
I recovered in record time, but not before I bled all over the expensive antique couch they put me on. I know it’s petty to feel immense satisfaction at the knowledge that I had ruined the property of people who had hurt me. But some days, petty is all I have and I will take it. I sat up as the pain faded, and I pulled at my shirt so I could look down the neck and peer at the bullet wound.
The wound was already closed up with a scab covering the hole and a nasty bruise spreading across the ribs the slug had broken. The squashed bullet had been ejected from my body and was caught in my lap between my bloody t-shirt and jeans. I would have enjoyed this wonderful side effect of Bres’ geas if the man hadn’t been such a dick head. Instead, the accelerated healing was one more way that the creature had control over me.
“You never healed this quickly before. Either you have managed to hide more from us than we thought, or you have grown in power.” I hadn’t noticed the old man sitting in the chair across the room, and I glared at him when he startled me. I let my t-shirt go and sat back on the couch, moving a little so that I wasn’t sitting directly in my own blood.
“Your man shot me.” I said petulantly. As far as bad days went, this was amongst the most bizarre. Never in my two thousand plus years have I ever endured such a string of traumatic events in so short a period. Even the days of the Black Death and the Holocaust had more down time between disasters. I seethed and fumed, and swore that somebody was going to suffer for this. The old man in his three-piece suit and wire rimmed spectacles looked like a good target to start with.
“You gave him no choice. You were asked politely to come along, and then you bit his ear off.” The old fart was a dignified gentleman with thick, white hair and fingers like sausages. The lines on his face made him look like a kindly grandfather instead of the maniacal leader of a secret society that has stalked me for hundreds of years. He gave me the calm watery eyes of men who were so old that they were ready to die and waited for me to respond.
“Just tell me what you want so I can tell you to go to hell and leave,” I growled. “I have other things to do.”
“I am aware of your troubles, and I am sorry for it. We tried to give you the assistance you needed, but you refused. A foolish move I thought was beneath you, but you have always been an independent creature…” he let the words drift away, as if he hadn’t the strength to carry on. I doubt that this man has ever lacked for strength. As old and gnarly as he looked, he held himself like he was used to getting what he wanted, no matter the cost or effort required. “As I’m sure you already know I am the Great Bard of the Children of Orpheus. But I know you hate formality, so you may call me by my Christian name. I am Howard Stevens.”
“What do you want Howard?” I remembered having to repeat myself with Alejandro the night before. I wondered if this was the kind of thing I would have to do with all of the Children. If so, I was going to have to find ways to avoid conversations with them if they were going to continue this new habit of talking to me.
“I would like to show you something.” Howard unfolded his lanky body from the chair and stood with the grace of a man half his age. His big hands smoothed the expensive fabric of his suit as he adjusted his posture into something stiff and formal. I rolled my eyes in disgust and followed him out of the sitting room and into the foyer.
I expected to be taken upstairs where the offices and the private rooms were located. The fanciest technologies would be in that section of the house and I figured that Howard wanted to impress me with the Children’s newfound strength. Instead, he led me to a panel under the sweeping stairs and opened it with a touch of his fingers. Behind it was a steel door with a glass plate on one side. I was aware of this hiding spot, but I have never been past this point. Whatever the Children had hidden here was protected with secret passwords and bio-scanners, and so I could never get through. The not knowing had driven me nuts for years, and this moment should have made me giddy with anticipation. Instead, I was annoyed with the tediousness of it all.
After scanning Howard’s hand print and a small donation of blood, the steel door clicked open to reveal a simple flight of wooden stairs leading to a basement below the house. Howard let me go first with a gentle sweep of his hand and down I went. At the bottom was a vast museum, all of it devoted to me. There were displays of the weapons, clothing, and jewels I had discarded as I moved through time. In every available space were neat rows of shelves, holding books and folders, likely containing notes and articles about my activities. One wall was hung with a variety of paintings and photographs of me, wearing an assortment of clothing and hairstyles, depending on what era I had existed in. Creepy. The Children had picked up my trash and they stored it away like a bunch of squirrels hoarding nuts. I turned away from it all and saw Howard behind me with a proud smile on his face.
“You people need to find something better to do,” I snapped. Really, there must be more to life than following me around. I do some pretty cool things when I get bored, but no one is that interesting.
“While you are still our main focus of interest, we have moved on to other things,” Howard replied, stepping past me. He let his fingers dance across the objects he passed, touching the things that represented generations of futile efforts to discover my secrets. I remained where I was and stared at it all, too troubled by the products of hundreds of my lives stretched out before me to see. It’s odd, that no one ever realizes how much one life can accumulate, not just in materials but memories as well.
I caught a glimpse of a simple pewter bracelet, and I recalled the anniversary my fifteenth husband had given me the trinket and the joyful light in his eyes that he had been able to do it. That night there had been sweet kisses and gentle touches in the comfortable warmth of our small home in Southern Italy. In another spot was a torn and blood stained gown draped around a seamstress’ mannequin and I saw the pale and enraged faces of German priests as they applied hot irons. I had screamed for them and begged for the lives of the children I had sheltered, but I never knew why they had taken me. Afterwards, I returned to my home to find the children gone, forced into convents and monasteries or dead from starvation and abuse. There were ancient weapons that brought flashes of terrible battles and murderous deeds in which I had learned that there were fates far worse than death. I remembered years of peace and decades of despair until all of it was mixed into a gray wash of emotion that left me numb.
Howard frowned concern at me. “Are you well?”
“I’m fine.” I glowered at him to show how much I hated what I was going through. There is a reason why I had discarded most of this stuff. I had no use for it once the people associated with them were gone and it was time for me to move on. If I had clung to these events they would have driven me mad. I could not bear the idea of the monster I would become if that occurred. Now the Children were flaunting these memories before me, and I wanted to burn the place down so that I never had to look at any of it again.
“Please, come in. There is something you must see,” Howard called. I sighed heavily and crossed the threshold, feeling the ghosts of my past crawl across my skin. Howard led me past the artifacts of my sins and virtues to another room near the back. It was small compared to the one devoted to me, but still large enough to hold computer equipment and science experiments. There were objects on display here too, but most of them were religious in nature, and some of them were newer than the things they had collected from me.
I moved to a glass case that held a series of small metal objects and colored stones. Most of the metal pieces were engraved with runes and pictograms representing a variety of plants. The larger bits were thin medallions emblazoned with a strange swirling emblem with straight lines and small circles cutting through the middle and tiny crosses drawn suspended from the bottom. The colored stones gleamed like precious gems pulled raw from the earth, and had star constellations cut along their surfaces. I recognized these relics from the time of the Inquisition, when the Inquisitors traveled far and wide to root out witches and exorcise demons. Such things were used as evidence against the so-called guilty before they burned them at the stake. These particular objects were supposed to come from the demon Stolas, a Prince of Hell who passed on forbidden knowledge of Astronomy, plants, and precious stones.
I touched the case with my fingers and I felt something oily and foul crawl across my hands and along my arms. I jumped back with a gasp and rubbed furiously at my skin to get the disgusting sensation off of me. I had never felt anything like it before. It made the relics feel like they were real, as if they had were impregnated with the demon’s power by its own hand.
“Be careful with those,” Howard warned, stepping beside me to stare down at the awful display. “We have been collecting witches’ talismans for occult museums and collectors in order to improve the Children’s treasury. Most of what we find is rubbish, and sold to whoever will have them. These particular items possess some kind of evil power that corrupts the susceptible, and destroys those who are firm in their purity. The Children have lost many good members while acquiring these objects.” Howard said the last part with a solemn, respectful tone, as if the members in question had been fallen heroes. I let him have his moment of silence.
“If they are so dangerous, why don’t you destroy them?” I asked.
“Everything we have tried has failed. Even fire and acid does nothing to deplete their power. As a last resort, we have surrounded them with holy items and placed them inside this case, where they can be closely guarded.”
“I don’t see any guards.” I hadn’t seen anyone but Howard since I was dumped onto the sofa to bleed for a while.
“The Vatican was kind enough to loan us specialists to train some of our members to deal with the items during power spikes and strange events while we search for some way to destroy them. They are around, even if you do not see them.” Howard kept his hands clasped behind his back as he stepped away from the display case and faced me. “There is more than this small collection in other safe houses. We have to keep them separated so that they do not take on a life of their own.”
“So you’re getting out of the stalking business then,” I said bluntly. Was this what the fuss was about? Howard wanted to tell me to my face that the Children of Orpheus had finally found a worthy purpose and now they were dumping me? If that was the case, they didn’t owe me an explanation. They certainly didn’t need to shoot me to get me to hear them out. I would not have given a single crap if one day I had turned around and saw no one following me. Hell, it would have made my century.
“In a manner of speaking.” Howard chuckled as if I had said something witty. “We would like to invite you to join us in a common goal.” He sighed and turned completely away from the display case, drawing me along with a gentle touch to my arm. “It is our wish that you use your considerable knowledge and skills to help us contain the rise of ancient creatures and help forge the new world that is already growing wildly out of control. Our interactions with you have put us in a unique position to guide the future that is fast upon us, and so we feel obligated to make certain that it goes as peacefully as possible.”
“Have you been sniffing glue?” I snapped. “Following me around and taking notes does not make you experts, and it doesn’t prepare you to deal with anything.” Of course I had to admit that there were other supernatural creatures out there, Bres had made certain that I knew that. But one rogue faerie does not equal a new world order. Even if every creepy crawly hinted of in myth and legend was about to rise up and swallow the world whole, it didn’t mean that the Children of Orpheus was equipped to do anything but make the situation worse.
Howard sniffed at me with disdain. “We are far more prepared to meet this change than any other group is capable of. With you in our ranks, we could save a good many lives.”
“What makes you think I give a damn about mortal lives?” I snapped. “All of you die before you can finish anything properly, and then the next generation just screws it all up trying to finish it.”
“All the same, it is a worthy cause. With your assistance, our work would see smooth completion without the usual trouble between generation gaps.” It took all of Howard’s considerable dignity and strength to keep from scowling at me.
“I think you’re interested in something other than saving lives,” I mused, giving the old man the full weight of my best suspicious stare.
“What other interest would the Children of Orpheus have in taking an open part in these events?” Howard replied with an innocent expression.
“The same thing that all people have wanted ever since mankind stood up and realized that they had thumbs,” I snorted. “You want power. You’re hiding your motives behind charity, which is a shitty thing to do. Better to come right out and declare yourselves and avoid the scandal and assassination attempts a few years down the road.”
“Perhaps I am telling you the truth of our motives, and you are merely skeptical in your years.” he replied calmly.
“I doubt it. What makes you think that the inhumans want to live with mortals now instead of taking over a thousand years ago when they had a better chance?”
“Who knows? Perhaps they saw no point in fighting with us. A thousand years ago, there was more than enough room to keep the human world and the metaphysical world far apart. But in the last few hundred years, humanity has become more sophisticated and our population has exploded as a result. We ate up the habitats that faeries, dragons, and the like relied on to keep apart from us, driving them further underground and into the shadows. Now the climate changes we caused are driving them closer to extinction. If they want to survive, they have to come out from the realm of legend and folklore, and carve out a place alongside humanity.”
“So what do you expect me to do about it?” Thinking of Bres, I decided that Howard was making a good point. However, I much preferred to do as I have always done and go with the flow. I have a rather fatalistic view of the human race and the world in general, and I firmly believe that what will be, will be. There is very little that I can do about the grand scheme of things, so I sit back and wait to see how things play out.
“I have given it a great deal of thought, and I have decided that your best role in the emerging new world is an ambassador of sorts. Your unique condition guarantees that you will emerge from all encounters, and the power that you hold will be sufficiently intimidating to the various races should they prove uncooperative.”
“You have decided.” I said in a dull, disgusted tone. Who did this guy think he is? I haven’t willingly taken orders from a man I wasn’t married to in centuries, and I haven’t conceded that much since the Women’s Liberation movement began in the early twentieth century America. “I’m not going to do that. Find someone else to run your errands, Howard. I’m going to go home.”
“What would you do then?” he asked. “Simply continue to live? Those days are at an end. The Children of Orpheus are no longer the only group who are aware of your existence, and the others will not be content to leave you to your own devices as we have done.”
“Name one creature that can make me do anything.” I rounded on the old man, daring him to find the words to put me in my place.
“Stolas can do it.” Son of a bitch! The old bastard came up with a name. Not that it would do him any good. Demons do not exist on the material plane. If they did, the greedy monsters would have taken over the world by now.
“I don’t think so,” I scoffed. It was time to go. I started for the door and the stairs beyond, leaving the old man glaring at my back. To his credit, Howard didn’t touch me or try to stop me. He stood with quiet dignity and anger sparking in his eyes.
“You cannot walk away from this.” His voice was almost sad as he spoke. “I wish we could leave you be as we have always done, but those days are gone. You will have to join the Children, or you will find yourself enslaved by things that even you cannot out live.”
“If there were such things, they would have found me by now,” I growled. Howard had told me what the Children wanted, and I had no interest in helping them with their world domination schemes. I was certain that was what they were up to. Howard was lying to himself if he actually believed that the Children’s involvement would stop with advisement and charity. No one ever let go of control once they had it. And the more well-meaning the organization, the more bent they were in their quest to protect people from themselves. I wanted no part of such oppression. It was time to leave before Howard thought of some new way to waste my time. Without another word, I turned on my heel and walked away.
“Be careful. The beast is rising, and he has already set his sights on you.” Howard called after me. “This morning’s silly bomb was only the beginning. The Immortal Church of God is far more than you believe.”
The Children did nothing to impede my exodus from their safe house. They even called a cab to take me home. I gave the driver my address as I climbed into the back seat, and gave a last accidental glance to the old, stately house. I spotted Alejandro standing in one of the large picture windows watching me go. His dark features were stained orange in the setting sun as he lifted his hand and waved a sad and fearful good-bye.


Chapter 8

Detective Philip Shaw did not look very happy when I opened my door and found him standing behind it. He was still cute though, so I didn’t mind so much. I could see Mrs. Atwater watching us from her doorway, eagerly taking in everything that was happening. I heard Ed yell at her to mind her business, and suddenly I knew who had fixed my broken door.
“Thank you for fixing my door, Ed!” I yelled as I stepped aside to let Shaw in.
“He says your welcome,” Mrs. Atwater replied quickly and went back into her home. I heard the sharp beginnings of a domestic battle and I smiled. Mrs. Atwater had finally done something that got Ed all wound up and now he was going to throw down. Or at least he was going to pitch as much of a fit as his laid back little soul could muster. Mrs. Atwater will win the fight, but Ed will keep her occupied until I get my current disaster straightened out. I made a mental note to send the man a basket full of the things Mrs. Atwater won’t let him eat.
“You look very good.” Shaw didn’t say it like he meant it as a compliment. Instead, it sounded like an accusation. He touched my cheek with his fingers, tracing the spot where the bruises had been, and leaving a trail of warmth across my skin. I had to fight off a lecherous grin. No need to outrageously flirt with the nice detective until I know it will get me somewhere. “I thought you were dying when they took you out of here.”
“Is that why you came here?” I asked, smiling and deflecting the implied question. Shaw wanted me to explain how I survived something that killed everyone else, and I wasn’t going to do it. “You were worried about me?”
“I thought it was rather remarkable that you managed to walk out of the hospital after your brain liquefied for no reason.” Shaw was upset and his accent showed. He had a hint of the sweet Southern drawl that is so popular in movies and Mark Twain books. “I wanted to see if it was true.”
“Who told you that my brain liquefied?” I scoffed.
“I spoke to your doctors. They had some interesting things to say.” Shaw produced a file and spread it out on my kitchen counter. Inside were my miniscule medical records. Like I said before, I avoid doctors whenever possible and I stay away from competent medical professionals at all costs. That habit doesn’t acquire very much paperwork.
“How did you get a hold of my medical records?” I asked, outraged. Not because it was a huge breach of privacy, which it is, but because it isn’t normally part of a kidnapping investigation. Shaw was digging too deeply into my personal history. If he keeps this up, I’ll be forced to kill the man if I wanted to avoid making uncomfortable admissions. I don’t want to kill Shaw. I liked him.
“It didn’t take much. Your doctors practically threw them at me. I think they’re hoping that I’ll drag you back to them for more tests.” Shaw plucked a sheet of paper from the file and showed it to me. It had two columns on it. On the right side was a list of abbreviated names that held no meaning to me, and the left side was nothing but numbers and percentages. My medical knowledge is limited to first aid and herb lore, so the paper was indecipherable.
“So what?” I asked after glancing at it.
“This is the results of the antibody and toxic substance tests your doctors ran.” Shaw waited for me to react. When I didn’t, he continued on. “The doctors didn’t give me the full details, but basically what they said was that your blood work is loaded with heavy metals and some foreign substance that they can’t identify.”
“And?”
“They also found antibodies for bubonic plague, Ebola, tuberculosis, malaria, and small pox.” That made sense. I’ve had all of those diseases, and then some. I’m actually surprised that was all the laboratory found.
I shrugged nonchalantly.
“How old are you, Miss Calden?”
The question was so unexpected that I had to think about it. For the life of me I couldn’t remember how old my new identity was supposed to be so I picked an age that was compatible with my physical appearance. “I’m twenty-one.”
“Are you sure about that?” He cocked his brow in a look of disbelief.
“Yes I am,” I replied dryly.
He gave me a firm flat look that meant that he had already concluded something he didn’t like about me. Shaw continued on to his point. “They can’t understand why you tested positive for small pox virus anti-bodies. There hasn’t been a reported case of it in decades. No one knows how someone your age has been exposed to it.”
“I’m just lucky, I guess.” I couldn’t believe the doctors thought to run that particular test.
Shaw knew he wouldn’t get me to say anything else on the subject until he had something to wave under my nose and force me to talk, so he let it go. “There’s another reason why I came by. I was wondering if any of these men look familiar to you.” He produced mug shots from the inside pocket of his suit jacket, and he put them in my hand. I flipped through them, barely seeing the brutish faces sneering at the camera. Obviously these were the usual criminals that the cops always went to when they were stumped for suspects. There was quite a large stack in my hands, and it made me wonder what kind of city I was living in. Finally, I came to the last two pictures and saw Baja and Kootch glaring at me from the little snapshots.
“This is them,” I told Shaw, holding out the pictures to him.
“Are you sure?” he asked, taking them back and using a paperclip to attach them to the file with my medical records in it. He had a small notebook in a leather cover that he used to write down the prisoner numbers from the mug shots along with the men’s legal names.
“I’m sure.”
“Was there any mention of a ransom or were they after whatever it is that makes you so healthy?” Wow, that wasn’t a subtle hint toward my mysteriously good well-being at all. But he asked the question like it was a normal thing to wonder about rather than an attempt to make me confess all of my secrets. Even the look he gave me was one of patient blandness rather than interest. Shaw was trying very hard to stay non-threatening while he silently told me that he knew I was up to something illegal. I frowned at him and tried not to take it personally. Shaw is a cop and it is his job to be suspicious.
“No,” I lied. “They broke down my door and beat me up. If they made demands, I don’t remember it.”
“Memory loss is common with skull fractures,” Shaw commented, implying that he knew that my head was cracked and I didn’t. It was meant to fluster me and I refused to respond to it. He didn’t know what to be suspicious of, and from the look of frustrated hostility he gave me, it was driving him nuts. He couldn’t justify getting a warrant to search my house and put me under surveillance, but it wouldn’t be long before he found something. We both knew that he had gotten my medical records illegally, and while the burden of responsibility probably fell on the doctors who gave them to him, I could still pitch a fit nasty enough that he could be facing ethics charges. Shaw wouldn’t push his luck with me until he knew for certain that I was breaking the law. If he thought that making off the cuff comments and staring hard at me was going to make me spill my guts, he had another thing coming. I’ve been alive far too long for that to work on me anymore. So I stared cheerfully back at him and waited for him to do whatever else he had planned.
I have to admit Shaw is a lot more attractive when I haven’t had my face beaten in and I’m not bleeding from my eyeballs. I was able to see the soft reddish gold highlighting his brown hair and there was a blush of color covering his skin that marked him as a person who spent his free time outside. There was a tan line around the ring finger of his left hand that meant he was recently widowed or divorced from a marriage of several years. I studied his clothes for a stain or trinket that would give me some sign of fatherhood, but I found none. Either his marriage had been sterile, or he thought displaying clues of his family life was unprofessional.
“That’s all I have for today,” Shaw said, finally giving up and deciding it was time to go. “I’m sure I will be contacting you in a couple of days to let you know that we have the suspects in custody. Then we’ll take it from there.”
“Thank you.” I smiled at him and politely offered my hand to shake. He grasped my fingers firmly, and a strange, heated shock trembled up my wrist and into my arm. It startled both of us, and we exchanged wary looks.
“That was weird,” I commented, rubbing the palm of my hand.
“Must have been static build up.” Shaw grimaced as he flexed his fingers and gathered up the file he had with him.
I don’t know what that was, but it certainly wasn’t static. I let Shaw use the mundane words to explain the weird experience and showed him to my door. Again, he promised to keep in touch, but this time he gave me a pointed look that meant that I wouldn’t like the next conversation we had. I smiled as if I had nothing to fear and closed the door behind him.
“Why did you let the detective go? He is going to discover what you are.”
I ground my teeth hard enough to make my jaw ache. That was Bres’ voice coming from the direction of my living room. I didn’t want to look. I wanted to walk out the front door and follow Shaw to his car and beg for his protection from the maniac. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the knowledge that the crazy-assed faerie would only find me; probably in a place and time that was the most inconvenient for me. So I let out a pained sigh and I went into my living room to deal with the creature that tormented me.
“I’m not worried about discovery,” I told Bres as soon as I saw him. The faerie was sitting on my couch and flipping through the porno channels on my satellite subscription. He must have found something he liked; because he stopped on a movie depicting two women doing rather awkward things to a man’s genitalia with their mouths. Indignant, I grimaced at the television then whacked Bres on the top of his head with my hand. He yelped and rubbed the offended spot as he gave me a petulant look. “Turn off the damn television.”
Bres did so with a regretful sigh and tossed the remote aside. “I would think that you would be more grateful considering that my geas made it possible for you to heal your wounds so quickly.”
“Oh yes, I just love how you’ve jerked around with my biology. It’s been a real blast,” I snapped sarcastically. “What do you want?”
“I thought that I have given you a task that you might find difficult to complete without some help.” Bres did that thing where he glided over the floor without putting his weight on it and came to stand close in front of me. Not wanting to be within easy reach of the creature, I took several steps back. He did weird stuff to me when he was too close. Bres cocked his head curiously as if he didn’t understand why I moved.
“This should help you get started.” Bres flourished his hand and one of the pamphlets Charles Abernathy had been handing out appeared. He held it out to me, but I did not move to take it.
“Put it down on the couch,” I told him sternly. “Then get out.”
Bres lifted one brow in an eloquent expression and let the pamphlet drop from his fingers. It fell in a rustle to the floor where both of us stared at it. “Aren’t you going to pick it up?” Bres asked mildly.
“I’ll pick it up when you leave,” I snapped.
Bres laughed, making a low, velvety, musical noise that curled in my ears and made me shiver. It was like really good Blues music, both sad and joyous all in one delicious sound. “Are you afraid of me?”
“Damn right I am,” I admitted. After a couple of thousand years, a person learns that stupid things like honor or dignity are fluid concepts that can be detrimental to one’s quality of life, so don’t judge me. “I learned the first time. There is no way I’m letting you touch me again.”
Suddenly, Bres moved and it was like a wrinkle in time and the world went odd and sideways. My eyes crossed and I became nauseated. When my vision sharpened, Bres was nose to nose with me and grinning like a loon. I backed up against a nearby wall, and Bres put his freakish hands up on either side of my shoulders. He smiled as he leaned his body in, closing the distance between us until only a hair’s breadth of space was left.
“How do you know that you cannot tolerate my touch?” he purred with his lips hovering over mine. I could smell the earthy scent of moss with the sharp bite of fragrant herbs radiating from the heat of his body. It did nothing for the condition of my rebellious belly. “There are maidens who beg for a single moment of my favor. Despite your immortality, I know that there are not many differences between you and them. What makes you think you can resist my charms if I don’t want you to?”
“I gotta throw up,” I moaned. If I had been paying attention, I might have been terrified or even a little turned on. But that quick move trick Bres did had given me a nasty case of vertigo, and all I could think of was my roiling stomach.
Bres pulled back with a fiercely disgruntled expression. “Very well, then. Get to work. There are fairer maidens than you to entertain me.”
What an ass. I would have told him so, but I clapped a hand over my mouth and made a mad dash for the toilet. I emerged many minutes later, sweating and reeking. To my delight, Bres was no longer in my apartment.

Chapter 9

I stopped for dinner before dropping in on the six p.m. service of the Immortal Church of God. I watched the rush hour traffic of one Atlanta’s dozens of Peachtree Streets through the tall restaurant windows as I munched at a club sandwich and fries. I love food in a way that I enjoy little else. I don’t have to worry about high cholesterol, hypertension, heart disease, or diabetes so I am free to eat what I want, when I want. But I can get fat. There have been decades when I grew enormously rotund and had to lose the weight if I wanted to move my arms and legs, but other than that, there isn’t much to deter me from gluttony.
My waiter discreetly refilled my sweet tea and disappeared to tend to other diners and to clear away tables. I took quiet note of this and continued with my solitary meal. After the events of the last two days, I was taking nothing for granted. I was in a state of hyper awareness that I haven’t been forced into since ninety years ago when I was embroiled in the Chicago crime families. I’d been married to a made man then, and he had been an ill-tempered and violent lout. That marriage had been a difficult one that had ended when I shot my husband in his bed after I had finally snapped. The family he had worked for had not taken his demise well, and they had hunted me until I faked my death in a public display of fire and flying car parts.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure wind his way through the rows of tables toward me. I had replaced my usual leather wrapped club for a pair of collapsed spring batons that were easily hidden in my belt. I’m not entirely sure what the concealed carry laws regarding the weapons are, and I don’t care. Most cops don’t consider the weapons as much of a threat, not when they constantly have to deal with gun control. So they don’t notice them unless I give them a reason to. I placed one of the batons next to my plate and eyed Alejandro warily as he slid into the booth across from me. The waiter had noticed his approach and was there to offer service before I could tell Alejandro to go away. He ordered a soda and accepted the menu the waiter offered him, but never opened it. Instead, Alejandro set it down on the table in front of him and folded his hands on top of it.
“What now?” I demanded with open hostility.
“Nothing. I’m back on your shadow detail.” The bruises and swelling on his face had faded a great deal so that I could make out the pure ethnicity of his Hispanic features. It was a good face, with high cheekbones and broad nose over a full mouth and thin, black moustache. If I didn’t know who he was, I would have believed the well-meaning, amiable façade he was projecting at me as hard as he could.
“Then go back to the shadows and leave me the hell alone.” I fingered the baton next to my plate as a subtle hint that I could get violent if he didn’t do what I wanted. Alejandro pretended not to notice as the waiter returned with a soda and left.
“The Great Bard wants to know if you have given any thought to his proposal.” He said plainly.
“I’m not joining the Children of Orpheus,” I snapped.
“Don’t you understand what we’re offering you?” he asked, lowering his voice and leaning forward so that none of the nearby diners could hear us. “You would be surrounded by people who know what you are and wouldn’t hound you for it. The Children can protect you from zealots and super naturals in ways the police can’t. Think of what you could do with the peace and shelter we would give you. With our resources and your immortality, you could make significant changes for the better. How can you refuse that?”
“Look, I’ve been around for a very long time,” I retorted into Alejandro’s earnest face. “And if I wanted to make significant changes, I would have done it by now. I do not need or want anything the Children of Orpheus has to offer. Accepting it would be submitting to slavery. If you were very smart, you would quit the Children and find a life of your own. Whatever the Children are up to isn’t good for anyone.”
“You’ve allowed us to follow you around for more than a thousand years,” Alejandro snapped back. “You know us as well as we know you. Have you ever seen us do anything that was evil?”
I couldn’t answer that. I’d ignored the Children of Orpheus as much as possible. They were a fun distraction when I wanted it, but otherwise they are one more piece of background. If they ever did anything other than watch me, then I didn’t know it. I hadn’t wanted to know. With knowledge came responsibility, and I worked hard to beholden to no one. Forever is a long time to be responsible for large groups of people I barely knew and liked even less.
Alejandro took my silence as an admission of defeat and he leaned back in his seat with a smug smile. My sandwich sat half-eaten and cold on my plate. I had lost my appetite during the conversation. I checked my watch and decided that it was just as well. The evening service at the church was looming, and I had to go if I wanted to make it. Fuming, I called the waiter to retrieve my bill.
“Do you know that the men from the Cellar are following you?” Alejandro asked as I signed the credit card receipt and handed it back to the waiter who stared at me in alarm.
“Figures,” I muttered. I supposed Bres didn’t trust the geas to keep me from plotting revenge while I followed orders. Why else would he have Baja and Kootch follow me around. I guess a faerie wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did by being an idiot, no matter how the lunatic behaved. I would have to get very nasty to get rid of him. I gave the waiter a look that ran him off.
“What are you going to do about it?” Alejandro asked, alarmed.
“Nothing.” I don’t owe him an explanation.
Alejandro thought differently. “Why not?”
“I’m going to go places where I shouldn’t be and will probably get them killed. I don’t see any reason to stop them from following me, do you?” I snapped.
“They’ll draw the cops to what you’re doing,” Alejandro pointed out. Truth be told I was knee deep in some very strange stuff, and the police are legally obligated to save my ass if anything went horribly wrong. Their preoccupation with Baja and Kootch will keep them from paying too close attention to what I’m doing until I want them to. This is working out pretty well for me. It’s nice to have the back up even if they didn’t know that they were doing it.
“I don’t have a problem with it.” I shrugged.
“If you joined the Children of Orpheus, you would have dozens of brothers and sisters who possess skills to keep the police from learning about anything you’re doing,” he said “And we would always guard your back.
“Go away Alejandro.” I picked up my purse and baton and slid out of the booth. If I wanted to get to the service before it started, I had to leave now. I hurried to the exit with Alejandro dogging my steps all the way to my car. I had gone back to ignoring him, so it was a bit of a surprise to see him sitting in my passenger seat as I pulled the car door closed beside me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.
“I figured that there was no point of following you at a distance if you knew that I was there,” Alejandro replied smoothly. “This way is much more efficient.”
“Get out of the car,” I snarled. I didn’t want the Children of Orpheus to make things more difficult for me. If the Immortal Church knew what I was, then they were certainly aware of the Children, and having Alejandro around would make it harder to blend in while I cased the joint and made my plans. Also, I just didn’t like Alejandro. He bugged me.
“No.” Alejandro grinned at me, daring me to do something about it. I seriously considered taking extreme measures, but I caught a passing patrol car out of the corner of my eye, and I was reminded that I might be under surveillance. Anything that I did to get Alejandro out of my car could be documented and used against me in a court of law. I was left to grind my teeth in frustration.
“Fine,” I snarled, jamming the keys into the ignition and giving it a vicious twist. “You’re on your own. If you get into trouble, I’m not going to risk my hide to save your ass.”
“Okay,” he responded with a casual shrug. “You’ve never gone out of your way for anyone before, so I can’t expect you to do anything heroic now.”
I don’t appreciate being called a coward, so I gave him a dirty look and called him a name too filthy to put into print.
The Immortal Church of God was housed in a prefabricated structure made from aluminum and thin steel. The parking lot was nothing but gravel and the peculiar red clay that makes up the earth of this region. It could have been one of a thousand small churches in Georgia, with its simple sign hung over an ordinary door to proclaim what it was.
Faith in the South is like college football. Everyone has their favorite team, be they Baptist, Southern Baptist (yes there is a difference though I can’t find someone to explain it coherently) Lutheran, Catholic, Episcopalian, or what have you. They scream and yell about their favorite preacher, and how good his teachings are. Then they howl their supremacy over all other denominations and how they are the right and chosen people of God, and only they will be allowed to get into Heaven. They often work themselves into a frenzy over it, and once in a great while, they even beat each other up.
I don’t understand the lunacy the mortals feel for the subject. They repress every kind of impulse they have, calling every whim and desire sinful and created by the Devil. That last bit always felt like a contradiction to me. If the Christian God is the creator of all things under Heaven, how is it possible that Satan has managed to do some of the same? By definition, evil is a destructive force, unable to create a damn thing. So it made more sense to me that the Creator would grant us the impulses that lead to procreation, evolution, and competitive survival rather than some belligerent and destructive force known as Lucifer. Don’t get me wrong, I know evil exists, but it has better things to do than tempt humans to engage in pre-marital sex and stealing from the cash register. That sort of thing is all the result of poor socialization.
From what I have seen of the modern Christian, very few open the Bibles they clutch in their sweaty hands. They rely solely on the wisdom and intelligence of their leaders to do their interpreting and thinking for them. It is an unforgivable practice in an age and country where literacy is a right, not merely a privilege of the wealthy. If a person can read, they should tend to their own souls, seeing to their preacher for guidance and not grant the fool blind obedience. Anyone remember Jonestown? Nearly a thousand men, women, and children died of poisoned fruit punch because no one bothered to stop and ask, “Does that nutter Jim Jones sound a little paranoid to you?” Of course there were more complicated issues involved there, but blind obedience was a huge part of it.
The tires of my sports car kicked up orange dust in a cloud around us as I searched the crowd of cars for a place to park among them. There were a few last minute stragglers arriving in the nick of time for church services. The men were dressed in white slacks and yellow dress shirts and the women wore white blouses and long yellow skirts. None of them so much as glanced at us as they hurried to the doors as if they were the most important thing in the world.
I found a place to park on the far edge of the lot away from the door and the gravel path that served as a driveway. I didn’t like that it was so far away from my escape routes, but I decided that it couldn’t be helped. I got out of the car and tucked the spring batons in the band of my jeans under my shirt. This crowd had already tried to kill me once, and so I wouldn’t want to provoke them by flashing weapons. Of course their weapon of choice had been holy water, so I could safely assume that they weren’t smart enough to search me.
Alejandro watched me go through the motions with a slight frown darkening his face. I had stopped acknowledging his presence an hour ago, so I didn’t pay attention to his disapproval. I got out of the car, trusting that he would follow me, and not caring if he didn’t.
“What are we doing here?” Alejandro hissed as we walked to the church door. “These people want to kill you, and you’re just going to go sit in the chapel with them?”
I looked at the building and thought that it would be a miracle if these people had anything that remotely resembled a chapel. “I’m going in to have a look around. If they’re going to keep coming after me, I’d like to get a rough head count of the number of people I’d have to kill.”
I didn’t actually have any intention of killing anyone in the church other than their leader. Even after all the battles and needless slaughter I’ve witnessed over the years, I still don’t have the stomach to commit mass murder. Luckily, cults are just another kind of gang. You take out the leader and the rest of the group falls apart because no one else knows how to tell them what to do. Eventually they’ll scatter and join more reasonable faiths, or they’ll commit mass suicide in some psychotic display of devotion. Either way, my job would be over.
The comment was meant to shock Alejandro and it worked. He gaped open-mouthed at me as the implication of what I’d said washed over him. “Are you insane? A large percentage of this church is innocent women and children! How can you justify murdering them?”
“First of all, being female does not make a woman less capable of evil and brutality. Anyone who thinks otherwise is probably a man and is asking for what he gets. Second of all, this is a religious cult full of true believing, rabid, fundamentalists. These people hate anyone that isn’t one of them, and they never stop. They either die off, or they perpetuate their insane belief systems by passing them onto the kids. Discriminating according to age and gender is stupid and dangerous.” I know it was mean of me to say such things to Alejandro, but I couldn’t resist it. The horrified expression on his face was priceless. Besides, if he was as studious a member of the Children of Orpheus as he claimed, then he should know that I don’t do things like infanticide. Sure I’ve gone on rampages before, but I’d been provoked by rape, murder, and pillaging. I have never killed an entire community because they posed a mild threat to my personal comfort. I simply fake my death and get out of town. It’s a method that is easier than confrontation.
The inside was as plain and unremarkable as the outside. The massive interior had been portioned off with cheap sheet rock and pleated plastic partitions. They’d hung up the traditional portraits of Jesus depicted as a handsome Norseman in clean white robes rather than a real Jewish carpenter. I always laugh at the obviously racist images of a man who had devoted his life to peace. It made me wonder how these people would respond if they knew that their lord and savior had been small and brown and malnourished. Jesus hadn’t been ugly, but he hadn’t been remarkably attractive either. He was…ordinary for the time. It was just as well; he hadn’t had the time or practical use for women anyway.
Each door was hung with iron crosses, which explained why Bres didn’t come in here and do his own dirty work. Faeries cannot cross thresholds hung with iron. I have no problems of that nature so in I went. The chapel was located in the center of the church and its shabby walls were too short to reach the high ceiling overhead. They were hung with scenes from Biblical stories, colorful banners with poorly embroidered scriptures, and large bouquets of silk flowers set on the large metal platform at the back of the room. A wooden pulpit had been erected at the platform’s center, and there was a drum set and electric guitars set up behind it. Above it, a massive, neon lit crucifix had been suspended from the rafters so that it implied whomever spoke from the pulpit was speaking with divine authority.
The congregation seating started with three long rows of padded, wooden pews in front of the platform, obviously the reserved seating for the most prominent church members. For the peons there were cold, metal folding chairs without cushions to lend some comfort. A single, wide aisle had been created down the center of the chapel, so that people could move about if they wanted to. I studied the congregation crowding the chapel and nearly turned on my heel and ran for it. Everyone was dressed in the white and yellow cult uniform, with one or two potential recruits wearing ordinary street clothes and uncertain expressions on their faces.
“Do you still want to get your head count?” Alejandro sneered.
No, I really didn’t. I studied the way these people moved and talked, as if their piety was the last thing in the world left to them. They were too urgent in their polite conversation, like they weren’t sure that they should really be here and sought validation of their choices from each other. The air stank of desperation so thick I could taste its sourness at the back of my throat. All of these people were easy prey for a charming predator that would send them out like lambs to the slaughter for no reason other than because it amused him. This is why I don’t get involved. Now that I was staring at these desperate and mindless creatures, I saw them as people who needed to be saved. In my heart I knew that I could rescue them and I felt obligated to do it. Wishing that I could walk away without guilt, and knowing that I couldn’t, I sat down in a chair near the back wall to wait for things to start.
“Hi!” came a bright and perky voice. “Have you come to hear the words of Christ from Reverend Ryerson himself?”
I saw a girl of eighteen or nineteen standing over me and groaned. She was a lovely creature, with big, dark, doe eyes, and delicate bones. She was practically vibrating with joyful excitement so that her dark Hispanic coloring was full of a lush, rosy glow. This girl was the image of what the first blush of womanhood should be, full of life and innocence. She was exactly the kind of beauty that ended up being rescued from monsters in fairy tales because she was so very lovely and all around wonderful. I wanted to puke. I offered her a weak smile, and thought that she was the loveliest corpse I had ever seen. This is what sucks the most about murderous religious cults. They always destroyed the best among them.


Chapter 10

I’d done everything I could, short of yelling at the girl, to get her to go back to wherever she came from. Alejandro had stymied every insult and crude insinuation that fell from my lips with compliments that made Mabel Fortuno blush charmingly and he made pointed questions that screamed ‘I want to do you right now’. The girl’s interest had quickly focused on the handsome Mexican at my side and she batted her eyelashes at him. They flirted with single minded intent, leaving me alone in a sea of people. I could tolerate only a few minutes of Mabel’s vapid giggling at Alejandro’s dumb jokes before I had to move so I wouldn’t scream.
I scanned the congregation, considering where best to park my carcass. I chose a seat in the middle of the room next to the aisle so that I could make a quick getaway if I needed to. Seconds later, the lights dimmed and everyone rushed to their seats. Every chair in the chapel was taken in a matter of minutes, and I found myself surrounded by a sea of yellow and white devotees. I blew out a nervous breath and kept my eyes stubbornly on the platform in order to avoid eye contact with any of my neighbors and instigating an unwanted conversation.
A spotlight cut a beam of light upon the platform, casting black shadows thick enough to feel like walls pressing in against me. The crowd bustled with excitement and made hushing noises. The room went eerily silent, devoid even of the rustling of cloth as bodies shifted in their seats. It was as if every person in the room was held in motionless thrall. I dared a glance at my neighbor and found the man staring intently forward, his features stiff with an expression of ecstasy. A weird odor poured off of him, smelling bitterly sharp of henbane and human sweat.
Disgusted, I leaned slightly away from the man and tried to breathe in another direction. Henbane is a nasty weed from the nightshade family, and once absorbed inside the body it can cause anything from giddiness to death, depending on the quantity taken and how it was absorbed. This guy reeked as if he had been smoking it, which meant that he was truly stoned and probably dying. He lifted one sausage fingered hand from his lap and pulled at the collar of his shirt. A large stone spilled from between his fingers, catching the harsh light trained ahead of us and flashed in a riot of color. Strange symbols and figures were cut into the jewel’s surface that flared then faded.
A cold chill crept across my skin and an old memory flashed through my mind. The opal grasped in the man’s hand reminded me of the Abraxas Stones I had encountered during my travels through the ancient Persian lands. They had been talismans of great power, supposedly possessed by demons known as djin and bestowed luck and wealth to any who possessed them. They had been precious gems of profound beauty, and I had coveted a pair of them enough that I stole them from a senile old sultan. Now they were tucked away in a safety deposit box of a Swiss bank.
But what was clutched in the man’s sweaty fist was a cruel mockery of the fabled Stones. While the opal was as beautiful as any jewel I have ever seen, there was darkness to the fluid shine and vibrant color of the soft gem. It looked as if it was eating the light that grazed its surface instead of reflecting it with majestic glory. I was repelled to the point that my skin crawled and I nearly stood and left the church. I glanced around and saw more of these stones in people’s fingers, greedily eating any light that touched them. I saw so many that I suspected that every full member of the church possessed one.
A single note from electric guitars cut through the silence like magic. The spotlight made it impossible to see anything but the podium, so the music sounded like the air was singing. That first note began low and sorrowful, then grew into a complex melody that sang with complicated chords filled with triumph. The congregation slowly rose from their seats in time with the lift of the music. By the time the man in the black suit stepped up to the podium, everyone was on their feet and swaying as one to the music.
The mortal I assumed was Ryerson appeared in the spotlight as if he had been poured out of the darkness behind it. He stretched out his hands in a gesture of benevolence and a beatific smile on his face. He wore a three-piece suit with a yellow tie against a white shirt. His thick brown hair was brushed in waves away from the sharp angular bones of his handsome face. He smiled broadly, lifting his eyes to the light as if accepting some divine grace.
The congregation was humming along with the music, their bodies swaying in unison so that I was forced to move closer to the aisle to avoid being touched by any of them. They clutched each other’s hands and lifted them high over their heads without breaking the rhythm of their swaying. The man on the platform smiled broadly and thanked the congregation for their praise, humbly gesturing for them to stop while subtly encouraging them on. This guy was full of shit, more so than any other hypocritical religious douche I’ve encountered in a long time. He was also a little scary. The people around me were devoted to the point that they didn’t question anything he did, and they were bringing in new recruits.
Finally, Reverend Ryerson made a gesture and immediately, the congregation fell silent as if a switch had been flipped. Still smiling, he stepped to the podium and folded his hands on it. The smile stretched across his face was like the grin of a wolf examining a herd of placid sheep in search of the juiciest specimen for his supper.
“My brothers and sisters, it is joy that has brought us together, and it is joy that keeps us together,” Ryerson began in a voice that was strong and low. It felt like the caress of velvet across my cheek and I felt warm and comfortable while a little voice in my head screamed in helpless terror. The congregation shouted agreement, their voices happy as they encouraged the Reverend to continue speaking.
I remember very little about the sermon that was performed over the next hour and a half. After a few minutes, I felt a terrible lethargy consume my mind so that I was unable to create a coherent thought of my own. Even the frantic voice in my head was faltering into a small whisper that I could easily ignore. I wasn’t aware of Ryerson’s words as much as I was overwhelmed by the emotion consuming me. I longed for perfect happiness that I was certain could only be granted by the man at the pulpit. I gazed upon his beautiful face with tears pouring down my cheeks and when he called me to him, I felt his pull on me like he had thrown me a life preserver and was reeling me out of a tumultuous sea. I went to him willingly, gratefully.
I was a few precious feet from him with the press of bodies all around me, smothering me with their rancid heat and the careless prodding of their fingertips. One woman growled jealously and poked me hard in the ribs with her knuckles. The pain brought me to myself a bit, so that I was aware of the unnatural sway upon me. I blinked against tears that filled my stinging eyes, and I saw Ryerson laughing as he knelt down to touch those reaching hands stretched out to him.
Suddenly, I was at the front of the pressing group and staring straight into Ryerson’s face. His broad smile faltered and his eyes narrowed. Then his face did something strange. His eyes flashed with a strange light, just over his pupils, and something almost like a shadow passed over his features and made his skull bones appear more prominent. A grotesque snarl came and went so fast I almost didn’t register it and then he seized my wrist in a cold, iron grip.
A flood of visions and emotions washed over me, and I felt horror and joy as I saw lush paradises filled to brimming with hideous, cavorting beasts. They ate their screaming human victims and spat out their bones among glorious blooms and fragrant orchards. As soon as the remains touched rich, fertile earth, sinew and flesh grew over the glistening bones in seething waves and the poor humans emerged from their deaths, shrieking their agony as the monsters lunged at them again.
Horrified by the images in my head, I knew then that I was dealing with a man who had left his humanity far behind him. Desperate to get away from him, I twisted and pulled in his grasp. Ryerson merely sneered at me and tightened his grip until he ground my wrist bones painfully together. I cried out in pain, drawing the attention of the people around me. They blinked at me in astonishment as if they didn’t trust what their eyes were showing them. One of the men demanded to know what was going on and insisted that Ryerson calm down and let me go. Ryerson gave the fellow a fierce stare that had enough threat behind it that the fellow took a step back. But he still insisted on reason despite the fear trembling in his voice.
I screamed and struggled to break free of Ryerson’s hand. He held on easily, and pulled me closer to the platform; forcing me off balance and making me stumble. Suddenly I was nose to nose with him and staring into eyes that had gone as deep and black as an abyss. Ryerson was still kneeling at the edge of the platform, but he had lifted me off of my feet and put me even with him. The congregation ceased their frantic entreaty of his favor, and they stood in stunned silence at the power on display before them.
Ryerson hissed in my face, releasing a foul, rotten stench from between his white teeth. His cruel eyes slid from my face and coolly regarded his people. “Behold!” he called in a booming voice that sent a shudder through the gathered crowd. “A devil in our midst!”
The words rang in the stunned silence for a moment and then the church exploded in a fit of rage. Ryerson laughed in my face as the people clawed ferociously at my legs and screamed their desire to rip me to shreds. I fought back, kicking violently at the grasping hands pulling at my jeans and t-shirt. I managed to jam my foot into a few snarling faces and they fell back into the crowd. No matter what I did, more people replaced those I bloodied, making my efforts futile. I finally remembered the batons tucked into my belt and I yanked one free. With a sharp flick of my wrist the baton extended to its full length of eighteen inches. Before Ryerson could anything else, I swung the weapon and slugged the bastard across his cheek and jaw.
His head twisted on his neck from the force of my blow. He slowly turned his face back to me with a thin line of blood trickling from his smiling mouth. I would have cringed if I could, but his hold on me tightened, promising to leave a ring of nasty bruises on my skin. I gasped at the strength of his hand, certain that he was about to break my arm. I struck Ryerson’s face again, putting as much force into the blow as I could manage. Instead of breaking bones as I had intended, I completely pissed him off. He snarled into my face and stood up, dragging me out of the clawing fingers of the people and brought to my knees on the stage. Ryerson wrenched the baton from my hand and offered it to a burly guitarist that appeared from the shadows. As he did so, I got to my feet to continue my fight, but the crowd was already up the stairs and swarming the platform. Before they could reach me, Ryerson punched me hard in the face, making my eyes cross with pain and knocking me to my knees.
“Be calm, brothers and sisters!” Ryerson shouted over the screaming mass. “I have subdued the demon! You have nothing more to fear now. Return to your homes and continue your worship in private, so that your prayers will aid me as I do battle against this evil!” He shook my arm at them for emphasis.
Now that the crowd was riled up, they weren’t as biddable as they had been when the service began. I watched through eyes that refused to stay focused as the congregation growled and threatened to break loose of Ryerson’s hold over them. In the end, they did as they were told, many showing their displeasure by spitting on me as they passed me by.
Ryerson hauled me back to my feet and held me up since my knees refused to lock so that I could stand. Softly, he ordered some lingering men to take me away where he could deal with me properly without bringing harm to his people. I didn’t like the sound of that. His words seemed like code for ‘torture chamber’, and that is no place I wanted to be. Believing in the benevolence of their leader, the men took me from Ryerson to drag me away. As much as I wanted to, I did not fight them. I was waiting for my senses to stop reeling. I probably could have walked if I had tried, but I saw no advantage in letting the men know that I was not completely helpless. Besides, I still had one baton tucked into my belt and I did not want to do anything that might make them search me for it. I would need it when I saw my opportunity to escape.
I heard Ryerson thank his congregation for their obedience as I was taken through a door at the back of the platform and dumped into a leather chair in an office at the end of a hallway. I lay limply in the pale light of a single lamp set upon a small and shabby desk. I looked in vain for implements of torture and found nothing more dangerous than a letter opener and a very thick book. The men who had escorted me into the office took places on either side of the door and grimly waited with their hands folded in front of them.
Just when I had an escape plan worked out in my head, Ryerson came through the flimsy door with five lackeys in tow. Each of the three men wore suits the same cut and color as the Reverend, as if they had all pulled their garments from the same closet. The two women wore black pant suits that were more feminine and had a goofy spill of white ruffles pouring from their collars. All five openly wore the opals I had seen in the congregation, but theirs had more elaborated carvings in the surfaces than the ones worn by ordinary members. These must be the high ranking members who stroked Ryerson’s ego and acted as his inner circle of flunkies.
Ryerson barely acknowledged me as he dismissed my guards and moved to the wall behind his desk. Two of the men hauled me out of my chair while Ryerson pulled open a panel and gestured. He gave me an expression of cold satisfaction as the men brought me forward. I dug my heels in and fought their hands, but it was useless. They were bigger and stronger than me, and from the way they were digging their fingers painfully into my upper arms, they didn’t care very much about how they got me there.
Behind the panel was a hole in the ground with a ladder leading into it. The air above it shimmered slightly, as if gas fumes were pouring out of it. I thought I could see shapes in the wavering air, thin scrawny creatures with spindly arms and hooked fingers. I felt those things see me, and I was consumed by a horror so deep that my sentient mind shut down, leaving me with only my animal instincts to get me through. I fought and screamed to keep from getting closer, clawing viciously at the hands that held me and kicking at anything that got close enough. The men grunted and swore from my violent efforts, but their grip never loosened as they pulled me forward inch by inch. Suddenly I was at the edge, looking down into the hideous abyss seething with terrible evil. I couldn’t see them because of the darkness, but I could feel them down there, waiting to rend me body and soul. I cursed my immortality then, knowing that I would surely survive whatever befell me down there and I would never claw back to the light with my mind intact. I prayed for death, begged for it, but Ryerson laughed at my terror and ordered the men to push me in.
“Reverend, there’s a detective here to talk to you,” came a high breathless voice behind me. The men stopped trying to push me into the deep, dark hole and looked to Ryerson for directions. A young woman in the white and yellow uniform stood in front of the open office door with a frightened look on her homely face. Behind her, Shaw stood in the threshold with his hands clasped politely behind his back and an unpleasant smile on his lips. The Reverend shot me a dirty look as if I was to blame for bringing the law down on him and ground his teeth.
“There you are Miss Calden,” Shaw chastised, stepping into the office. “Can’t you go anywhere without causing trouble?”


Chapter 11

I have never been so happy to see a cop in all of my life. I promised myself that the next chance I got, I was going to throw that gorgeous man down and lick him until he wiggled and his eyeballs rolled back in his head. I all but danced my way across the room and out of the office door in my relief.
“Oh you know me,” I sang cheerfully as I passed him. “My day isn’t complete until I piss someone off.” It was all I could do not to throw my arms around him and babble hysterically into his neck.
“So I see.” Shaw directed his full attention on Ryerson. “Is everything okay here?”
“Everything is fine!” I could have told Shaw about what was going on that moment and enjoyed the sight of Ryerson getting taken away in hand cuffs. But I had just had one of the worst scares of my life, and it was a struggle to keep myself from going fetal and losing bladder control. My brain screamed that I had to run as far away from here as I could, but the nice man had come to my rescue, and it would be worse than cowardice to leave him to face Ryerson alone. I pulled on Shaw’s arm frantically, eager to get both of us away from this awful place.
Unfortunately, Shaw wasn’t interested in leaving. He stepped further into the office, pulling gently out of my grasp to speak with the reverend directly. The room was small enough that Shaw’s invasion of the other man’s personal space was forgivable, but not so small that Ryerson didn’t notice that the detective was being rude. Behind his back, Shaw gripped his arm so that the sleeve of his jacket and shirt pulled up and exposed the blue and green edges of a tattoo on his wrist. Shaw's body art was so unexpected that it chased some of the fear away from my mind.
“What is going on with the closet?” Shaw spoke as casually and amiably as he could manage. He moved into a good-ole-boy persona that made him seem dumber and less threatening than he actually was. He even relaxed enough that his accent thickened and he sounded like he had been born closer to rural Tennessee than Atlanta. Two of the male lackeys were visibly relieved, as if the fact that they were all white, Southern men of a certain income meant that they were granted an automatic immunity from whatever threat Shaw posed. Studying Shaw, I saw that he had no intention of giving any of these people the benefit of the doubt simply because they came from the same social class. But he didn’t mind letting them think otherwise.
“It’s the entrance to the lower sanctum,” one of the black suits replied smoothly, fully expecting Shaw to believe the bullshit he was shoveling. “Many of the church’s most important personal rites of passage are held there.”
“Why was Miss Calden going in there then?” Shaw was still holding to the bubba stereotype, but it wasn’t easy. I could see the façade crack at the edges a bit as suspicion rose to fill the gaps.
“She was granted a ceremony to purify her to begin her journey on the path of God,” the man replied. Shaw glanced at me as if he didn’t believe that lie.
“Is that true, Miss Calden?” He asked me.
“More or less,” I replied nervously. What was I supposed to say? With Ryerson standing there glaring daggers at me, I couldn’t very well tell the detective the truth. Besides which, I had a geas upon me that prohibited me from talking about what was going on and compelled me to murder Ryerson at the next possible moment. It was a bad idea to let the cops know that you had a problem with someone right before you intended to kill them. It made them suspicious when the bodies were found. And there was no doubt in my mind that I had to kill Ryerson, geas or no. Whatever that thing was, it was evil and it would continue to make my life a misery until it was sent back to whatever pit of Hell it had been spawned from.
“I’d like to have a look at it if you don’t mind.” Shaw said it as an order. But Ryerson shook his head defiantly.
“No. The lower sanctum is for initiates only. If you want to see it, you’ll have to bring a warrant,” he replied coldly.
“I don’t need a warrant for probable cause,” Shaw snapped. He tried to push past Ryerson to get a better look at the closet, but one of his lackeys got in the way. Shaw stiffened irritably, but the fellow gave him a sheepish grin and shook his head.
“You don’t have probable cause,” the man said politely. “We were doing nothing wrong.”
“I came in here and saw you dragging Miss Calden into that closet in a manner that was clearly against her will. That is probable cause,” Shaw growled, stepping aggressively into the man’s space. He had dropped the bubba routine to emphasize the point that he wasn’t fooling around. “Now step aside so I can look around. If you’re telling me the truth then you don’t have to see or hear from me again.”
“You can stand outside the entrance, but we would appreciate it if you would refrain from going into our sanctum,” Ryerson said, interrupting the other man’s snarl. “You have not been initiated into our faith, and so your presence in our holy place will render it unclean. The process of purification is complicated and time consuming.”
“Fine,” Shaw growled, glaring at the man standing in his way. “Do you mind?”
“Mr. Dorman, please stand aside and allow the officer to peer into our sanctum,” Ryerson growled. “He can do no harm from this side.”
Dorman’s face stiffened with rage, but he did what he was told. I wanted to scream at Shaw to stop, to come away with me and stay out of this place forever. Ryerson was watching him like he was planning something sinister. As Shaw stepped past the threshold of the small space containing the hole, I saw Ryerson lift his hands to waist level and touch his fingertips together. They danced against each other in an intricate pattern, moving too fast for me to make out what it was that the man was doing.
Suddenly, the room was swept with a hot, unnatural breeze that carried the rotting stink of sulfur with it. The shimmering air over the hole grew still, and I saw nothing of the evil I had glimpsed before. I could still sense it though. Even from where I stood near the door, I could feel it lurking in the shadows of the deep hole.
I waited to hear Shaw scream as he was suddenly snatched by some hidden beast to be eaten or torn to shreds. He pulled a penlight from the pocket from the inside of his suit and shined the light into the darkness. When he saw nothing, he returned from the edge of the abyss with a troubled look on his face but gave no other sign of what he had seen. Ryerson made a low noise in his throat, and I met his eyes and found wickedness combined with evil intent sadistically curling his lips.
“I know you.” Ryerson’s voice violated the privacy of my mind to taunt me without the detective’s knowledge. “I know what you are, and I know how to end you. Your time on this earth is coming to an end.”
This seemed to be my week for new experiences. First, I discover that faeries exist and they’re as crazy as the stories say they are, then my brain melts because of a magic spell, and now I’m facing off against a creepy mind talker with a god complex. I was rapidly reaching the point where it’s easier to simply accept the new reality and deal with it than it is to pretend that there was a logical explanation for it. I was also becoming increasingly annoyed with it all.
“Bite me,” I growled at Ryerson so that Shaw couldn’t hear.
“Tell me, do immortals have souls? Or are you some ungodly thing without a place in the universe?”
This is why it’s stupid to talk to anything evil. They are sinister and crafty creatures that will do anything they can to torment you for fun. I had given the theological implications of my condition a great deal of thought in the past, but had stopped centuries ago when I could come to no conclusion about whether I possessed a soul and realized that there was nothing I could do about it if I didn’t. I had decided to be me, for better or for worse and let the metaphysical work itself out. Ryerson could throw the question in my face all he wanted, but he would get little to no reaction from me. I simply shrugged and gave him a bland look. I didn’t make it this far in life with the mental condition I am in by doing stupid things like arguing the existence of my soul.
“Alright Reverend, I’ve seen enough,” Shaw said, stepping away from the hole and returning to the office.
“Did you find anything out of place?” Ryerson smiled broadly and offered his hand to shake.
“No, everything looks to be in order.” Shaw stared at Ryerson’s hand as if he thought it might bite him, and then clasped it firmly. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”
“You’re simply doing your job.” Ryerson was being reasonable. Things were going his way. “I understand that you have to follow procedure and all that. Let me know if there’s anything else you need, Detective…”
“Philip Shaw.” Shaw frowned and tried to pull his hand free. Ryerson held onto it like an over eager date as his grin turned maniacal. I flinched with dismay and fought to keep from screaming. By giving his name, Shaw had unwittingly given the other man a near all access pass to his mind, body, and soul. Luckily, it is not common practice for people to exchange their middle names, so that last frail sound held the enemy at bay. I wanted to cuss a blue streak at the cop, calling him a fool and worse.
The mistake wasn’t really his fault, no matter how stupid it was. In the old days, the name by which your mother called you was the one thing that truly belonged to you. It was believed that those precious syllables were a map of your soul, and in the wrong hands, it could be used to manipulate your thoughts and actions. It was even said that particularly powerful witches and necromancers could use a name to condemn a man to the Underworld or use it to enslave him. To help protect against such wretched fates, ceremonies and rites of passage had been developed to shield a person’s true name and grant them a new one. It is through this practice that mankind’s fondness for nicknames and middle names developed. It made it harder for your enemies to get you where it truly mattered. I had grown to believe that the power associated with names were nothing more than quaint traditions born of silly superstitions. Now I was grateful that I could not remember the last time I used my true name, leaving one piece of me that Ryerson could not touch.
“Have a good evening,” Shaw said in a tone that implied that Ryerson might not have many good evenings left to him. Sadly, I didn’t think that Shaw would be the one who came out on top if the two went toe to toe. Shaw had to pry his hand out of Ryerson’s iron grip with an effort that wasn’t pretty. Unnerved, he took me firmly by the arm and hustled me out of the office, moving as fast as he could without running.
There a sense of something hot and angry pressing against my back, as if something hungry was clinging to my shoulders. I glanced back and found that Ryerson’s polite smile had twisted into a grotesque grin as he brought his fingers together in front of his lips. His lackeys were gathered around him in a semi-circle leering at us in triumph. My skin ran hot with painful pinpricks, like a swarm of burning mosquitoes was feasting on my blood. Something bad was forming in the growing space between us and them, and I wanted to be nowhere near here when it finally showed itself.
“Run!” I gasped.
“What?” Shaw’s voice was thin with growing panic he didn’t understand. His blue eyes were wide with fear so that the whites showed all around the irises.
“Run!” I didn’t wait to see if he understood. I tore my arm from his grasp and sprinted for the door at the end of the hallway. It should have been a quick dash down the corridor to the door, through the chapel and the entrance way until we reached the parking lot. But the hall stretched impossibly long like a visual effect from a cheap horror movie as we hauled ass for the closed door at the end. No matter how hard we tried, we could not reach the damn door and get out.
Suddenly, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I was angry. What could Ryerson possibly do to me that no one else had tried? There was nothing he could do besides give me a painful experience, and I have endured plenty of those in the past. They were unpleasant, but they did not scare me. I am truly immortal, and there was nothing in the world that could stop me if I didn’t want it to. This ass hat was going to go down hard.
I slid to a stop on the thin carpet and swung around to face the sinister group. Shaw shot past me, realized that I was no longer running for my life, and stopped as his training kicked in. He yanked his cell phone out of his pocket and spoke frantically into it, giving the dispatcher a long string of code numbers and then the church’s address. I would have preferred that he continued to run and leave me to fight alone without having to explain everything afterward. Now I would have to lie to a bunch of skeptical cops about what had happened, provided Shaw didn’t live through the next few minutes. If he survived, then I would be forced to tell the truth, and that would probably go wrong somewhere along the line. Ain’t it always the way?
I drew my remaining baton and started back toward the office, moving slowly so that I had time to dig through my oldest memories to identify what Ryerson was and how best to deal with him. But memories fade and distort, and the best I could do was assume that he was the victim of demonic possession and that the only way to rid myself of him was to kill the poor bastard he controlled. There are a few nasty consequences for a mortal killed while overcome by a demon, like eternal damnation and torment, but if the human hadn’t been doing things he shouldn’t have been, he wouldn’t have gotten possessed in the first place. So he would be sent off to Hell along with the beast.
“What are you doing?” Shaw demanded behind me. I heard his gun clear leather and for the first time in many decades, I regretted my choice of personal weapons. If I had brought a gun instead of my batons, I could have shot Ryerson full of holes from a safe distance instead of getting close enough for him to work his nasty mojo on me. Oh well, hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I’d make sure to carry a gun the next time I went up against a demon. Not that I intended to ever do so ever again.
“The demon isn’t going to simply let us go,” I barked at Shaw. “We have to convince it that it’s in its best interests to back off.” The office had gone dark during our useless flight, and all I could see was the red glow of a small eerie light. I contemplated the scene and scoffed. Was this really what I was dealing with? A minor creature possessed of such little imagination that it had to steal its crappy tricks from B-movies and bad novels?
“Demon? Are you shitting me?” Shaw asked.
“No,” I snarled. Let Shaw chew on that revelation for a while. I would do something about it. I was going into that office and kick the crap out of those people until Ryerson stopped being a prick and let us go. If I happened to kill him while I was at it, then all the better. Going back proved to be as frustrating as getting out. The corridor refused to shrink as I walked.
“Do you really believe that you can defeat me?” he sneered at me in my head.
“Do you really believe you can kill me?” I retorted. By way of reply, Ryerson sent long ribbons of blue and green flame scorching out of the office and racing down the walls. I gasped as the heat bit into my exposed flesh. Behind me, Shaw let out a strangled cry of primitive terror. Ryerson laughed at us, his sharp features made ghoulish by the strange glow of the intense flames. Around him, his lackeys had all placed their hands on his shoulders and arms, lending him what strength they possessed. At their feet was the girl who had brought Shaw to my rescue; her head was bent at an odd angle, and she leaked blood from a deep puncture wound from her neck.
Shaw fired his gun in three rapid shots that sounded like cannons had gone off. I felt something sear my cheek and realized that Shaw had come perilously close to shooting me in the head. Two men and a woman fell from Ryerson’s side with a cry and Ryerson snarled rage at us. I decided that now was not the time to yell at Shaw for his carelessness, and I attacked before the enemy could regroup.
Fighting more than one opponent is all about geometry and speed. You have to enter the battle knowing where everyone and everything is, and then kick the crap out of them in a way that allows you to avoid falling or getting struck in return. You have to estimate the distances between each individual and figure the angles required to take out as many of them as possible with a single stroke. A fighter must also deliver enough force so that an enemy is taken out in the minimum number of strikes; otherwise they get back up and make you bleed while you worry about their friends. It can get tricky.
Ryerson was still gloating when I rushed upon him and cracked his skull with my baton and swung around to one of the women before he had a chance to register that he’d been hit. The woman fell with an anguished scream and Dorman bull rushed me from the other side. I took care of him when I jabbed the baton into his throat, collapsing his Adam’s apple and leaving him struggling to breathe through his crushed windpipe. Ryerson was already on his feet as I whipped back around to him, and he blocked the next hit with his arm while I was seized around my legs by a man Shaw had shot.
I fell trying to free my legs from his relentless grip, and Shaw fired twice more, hitting Ryerson and sending the second bullet into a wall. I snarled and whapped the clinging man on the top of his head and swore at Shaw and his poor aim. He cussed back, but his words were directed at the people climbing back to their feet. Ryerson, Dorman, and one unnamed man sported bullet holes in their torsos and didn’t seem the least bit bothered by them. The sight of their injuries made my breath catch and hesitate in wonder. I thought for a moment that I was fighting more people like me, that I was engaged in a battle that could not be won, and that my only option was to run away, and keep running until the end of time.
Dorman and a woman rushed Shaw, hesitating only when he shot them, then they kept going. They seized him and pulled the gun from his hand before they shoved him face down onto the floor. He continued to fight even then, struggling hard to get up and get away. Ryerson stood, smoothing his hands over the blood staining the pristine whiteness of his shirt as he smirked down at me.
“Sir, the fire is growing!” Dorman cried where he struggled to keep Shaw pressed to the carpet. Ryerson made a sheepish noise, as if he had forgotten about the inferno raging out of control around us, and he bent beside the dead girl and dipped his fingers in her cooling blood. He closed his eyes and murmured some nonsense words, then stretched out his hand toward the blaze. The fire went to him like a faithful hound to swirl around his wrist and arms before it disappeared into his flesh. The walls and floor were clean, as if the blaze had never existed.
“We can’t kill a cop,” Dorman grunted as he and the woman forced Shaw’s arms behind his back and hauled him off of the floor. “They’ll notice that he’s missing too soon, and they’ll know he came here before he went missing. He’ll talk if we let him go, and I don’t want to go to jail. What are we supposed to do?”
Neither of us said a word, afraid that we would inadvertently provide a spark of inspiration that would give Ryerson some nasty ideas about what he should do with us. Their three fallen comrades groaned and climbed shakily to their feet as they fixed the reverend with looks of exhausted adoration and waited expectantly for him to tell them what to do.

Chapter 12

All I know is that I found myself standing in the parking lot of the Immortal Church of God and wondering what had just happened. A plain clothes detective was questioning me with an earnest look on his face and I could hear Shaw pitching a nasty fit from the back of an ambulance. Near the entrance to the church, Ryerson screamed at another police officer that he did in fact; plan to file assault and violation of civil rights charges against Detective Shaw. That last bit astounded me and I turned to look, but the detective stopped me by calling my name.
“What do you want?” I snapped at him, scowling. The detective sighed wearily, and pushed his thick spectacles up his nose with a finger.
“I was asking if there was anything else you wished to add to your statement,” he replied. The man in front of me was a clean cut, ordinary looking black man with bags under his dark eyes that made him look as if he didn’t sleep very much. I blinked at him in confusion. I didn’t remember telling him anything.
“What did I tell you already?” I asked cautiously. The detective gave me a concerned look.
“Are you sure you’re okay Rebecca?” he asked. “Would you like some water or to sit down?”
He was using my first name in an attempt to be friendly and non-threatening. Goodie, I wasn’t suspected of a crime. That at least was bit of a relief. “I promise I’m fine. I’ve just had a bit of a shock.”
“Yes, you did,” he chuckled as if I was being ironic. Was I? “You stated that you were investigating the church for the possibility of becoming a member when Detective Shaw arrived under the mistaken assumption that you were being held against your will. When you refused to go with him, he felt that you were under duress and he fired upon the Reverend Ryerson and other church members and had to be disarmed and restrained. You have stated that Detective Shaw was speaking and behaving like he was mentally ill or intoxicated. The Reverend and three men were required to restrain him until two uniformed officers arrived to take him into custody. Do you remember who called the police?”
What was going on here? That wasn’t what had happened and I didn’t remember anything after Shaw and I were finally subdued. Ryerson and his group appeared to be perfectly fine despite being shot and beaten. They didn’t even have blood on their clothes. I felt at my belt and discovered that both of my batons were gone.
“Shaw called the police when we were trying to get away,” I murmured in confusion. Why would I lie to the police? The detective was staring at me intently now, watching me while I tried to sort out what was going on.
“Why don’t you sit down?” he suggested as he gently took my arm and guided me to a nearby patrol car. One of the back doors was open, and I sat down so that my legs stuck out the side. I struggled to remember what had happened, but the only thing I could remember between the fight and this moment was Ryerson’s grotesque face staring down at me.
“He’s done something to me,” I muttered, frowning. It made sense; Ryerson had proven capable of altering my perception of reality when he stretched out the hallway, so he could easily get into my head if he wanted to. I have never encountered a person who could do this before, so I had not developed any defenses against such an attack. I would remedy that problem before I went after the man again.
“What did Shaw do?” the detective asked softly.
“He saved me. Ryerson is the one who screwed with my head,” I growled. The more I contemplated the things Ryerson could have done to me, the angrier I got. I felt violated and embarrassed, two sensations I liked the least. The detective’s face was wrinkled with confusion and he stood up to think. Finally, he called a pair of paramedics over and they came at me with their instruments. I pushed them away, not wanting to be poked and prodded again.
The detective was speaking softly to one of the paramedics about me, keeping their voices low so that I couldn’t make out was they were saying. I didn’t bother to eavesdrop. I had already figured out that they thought I had taken a head injury or that I was being coerced. Their problem was that they didn’t know if they could believe what I was saying about whom. If I were them, I would have already given up on me as a viable witness.
I heard Shaw give an angry curse, and I stood up out of the car to see what was happening. Alejandro was making his way across the parking lot toward us with the pretty girl in tow. She was still in her cult uniform of a white shirt and yellow skirt, and she was still beautiful as she clung fearfully to the taller man’s arm. Shaw jumped out of the ambulance where he had been held, and he hurried toward Alejandro, trailing cops and emergency workers behind him.
“You two were there,” Shaw called to them. “Will you please tell the police what had happened?”
Alejandro put his arm around Mabel and cuddled her against his side as he faced the men advancing on him. His dark eyes glittered with anger as they slid over the Reverend and his people, then he made contact with me and quirked a questioning brow at me. I shook my head and shrugged. I didn’t know what to tell him to do. The police already thought that I was nuts. Nothing I could say would make things better.
“Rebecca and Detective Shaw were attacked by Ryerson and his people,” Alejandro explained as if he thought everyone was insane for thinking that Shaw had done anything wrong. Every cop in earshot exchanged frustrated looks and shook their heads in disgust. From his place, Dorman called Alejandro a liar, while one of the women went into hysterics. The detective that had been interviewing me bellowed for people to calm down before he hauled the whole lot of us to the station where we could sit in a jail cell while we waited our turn to be interrogated.
Everyone calmed down after that, and we were separated and questioned again while the Crime Scene Investigators went into the church and processed the scene. For my part, I was finally able to give the Detective Nelson Chayne the truth, minus the weird parts that he wouldn’t have believed anyway. I also neglected to tell him that I was the victim of a kidnapping case. Again, I wanted to avoid the police attention to my personal activities.
Chayne hadn’t been as sympathetic as he had been before, but he wrote down everything I said, asking questions only when I paused. When I was finished, he tried to poke holes in my story, trying to find a lie in the tale, but I held firm. He finally let me go as the crime scene technicians were packing things up and leaving.
“Stay in town please,” Chayne told me, handing me his card. “Call me if you think of anything. I’ll contact you if I have any more questions.” I acknowledged him with a nod and tucked the card in my back pocket. I wasn’t going anywhere, although it would probably be a good idea if I did.
As I walked to my car, I noticed that a middle aged Mexican couple was rushing up to Mabel with their arms thrown wide to embrace her, they babbled incoherently in Spanish as they rained kisses down on the girl and frantically thanked Alejandro. Another cop wandered over to investigate that scene, and soon the girl and her parents were ushered away. Shaw was grim faced as he listened to a man and then he too was escorted to a vehicle and was gone.
“Can I get a ride?” I turned to find Alejandro standing behind me, looking beleaguered and hopeful. I scowled at him and shook my head.
“You should call the safe house to have someone to come and get you. I’m going home,” I answered. I got into my car and locked the doors so that Alejandro couldn’t jump in. I made sure he had to jump out if my way as I drove off. Ha-ha!
My bed is quite possibly the most fabulous thing in the entire world. When I was as young as I looked, I slept on a straw pallet that had to be beaten and smoked every few months to keep the fleas out of it. After that, I had a long sack stuffed with rags that had to be taken apart and washed if I wanted to keep bedbugs out of it. Then there was a feather mattress that sagged in the middle after a couple of months of sleeping on it, and half the lice that lived in it came from the geese the feathers were plucked from.
Now I sleep on the best mattress money can buy. It has a divine space age design guaranteed to make me feel as content and comfortable as a swaddled babe without annoying springs to poke at me in the night. My maid had come while I was out, and she had put cool silk sheets over the mattress and covered it with my goose-down comforter, all of which was vermin free. This is one more reason why I love the modern age. The bugs usually stayed outside where they belonged.
I had fallen asleep almost as soon as my head touched the pillow and I dreamed. I was standing in a massive cavern with weird formations that looked like they had been poured from melted wax. In the center was a large thermal pool, common in the caves that surrounded my birthplace in the Buda side of the Danube River. I had spent my childhood exploring these caverns with their corridors carved out of the rock by time and rushing water. I had always imagined that the strange rock formations looked like twisted images of the people who used to live within them, back before the first structure was built of wattle and daub. By the time I was born, they served as a safe haven when raiders came to pillage and rape in our town. And they were my secret refuge when my father was home from his travels to distant lands and he was deep into his cups.
I had learned early to stay away from home when Father was there; railing bitterly at Mother for his lost youth, and hitting my two elder brothers because they inevitably stood up to him in her defense. So I spent all of my free time exploring the labyrinths beneath our home, stashing foods and what bits of small comforts that I could carry with me.
My dreams of these hot and humid caverns had always been soothing ones, full of happy discoveries in the dark, and the reliable safety of perfect solitude. However, this dream was different from all the ones before it. There was a hint of something fetid in the heavy air, and I felt an itch between my shoulder blades like I was not alone. In the weird light of the dream, my immediate area was easily visible in the strange gray light created by the mist, and I searched my surroundings looking for the source of my unease.
“Give me your name,” came the cold hissing that curled around me like the thick steam rising from the pool. My every muscle was taut and singing with tension as I searched the strange gray light for the source of the words. I saw nothing there, only the familiar stalagmite that had a smooth round crevice at its base. I went to it and touched the warm rock, remembering how I had made a nest of this place, so that I would be comfortable when I spent the night away from home.
“Your name, tell me your name.” I turned this way and that, seeing nothing that should not have been there. It was then I noticed that the thermal pool had grown, slowly spreading its sulfurous waters across the slick floor. The center of the pool began to boil as more water jetted out of the living rock. Water filled the cave by inches, and then rushed upward by many feet.
“Tell me your name,” came the insistent voice. “Speak the words, or all is lost.”
In the blink of an eye, I was fighting to keep my head above the water as a heavy current pulled ruthlessly at my legs. Without warning, something hard and slimy grasped my ankle and dragged me down below the surface. The water burned as I kicked my legs uselessly to free myself and swim back to air. The heat intensified, making my nerves rage painfully as my flesh began to boil from my bones. I forgot myself in my agony and screamed the last of my breath away.
Then my lungs were full of scorching water and I was drowning. My body wracked itself in its struggle to get a breath of air until there was nothing but terrible pain. This is not the first time I have drowned, and I always hoped each time would be the last. Drowning is one of the most painful things any living creature can endure. It drags you slowly down to the abyss, and while it does, your body fights to stay alive for as long as it can. For a mortal, it is a torturous four to six minutes. For an immortal, the fight can last for an eternity.
“Give me your name!” the voice raged.
In one last desperate violent rush, my foot made solid contact with the thing clinging to my ankle and it let me go. I swam for the surface, my legs kicking furiously and my arms moving through the insidious heat of the water in long, strong sweeps. My lungs were still struggling to force oxygen from the boiling liquid when my head broke the surface of the water and I brained myself on the cavern roof. I would have screamed my pain and terror had I the air to do so, and so I was left to writhe in agony in the dark limbo of a thermal cave pool and wait.
I jolted awake in my bed, covered in sweat and hot enough to be cruelly feverish. My heart pounded in a frantic beat while my lungs took deep, cool gulps of air. I remained paralyzed with relief until my body calmed and I was confident that I could move without falling down. Still trembling, I flung back the comforter and slid out of bed. I slipped on my robe to hide my nakedness and then I splashed cold water over my burning face and neck. My eyes looked large and haunted in the mirror, and my skin was splotchy and sickly gray. I disregarded my appearance as the result of sleep deprivation and a temporarily warped perspective and went into the kitchen in search of something to drink.
As I was turning the corner around my battered island counter, my ears rang and popped like the pressure of the atmosphere in the apartment dropped. The walls gave a mighty throb and cracked. Dark, thick liquid poured out of hair thin crevices and ran down the paint in long tears. The cabinet doors banged open and closed and my dishes flew from their shelves to soar in great circles through the air like birds. The floor buckled under my feet and in the living room, the couch cushions exploded in a cloud of foam and cotton batting. The lights went berserk next, strobing viciously in electric surges that buzzed like a hoard of bees, and the screen of my television exploded in a shower of sparks and broken glass.
“Give me your name!” the insidious voice from the dream demanded. I remained silent to it and watched my home declare war on me altogether. Knives and forks flung themselves out of their drawers and embedded themselves into the walls. Gunshots exploded through my bedroom as my small arsenal of hand guns fired themselves and drilled small holes into the sheetrock.
“Tell me your name!” screamed the voice.
I took in the scene before me dully, my mind too exhausted to be frightened or awed. All I could think above the noise of destruction and the evil hissing voice making it repeated demands for my name was, “My renter’s insurance premiums are going to skyrocket if this keeps up”.


Chapter 13

I was already sitting upright in bed when my eyes snapped open. My sheets and comforter were tangled around my legs leaving the rest of me bare to the moonlight that streamed through my bedroom window. I listened to the cloaking darkness intently, and I heard only the pounding of my own heart throbbing in my ears. Sweating and trembling from the residual fear of my nightmares, I leaned across the bed and flipped on the lamp I kept at my bedside. The warm light filled the room, showing no sign of the mayhem I had experienced. The walls were smooth and unblemished, and all of my property was unbroken and in their places.
Unnerved by the intense vividness of my nightmares, I slid out of bed and wrapped my bathrobe around my body. I moved carefully through my apartment, listening for any unusual sound amidst the hushed noises of air conditioning and nocturnal city life beyond my windows. There was a thump and a wail from my ceiling that startled me, but I quickly realized that the Cochran boy had fallen out of bed again. I braced my arms on the counter top and waited for my heart to stop hammering and for my breathing to slow. But I didn’t calm down. If anything I grew more frightened until I imagined the evil voice from my dream speaking softly, insisting that I tell it my true name.
Eager for the sun to rise and expel the darkness bleeding into my consciousness, I glanced at the small clock the counter and found that it was only two o’clock in the morning. I couldn’t wait another four and a half hours alone in my apartment to feel safe again. I had to get out. I dressed in a rush, grabbing the first clothes that came to my hand. I paused in the foyer long enough to grab my keys, wallet, and cell phone and I was out the door.
I paid little attention to my surroundings as I rushed through the breezeway and down the stairs. It was a stupid thing to do, considering I had two sinister groups gunning for my ass. I should have known better. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was grabbed from behind and slammed into a nearby wall, but I was. Dazed and blinking at the pretty lights that flashed into my vision, I grasped the small blade hidden under my shirt and I struck blindly. Kootch’s voice rose high and plaintively in a wordless cry of pain as the knife hit flesh and bit deep. I was immediately released only to find Baja standing in front of me with a fist raised.
“You have got to give Kootch a break,” he said with a malicious grin, “the man ain’t right and you’re making him worse.” And then he punched me in my face. I was aware of my bottom hitting concrete followed by the sensation of flesh swelling around my nose and eyes. Before I could do much more than think, “Ow”, I was flipped face down onto the pavement and my arms were restrained behind my back with plastic ties.
“I hate you both,” I snarled as Baja hauled me to my feet.
“I thought you would. If it makes you feel better, I think Kootch hates you more,” he replied chuckling. Cursing violently, Kootch struggled to his feet with one hand pressed to his side. “You okay, man?”
“No, I’m cut!” Kootch gasped pitifully. “Damn bitch got me again!” He seized me from Baja, and using my hair as a handle, Kootch proceeded to drag me across the parking lot toward a battered car. Baja followed closely, doing nothing to help me in my struggle to stay on my feet. He simply grinned and jogged ahead.
“You’re kidding me,” I complained as I stared into the black abyss of the open trunk that the men intended to stuff me in. “There is no way you’re going to put me in there.”
“I woulda let you ride in the car if you’d come nicely, but now you pissed me off,” Kootch snarled. His hands were busy as he pulled my arsenal of blades and bludgeons from my body and handed them over to Baja. He grabbed me by the seat of my jeans and upended me into the trunk and shoved my legs roughly after me.
“Come on!” I protested, grunting as my own knee was forced painfully into my ribs. “What else do you expect me to do when you jump me like that? I can’t ride back here! I’ll smother!”
“You ain’t gonna die,” Kootch snarled back.
“That doesn’t make smothering any more pleasant you know.”
Kootch didn’t care enough to think of a comeback to that. The trunk was closed with a hard bang, and I was left in the dark with the odors of gasoline, oil, and some vaguely rotten organic smell I didn’t want to identify. The car’s shocks were nonexistent, so I was bounced around until my teeth rattled in my head, and my joints were cracked. By the time they finally stopped, I was sore and nauseated from whatever had left the stink in the trunk.
I was grasped by my arms and hauled roughly out of the trunk to be plunked on my feet on a gravel driveway. The moon was swelling toward fullness and cast a weak silver light over the new environment, outlining a dense forest of trees and shrubs embracing a small, squat house. I searched for some landmark to tell me where I was, but a hood was dropped over my head and each man grabbed an elbow and hustled me off. I stumbled and tripped over every pebble and protruding root, sometimes by accident, but mostly because I didn’t feel like being very cooperative. When I tripped on the first step of a short flight of stairs leading up to the porch, Baja and Kootch lifted me by my arms and carried me to the door.
From there I was jerked, yanked, shoved, and carried through the indoors until I heard a door slam and I was pushed into a chair. I worried about that at first, but then I realized that I was sitting on cushions covered in real upholstery, and relaxed a bit. People who plan to torture you don’t usually let you sit in a comfortable chair first. I listened intently to the sound of shoes rustling against thick carpeting until the hood was whipped off of my head.
I blinked and saw that I was in a plush room decorated with vases full of flowers with enormous blooms, along with graceful furniture and masterpieces of art. The entire effect was one of tasteful luxury, with an eye to a subtle undertone of sex. Most of the paintings hung on the walls were elegant nudes of voluptuous women embracing muscular men, and the few small sculptures were mischievous as couples entwined their limbs in playful embraces, their broad smiles frozen forever in marble and bonze.
A man sat hooded and hunched next to me with his arms bound behind his back in a position identical to my own. He flinched at every sound and the muscles of his back and arms jerking as if he expected to be struck at any moment. He was a muscular fellow, with a worn t-shirt stretched across his chest and shoulders that moved shallowly because his bulging arms were twisted uncomfortably so that his breathing was restricted. Baja pulled the hood off of the man and I would have fallen out of my chair if I hadn’t been tied to it.
Shaw squinted angrily up at the big man and tried to lunge at him from his sitting position. He managed to force a grunt from Baja when one broad shoulder was planted into his gut, but in the end Shaw didn’t prove to be much of an opponent for Baja. He pushed Shaw back into his seat and then slapped him. “You behave yourself now,” he said firmly as if he was speaking to an unruly child. Shaw glared hatred at the man and spat at his feet. Baja slapped him again, hard enough to leave him reeling. Oh my, this wasn’t going to go well for him at all.
Baja paused next to the couch Kootch had collapsed in and persuaded him to get up and then badgered him out of the door and left us alone. As soon as the door shut, Shaw began to struggle, fighting to break the strips of plastic holding his arms together. I let him go on like this for several minutes until he wore himself out and sat panting and fuming in his chair.
“You finished wasting your energy?” I asked. “Or do you want to spend more time trying to hurt yourself in an act of futility?”
Shaw looked at me like I had appeared out of the thin air, and his expression darkened until he realized that I was just as tied up as he was. He let out a frustrated sigh and stomped his feet on the floor. “What is going on?” he all but screamed from between his clenched teeth.
“I might know why I’m here, but I have no idea why they grabbed you,” I said. “Did they say anything to you?”
“No, they jumped on me the moment I got home and hauled me off.” Shaw shook his head in disgust. “The men are the same ones you identified as your abductors. Is that why I’m here? Because I’m the cop working your case?”
It seemed possible, but unlikely. Yes, Shaw was getting ready to arrest Bres’ favorite thugs and he probably had all the evidence he needed to put them away for a long time. But thugs and lackeys are easy to come by, and as far as I had seen, Baja and Kootch were not remarkable in any way. Those two are not worth the kind of heat that would come down by kidnapping a cop.
“Are you okay?” Shaw asked after I didn’t answer the question. “Did they hurt you again?”
“I’m okay,” I answered. “I was just slapped around a bit. Nothing you haven’t been through too.”
“Did they get you in your home again?”
“No, they were waiting for me in the parking lot. How’d they get you?”
“I was waiting on the front porch for my ex to drop off my kids for the weekend. They stuck a gun in my ribs and tied me up.” Shaw was really looking around now, examining every detail of the room. I could see his mind rolling around in his skull, working to find some way out of this mess.
“Did they throw you into the trunk?” I asked, thinking about some of the smells I had endured.
“No, I got the back seat. I take it that they weren’t so friendly with you,” he replied.
“I stabbed Kootch again. It pissed him off.” I shrugged, feeling a little jealous. Nothing like knowing for a fact that you weren’t your kidnappers’ favorite hostage.
Shaw stopped his search to give me a wry smile. “You’ve nailed him twice now, haven’t you?” He laughed. “Dumb assed redneck, you’d think he’d learn.”
“You’d think,” I said dryly. “But then a learning disability kinda comes with the white and trashy DNA.”
“Did they tell you what they wanted this time? Or are you going to lie to me again?”
“I didn’t lie to you,” I protested. Nope, I had simply left out a few details. Some people, especially bitter old shrews, will call that lying through omission but they’re wrong. Technically, it’s concealment. See, not the same thing at all.
“You didn’t tell me everything.” Shaw made a face to show me what he thought of that. It wasn’t a pretty face. “So why don’t you tell me now? Maybe then I’ll understand why my children are standing on my porch wondering why their Dad doesn’t open the door for them.”
Bringing up the kids was a cheap shot, and I glared at him for it. If there was one group I have a soft spot for, its children. Much to my great disappointment, I have never been able to conceive a child of my own, though the gods know I have tried with great fervor. I’m a sucker for their chubby cheeks and sticky faces and the wide eyed innocence that colors everything they do. When a small child feels joy, it is utterly profound for them because they have nothing better to compare it to and that joy is shared. When they feel pain, they are truly experiencing the worst thing in their short lives, and so the anguish is truly awful. I love them, and I have adopted or fostered hundreds of them. It grated on my nerves to think that two such creatures were feeling abandonment for something I had a part in.
Suddenly, Bres made a flamboyant entrance flinging the door open wide and, I kid you not, posed in the doorway like it was a frame built specifically to showcase his beauty. After he was sure we had seen and admired him, he came prancing in and flopped gracefully onto a lounging couch that seemed designed exactly for that purpose. I breathed a little sigh of relief. Happy people don’t usually kill or mutilate. We might still get out of this relatively healthy.
“Why didn’t you kill Ryerson when you had the chance?” Bres asked flatly. His big green eyes glittered feverishly, contradicting the pretty smile on his face. Alright, so he might kill or maim after all. I felt Shaw’s eyes like a slap on my cheek as his jaw dropped and hit the floor from Bres’ casual admission. There was nothing to do about that, so I kept going like Shaw wasn’t there.
“You didn’t tell me he was demonic,” I shot back.
“Killing is killing,” he scoffed with a dismissive flourish of long fingers. “If you poke enough holes in anything, it will eventually die.”
“No, there are things you can cut into little pieces that still come back to get you,” I retorted. I had never encountered any of these things personally, but I heard the stories like everyone else. With a faerie sitting in front of me, I had to consider the idea that those stories might be true too.
“Things like you?” he sneered.
I wasn’t going to acknowledge that comment with a mortal in the room. With any luck, he’ll miss it in the flurry of confession to several crimes, or better yet, he won’t believe it. “You should have told me the man wasn’t human. It makes a difference in the approach.”
“Have you ever killed a demon?” Bres asked. That ass hat knew that I never had. Hell, I didn’t believe the things existed until I encountered Ryerson.
“No.” I sighed.
“I have.” He leaned forward and pressed a finger to his chest for emphasis. “I can tell you that a demon can be killed in the same manner as a mortal. You aren’t trying hard enough.”
“Great. You can do it then.” I sat back in my chair and glared at the man in open disgust. It wasn’t an easy thing to do with my hands tied behind my back.
“I’ve had enough of you for the moment,” he snapped and turned his attention to Shaw. “You present quite an unusual problem for me.” He told him.
A lot of people would have whined and begged when confronted with a foreboding statement like that. People like Bres had a way of dealing with unusual problems that often left bodies on the ground. Shaw didn’t beg for his life or drop subtle hints about how much his children needed him. He remained silent with his eyes on the floor. I think he’d already accepted that he was going to be killed, and he was going to meet that fate with as much dignity as he could. He was stoic and I liked him better for it. I saw curiosity burning in Bres’ eyes as he waited for Shaw to do something to surprise him.
“Who has put their mark on you?” Bres asked. He flicked those long fingers and Baja came forward with a switch blade. He made sure that Shaw saw him loosen his gun at his hip, a silent warning to keep the other man behaving, and he cut Shaw’s bonds with a sharp jerk. Shaw rubbed at his wrists and rotated sore shoulders and glared defiance. Then he went back to staring at his knees and keeping his mouth shut. Bres slapped the arm of the chair to get Shaw’s attention.
There was confusion mixed with the anger in Shaw’s eyes. He didn’t know what Bres was asking him, and he didn’t know what would set Bres off. That made two of us. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said softly.
In a huff, Bres jumped to his feet and snatched Shaw’s wrist and stretched his arm out. A bandage was wrapped tightly around the limb from elbow to wrist that Baja sliced delicately away with his little knife. Underneath was a vibrant tattoo of a fairy star in an energetic blue with the Celtic representations of the seasons and the earth woven in green and gold throughout. At each of the seven points of the star were runes for the seven most powerful healing herbs known by the Celts, and within the seven arms of the star were runes representing the metals and elements that ruled the plants. The whole thing would have been beautiful, except for a series of welts and blisters bubbled the glory of the art.
“This is a mark of favor among us,” Bres told him. “Someone has claimed you. Who was it?”
Shaw looked at Bres like he was insane. Bres is, but not in the way Shaw understood it. “No one. I got this in college.”
“Do not play the ignorant fool with me; no one can have ink like this engraved in their skin without knowing who or why. Give me the name of the one who claimed you!”
There was nothing he could say that would not piss off Bres, so he pressed his lips tightly together and refused to say another damn thing. With an effort that was painful to watch, Bres managed to calm the rage that was contorting his features and plastered the smile back onto his face. “Please, tell me the story of how you got the tattoo.”
“I met a girl,” he replied as if that explained everything.
“And?” Bres pressed impatiently. “Was she an extraordinary beauty? What did she look like?”
“She had red hair, green eyes, and freckles. She was just a beautiful girl who was into paganism. I don’t think there was anything special about her beyond that.” Shaw was thinking hard, trying to figure out where Bres was going with this and whether or not he was endangering an innocent person.
“That could be almost any of our women,” Bres muttered thoughtfully. “What was her name?”
That was something Shaw wouldn’t give. “I don’t remember.”
“You allowed the woman to know you well enough that she placed a powerful protective mark upon your arm,” Bres murmured thoughtfully. “You would have certainly bedded her. Even our women are not so frivolous as to mark a man she had lain with once and never granted him her name.”
“It was a short relationship that happened ten years ago. I don’t remember her name,” Shaw insisted. Bres seethed at him for a long moment. Behind him, Baja and Kootch became tense with suppressed action. They expected Bres to order them to do violence, and were preparing to carry it out. Kootch looked especially excited by the prospect. A small, cruel smile curved his thin lips and darkened his eyes.
“Bring them along,” Bres finally said. He stood and flounced out of the room as Kootch and Baja advanced on us.


Chapter 14

Shaw and I walked side by side with Kootch up front and Baja behind. We were being led through the small house and out the back door, across the back yard and into the surrounding forest. The moon was setting fast and would soon leave the landscape in the shroud of deep darkness that marked the last hours before dawn. Shaw was increasingly more nervous as the boundaries of thick trees loomed ever closer, and I could not fault him for it. Across the centuries, forests have been convenient and likely places to commit murder because the foliage suppresses the anguished cries of the doomed, and the brush makes for good concealment of unmarked graves.
Shaw talked to conceal his fear from our captors and to brace his courage. It was annoying, but it was better than listening to the man beg and barter for his life. Knowing that if he could get Kootch and Baja to see him as a person rather than a victim they might be more reluctant to kill him, Shaw engaged the men in idle conversation. His tone was calm and even, as if he was talking to friends about mundane things like the weather or the rising price of gas. But neither of them acknowledged him with a word or look. Either through genetics, upbringing, or some twisted combination of both, those men were badly broken in a way that made their work for Bres an easy thing, and therefore immune to the humanity of others.
Shaw recognized this quickly and he fell silent for a few minutes before turning his attention to me. It made sense for him to talk to me I suppose. As far as he knew, I could meet the same fate he did, and there was comfort in the knowledge that perhaps he would not go alone. Mortals often bonded deeply with those they shared crises with and it made it possible for whole communities to bind together and survive terrible catastrophes and fight to the last man in a siege.
“So, you’re an assassin,” he said in an odd tone. I couldn’t tell if the comment was a hopeful one or accusatory, so I refused to take it as an insult the words implied.
“No,” I grunted as I stumbled over a root. I had been an assassin in other lives, but I had no intention of becoming one as Rebecca Calden.
We were into the forest now and it was far darker than in the open. Walking here would be treacherous and running could prove crippling. There was little chance of making an escape here even if the opportunity presented itself. I resigned myself to our journey and tried not to think of what might lie ahead.
“You’re former military then.”
“Nope.” The army was something I never joined. In previous lifetimes, my gender was prohibited from engaging in military endeavors, and I had no desire to endure the discomforts required to disguise my natural endowments and pass as a male. However, service was now possible for me in this modern world, but I am too accustomed to fighting alone to adjust my strategies to include whole groups.
“Then why does this guy think that you are capable of killing Ryerson?” Shaw was exasperated. To his mind, I am very young, untrained, and otherwise unprepared for this kind of task.
“Killing doesn’t require special training, any idiot with enough fear or rage can do it. You’re a cop, you know this,” I told him.
“Not if you’re murdering a family member or you’re a street punk shooting rivals or random bystanders,” he agreed. “But you were sent after a specific target with… specialized skills.” Shaw was verbally dancing around the fact that Ryerson had defied laws of nature and physics as he understood them. “You were expected to take Ryerson out like a professional.”
“I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Does it have something to do with the fact that these people think you’re immortal?”
Well I guess Shaw hadn’t missed that comment after all. I was relieved by his phrasing though; it meant that he didn’t believe it.
“Probably. I imagine that an inability to die would make for an effective murderer.” I shrugged.
“What gave Bres the idea that you cannot die?” Now that was a question I could give an honest answer.
“My unusual eye color made him believe that I am immortal,” I said.
“Your eyes are naturally purple?” he asked, astonished. “I thought that was from contacts.”
“Nope, it’s all me.”
“Shut up,” Kootch snarled at us. He stopped walking when we reached a small shed huddled among a stand of pine trees and blooming shrubs. I eyed it warily, thinking that it resembled the quaint little cottages described in children’s tales right before the wicked witch shows up to eat them. He pulled open the door while Baja shoved us inside and clicked on a flashlight. The yellow beam showed a wooden door that served a storm cellar leading underground. That is unusual. While tornados and powerful storm systems do occur in Georgia, none of them really require this kid of protective measure, not like the Midwest region of the United States. So storm cellars are rare here.
Kootch pulled the door open with movements that showed no sign of the pain he should have been suffering from the stab wound I had given him. I wondered about this, thinking it was strange that Bres would care enough about the skanky redneck to ease his pain and heal his wounds. But there he was, whole and hale, and I was glad I had noticed it before I knew a fight was unavoidable.
“In you go,” Kootch snapped, waving us toward the earthen steps leading downward. Shaw had finally reached the point where he was unwilling to cooperate. He shook his head in stubborn refusal and he pulled me by my arm to stand close to him. His free hand groped at his side as he searched for a weapon that wasn’t there. Kootch sighed in disgust and pulled his gun from where he kept it at the small of his back. “Man, I don’t wanna have to shoot a cop. That’ll cause me more trouble than you’re worth. Just get into the hole.”
“You aren’t putting us down there,” Shaw insisted. He took a step back toward the door and then another, pulling me along with him. Baja let out a curse and in one smooth move, he grasped Shaw by the back of his neck and threw him into the hole. I followed close behind, not because Baja tossed me in too, but because Shaw’s grip on my arm tightened by reflex when the bigger man grabbed him and he didn’t let go.
When I managed to lift myself off of the floor, Shaw was groaning and sitting up. The stairs had been longer than those found in most storm cellars and we had hit them about halfway down. I was sore from the resulting tumble, and I thought it was a minor miracle that I hadn’t broken my neck.
We were in a large underground room with beautiful, exotic wood lining the walls and the floor with old carpeting and priceless tapestries decorating the place to make it feel like something other than a hole in the ground. There were simple tables set up everywhere, with lush potted plants and pretty jars filled with phosphorous liquids. Uncut jewels gleamed in small piles here and there, along with gold coins and bolts of expensive fabrics. By all appearances, Bres was a hoarder and I doubted that this stuff represented even the least of what he had stashed in other places. How did I know he had other stashes? Like myself, Bres is a creature gifted with a long life and it makes us paranoid about thieves. It’s easier to keep most of your stuff over the years if you spread it around a bit.
I stood up and offered Shaw a hand, staring ahead as I did so. Our immediate area was shrouded in thin shadows with a light flowing out from the other end of the room. I felt Shaw take my hand and I braced myself to take his weight as he pulled himself to his feet, keeping my eyes on the bug-shit faerie humming merrily about the plants. Baja and Kootch finished whatever they were doing and tramped down the stairs with their big feet clattering on the boards.
“Come forward now,” Bres said happily, gesturing with both hands. Shaw’s fingers tightened nervously around mine and he refused to move. Baja and Kootch brushed past us, casting irritated glances over their shoulders as they went by. At least they left us alone to flank their boss at the tables. “Don’t linger there, come here now.”
I’d had enough of this. I found myself thinking about Bres’ earlier comment that if a person has enough holes in them, they’ll eventually die. I wondered if that applied to faeries as well. I contemplated the assorted odds and ends on Bres’ table and quickly realized that none of them would serve as a decent weapon. It didn’t matter; there was more than one way to skin a cat and I know most of them.
“Don’t.” Shaw stopped me from getting closer with a hiss. “There’s nothing good happening here.”
“How do you know?” I asked. As far as I could see, Bres was only talking to his plants. It was a little screwy, but not dangerous.
Shaw shuddered as if his skin was trying to leap off of his body, and he made a gagging noise. Afraid that he was about to be sick, I took a few steps away from him so that I wouldn’t get it on me. “I just know,” he told me in a thick voice.
“Don’t make me come and get you. I promise that you will not like it if that happens.” Bres’ voice was low and menacing, like the sound a large predatory animal makes before it bites your head off. I pried my hand from Shaw’s and went where I was told. Let him find out what Bres could do the hard way if he wanted to. I planned on doing something more proactive than having my brains melt through my eyeballs again.
Shaw hesitated for a moment longer and then followed warily. His hand kept touching his hip, still searching for the gun he carried on duty. We stopped before the tables; close enough to have obeyed the word of Bres’ command, but far enough away to be out of easy reach. Bres didn’t seem to mind. He continued his bizarre fussing with the potted plants as if everything was going his way. He whispered regretfully in his strange musical language as he snipped bits of leaf and stem and twisted them together with bits of string and copper wire. He set the bundles aside and regarded us with green eyes gone eerie with malice.
“Because you failed to rid the world of Ryerson’s stain, you revealed my existence to him and the host of malevolent creatures that swarm around him. I have to use a great deal of energy and resources in order to protect what is mine, including you.” Bres gave me a hard look to make certain that I knew that I was the beneficiary of his efforts. “Since you and your mortal friend are the source of my sudden vulnerability, you will be the ones who will see to my safety.”
“Are you kidding me?” I snapped, outraged. Bres had enough of his sick mojo all over me. I could feel it like a thick oil coating my skin. I did not want more. “You are Fey; don’t you guys have some kind of group protection plan against this sort of thing?” I felt Shaw jerk at the word ‘Fey’ and take a step away. His fear and confusion was like a thick fog around me, but I did not offer him any words of comfort or an explanation. Even though I had the advantage of being one of the supernaturals surrounding him, all of this was new to me too. I didn’t know what to tell him even if I wanted to try. So I pretended that he wasn’t there quietly freaking out behind his mask of indifference.
“You are over two thousand years old, and you haven’t heard my legend yet?” Bres sneered at me. “Don’t you read? I am a deposed king! I am exempt from the mound’s protection.”
I made a useless gesture. I don’t know how faerie politics work, and I don’t care. Bres glared daggers at me and slammed his stuff around on the tables like a pissy housewife.
“Good grief Bres, pull out the tampon and man up.” I exclaimed in frustration.
I woke up on the floor with my eyes crossed painfully and unable to recall how I got there. I’m sure I could guess if I tried. My head hurt a lot and my chest had wisps of smoke trickling up from it. As soon as I noticed that, I felt the pain of second or third degree burns scorching my cleavage. I couldn’t say without looking. They both hurt the same in the first few minutes after the flames are put out.
Shaw was kneeling over me with a mixed expression of shock, horror, and amusement. It made his face look odd. “I don’t want to know what just happened, but you have balls. Great big, shiny, brassy, balls. I would not have had the nerve to say what you just did.”
“Thanks,” I groaned. Shaw helped me get to my feet and I blearily regarded a furious Bres and his two snickering lackeys. My eyes kept crossing against my will, so it was difficult to focus on Bres as he glared indignantly at me. He held up two tuffs of hair wrapped in gold, one long and dark brown, the other shorter and fairer. I touched my hair at the sight, searching for the missing lock.
“Do not fear for your crowning beauty,” Bres growled, weaving the hair through the cuttings he had taken from the plants. “I took the hair from the nape of your neck. You’ll never know it’s gone.” I watched him work and thought that I would miss it very much by the time he was finished with it.
Bres completed his task and grinned with satisfaction. He admired his handiwork for a moment then holding them delicately in is fingers, came toward us. Even after what Shaw had seen and heard already, he pulled me back and put his body between me and Bres, as if I was the helpless one. I guess that even in the face of imminent, potentially fatal disaster, good socialization and training will always kick in. In the South, good men have the idea that women are ultimately helpless beaten into their skulls. It makes some of them bullies, but it made others heroic. Bres smiled curiously and tilted his head at Shaw as if he had suddenly realized that he liked the man. I suppose it is a good thing since most people, human or otherwise, won’t kill people they like. But then Bres is insane, so maybe it won’t make any difference in the end.
“You want to go first?” Bres asked, his eyes twinkling with mirth. Shaw shook his head and backed up, stumbling as he bumped into me. Bres laughed at his fear and reached for him. Shaw tried to elude him, but I unintentionally got in his way. Bres grabbed the tattooed arm and held the other man easily no matter how hard Shaw struggled. When I tried to intercede, Bres brushed me aside like a bug as he examined the blistered tattoo. “This won’t do,” he muttered. He bent him head and breathed long and hard on the injury, and then he pressed on it with his hand. Shaw let out a cry of pain and his entire body shuddered and his eyes rolled up in his head.
From where I had been knocked on my butt, I watched the blisters and welts smooth and the ugly discolorations fade into the bright tattoo ink. As soon as he was healed, Bres let him go and he dropped boneless to his knees. The air in the room became charged so that it seemed to spark with Fey power as he put one of the bundles against Shaw’s lips and caught his panting breathes with it. Shaw’s wide blue eyes fluttered shut and his breathing moved from frantic to excited. He collapsed onto his back when Bres took the bundle away and he was still.
Bres turned to me with a happy sigh. “Your turn.”
I looked from Bres to the unconscious mortal on the floor and thought, ‘Oh hell no.’ I jumped to my feet and sprinted for the stairs. But Bres is faster than I and he caught me easily and flung me to where Kootch and Baja stood. The two of them caught me and laughed, holding me by my arms between them so that I couldn’t get away. I still struggled; throwing my weight first one way then another while I twisted my limbs in an effort to wrench from their grip. When that proved useless, I took to stomping at their feet. They were wearing thick, sturdy boots that protected them from my efforts and left the bottoms of my feet bruised through my tennis shoes.
“Stop that,” Bres scolded gently. “This isn’t going to hurt you one bit. If you relax it will feel good.”
I cringed from him as he reached out one hand and ran his fingers through my hair. A lustful smile played along his lips as he stroked a thick lock and his eyes moved up and down my face and body. “Are you certain you do not wish an hour of my time? I can promise you pleasure like you’ve never experienced.” I didn’t have to answer him. The grimace of disgust was all the reply he needed. “Have it your way.” He sighed and pressed the bundle against my lips.
I felt electric, like a dozen orgasms were wracking my body all at once. My eyes clamped shut and I was vaguely aware that I would have dropped to the floor like a sack of bricks, but Kootch and Baja held me up. I heard Kootch cackle and Baja’s rumbling laugh, and then I was gone.


Chapter 15

I woke up in a place I never thought existed and couldn’t identify. I smelled green things and the rich earth, so I knew I was outside. I opened my eyes a slit and looked for some sign of Baja and Kootch lurking nearby. But the darkness was thick and close like a velvet wall, and I could not see anything beyond a couple of feet in front of me. I sat up and found that I was sitting on a small mound of earth carpeted in thick emerald moss that was soft and warm to the touch. Shaw was lying prone beside me, making weak moans as his eyelids fluttered toward consciousness. I gazed upwards in search of the source of the light that bathed the small circle, but the sky was as black as the land beyond.
I listened for some sign of life but other than the noise Shaw was making, it was as quiet as a tomb. With that thought came the idea that we might actually be inside a tomb and I felt a rush of panic. I’ve been buried alive before and each experience had been among the most terrifying I’ve ever endured, and each time I swore that I would rather die than endure it again. Since I cannot die, it always happens again and again. The fear left me quickly as I reminded myself that graves are dark and do not have ways to let in even a small amount of light. Where ever I was, it wasn’t with the dead.
“What happened?” Shaw was awake and struggling to sit up. He sat hunched in a pained posture as he peered around through bleary eyes. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.” That was the only answer I could give to both questions. Shaw stood up before he was ready to, and he reeled dizzily but did not fall. Once the spell had passed, he took a tentative step forward and reached the edge of the circle of light around us. He peered into the darkness and then he lifted his foot to take another step forward. He stood there on one leg for a moment and then let it drop with a sigh.
“I can’t go further,” he sighed in defeat. Shaw reached out with his hand, and the limb disappeared into the darkness. He jumped and pulled it back with an expression of horror as if he expected to pull back a bloody stump. His hand was intact with no sign of injury as he flexed his fingers and rubbed them against his jeans.
Intrigued, I went to where he stood and I stuck my hand out across the barrier. My flesh went icy cold, and it prickled like it had lost circulation and gone to sleep. I took my hand back, and like Shaw, saw that the limb was fine. Perplexed by the strange phenomena, but unable to think of a single thing to do about it, I grunted and turned away. Shaw had already proven that the darkness would not permit us to step into it, so I didn’t bother to try. It was all very weird but harmless for the moment. There would be plenty of time to mess with it when Shaw began to starve and dehydrate. In the meantime, I would wait to see what happened next.
“We’re in the Faerie Mound,” Shaw said suddenly after staring at the black in thoughtful horror.
“What makes you think that?” The thought had occurred to me too, but I wasn’t going to talk about it. I had worried that Shaw was in denial and would make the situation worse by arguing with me about it. I had been worrying for nothing. Good for Shaw.
“I figured out that Bres was Fey pretty quickly,” he said, still peering out of the circle. “My grandmother used to tell me the old stories every chance she got, so I heard enough descriptions to know what he is and where we are now. Don’t eat or drink anything here, and don’t have sex with anyone, or else you’ll be trapped in here forever.”
“So how do we get out?” I’ve heard all of the stories too, but my knowledge was centuries old and largely forgotten. Shaw seemed to know what was going on, so I would take his word for it. “Can we fight our way out, or do we have to wait for some random faerie in a squirrelly mood to walk by and decide it’ll be fun to let us go?”
“I think we’ll have to wait. Everything I heard about escapes involves bargaining or requires a rescue. I’ve heard of Fey whose sole task is to rescue humans from the Mound, but those guys are few and far between and usually want sexual favors in return,” he replied. “We’ll have to hope that they want something specific from us.” He gave me a curious look then. “You haven’t done this before?”
“No. Why would I have ever come anywhere near a Mound?” I snapped back.
“You’re immortal, aren’t you? I would think that the faeries would have been eager to get a hold of you before now.”
“Who says that I’m immortal?” I make it a habit to deny everything even when the evidence of the truth is painfully obvious. Most people don’t want to know that something like me was running around. The human need to lie in order to maintain their view of reality has kept me free for a very long time.
Shaw gave me a condescending look. “My first clue was when you walked out of the hospital hours after your brain melted into jelly inside your skull.”
“My brain did not melt,” I grumped. “You’re making a mountain out of a mole hill.”
“I had the medical examiner look at your scans, Rebecca. He said that your brain had turned to pudding and if you were up and walking, then I had the scans for the wrong person. Meanwhile, five doctors all insisted that the scans were yours and they had the hospital lawyer looking for a legal reason to have your ass hauled back in so they could run more tests. When Bres brought it up, you didn’t even try deny it.” Shaw glared, daring me to try and lie to him again.
“Bres is delusional maniac. He’ll say anything.”
“Perhaps, but that doesn’t mean that he’s wrong about you.” He snapped back. “What is your chronological age?”
I let out a heavy sigh and finally gave in and told him. It was not something that I had done before and it frightened me to do it. I didn’t know how he would respond to the admission. I immediately thought of several very bad reactions that made my skin crawl.
“I’m about two thousand, five hundred and sixty-three years, give or take a decade.” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or hysterical after I said the words. The rare times it had gotten out in the past, the mortals grabbed their torches and pitchforks and chased me out of town. I’ve never had a rational conversation about it before. It felt strange.
“About? You don’t know how old you are?” Shaw asked. There was fear and astonishment of his face that made me cringe a little, but there was also a flavor of delight there too, as if he was discovering something wonderful. From his point of view, maybe he was, but to me it felt awkward and strange.
“I was born in an area and time when people had bigger worries than figuring out what year it was,” I shrugged. “Then the Renaissance started and I was stoned out of my mind for most of it. I can’t even remember what country I lived in then.”
Shaw laughed at that. “You’re going to have to share some of that with me later. Where were you born?”
“In Budapest, on the Buda side of the Danube River.” I don’t know why it is important for me to specify which side of the river I had been raised on, but it was. It seemed silly ever since the two cities became one, but I had never stopped thinking that way.
“You don’t look Hungarian.”
“Sure I do,” I laughed. “I look the way Hungarians did over two thousand years ago.”
“So the purple eye color was common back then?”
“No. That has always been unique to me.” I felt sad, remembering the vague faces of the people I had known and loved. It had become painful as they grew suspicious of what I was with the fear of what I represented. But there had been acceptance too, and I had plenty of friends and loved ones. I would have liked to say that it was a simpler time, but it wasn’t. Life has always been messy and complicated, regardless of the century or lifestyle I was living. No matter what old people and historians say, golden ages are all lies. If you don’t believe me, ask the people who had lived in squalor under the thumb of tyranny how golden their lives were.
Shaw’s face reflected the sadness I felt, and the conversation died there. With no way to tell the time, it felt as if we waited for hours. The fear of the unknown faded into anxiety and we were able to sit back down on the moss to wait. Periodically, Shaw would get up to pace to try to step out of the circle and fail. Then he would mutter and curse, pace some more and sit back down. I took it all in stride, refusing to get worked up until the appropriate moment. I remained where I was until my muscles cramped from inactivity and I had to stretch.
“Who is Rebecca Calden?” Shaw asked me suddenly as I bent to touch my toes.
Perplexed by the question, I straightened and frowned at him. “I am.”
“You’re over two thousand years old. You couldn’t have been called Rebecca Calden the entire time. You had to have changed your identity every generation or so, to avoid suspicion. Was she real a real person you stole the identity from, or did you pull it from the air?” I didn’t sense a hint of accusation in his voice. He merely wanted to know, and since I’d already told him more than I had anyone ever, I figured that I couldn’t make anything worse by telling him everything else.
“I maintain contacts that help me get new identities when I come out of hiding. I instruct them to find a girl who died around the time I’m coming back and matches my physical description,” I explained. “They hand over her social security number and birth certificate and I have an accountant and an estate lawyer transfer my money from my previous identity to the new one. Then I settle in and go on with life as usual. The true Rebecca Calden died of a drug overdose, and no one came to recover her body.”
“What do you do when your identity theft is discovered?” Shaw gave me a small smile that told me that he had already had an idea.
I smiled as I answered him. “These days I fake my death, move to a different area and emerge a decade or two later.”
“These days?”
“It was a lot easier to be anonymous before passports and driver’s licenses were invented. I didn’t have to pretend to die then; all I had to do was relocate.” I sat down and stretched my legs out in front of me.
“So who were you originally?” Shaw moved to sit next to me so that we could talk softly. I examined the darkness for some sign that there was something lurking in the darkness, but I saw nothing. It didn’t mean that nothing was there.
“I was a peasant girl of no significance,” I said.
“I find that hard to believe,” Shaw replied dryly. “You had to have been someone or done something in order for you to be immortal.”
“Sorry, but I wasn’t special. I was just another girl living in a village that just happened to become a city. I saw a few things and I learned a few things, but I was no one important.” I smiled at the disappointment on his face. No doubt he had some epic story percolating in his head, full of danger and glamorous details about how I became immortal. Even I wished that had been the case. It certainly would have been more interesting than the reality. There was nothing but the ordinary, mundane things that happened to everyone I had known then.
I saw the question of how burning in Shaw’s eyes, and I could have kissed him when he repressed it. That is one issue I’m not willing to talk about, mostly because I didn’t have an answer. If I did know how I became immortal, I certainly would have made more like me by now. I’ve grieved the loss of too many loved ones and known too many years of loneliness not to have succumbed to the temptation at least once.
“Is Rebecca your real name?” he asked.
“No, and before you ask, I’m not going to tell you my original name. Not now at least. There are too many things around here that can use it against me. I have enough trouble without having something nasty come along and hijack my mind and soul,” I told him.
“Who can do that?” Shaw was appalled.
“If the stories are true, witches, demons, and some members of the Fey. What’s the story behind the tattoo?” It was time to change the subject. I was getting nervous talking about me.
Shaw laughed at that and rubbed his fore arm. “I was in my second semester of college when I met a girl. She was beautiful and exciting and she was into paganism. A couple of months after we hooked up, she talked me into going to a Beltane festival that year. There was a lot of music, booze, and marijuana and before I knew it, I had gotten drunk and passed out. When I came to, I was back in my own bed and I had the tattoo. The girl liked it a lot, but my family wasn’t too thrilled. My parents and grandparents are devout Baptists, and they pitched an ungodly fit about me having a pagan symbol tattooed into my arm. Every time I visit my grandmother, I get to listen to detailed descriptions of what Satan will do to me when I get to Hell.”
I laughed at that, imagining the clichéd southern granny fiercely harping at her chagrined grandson. “That’s it? You had one wild night with a pretty girl and ended up with a tattoo?”
“Pretty much.”
“Was the girl strange in any way?” I asked thinking. That tattoo made Bres think that another faerie had claimed Shaw. It was the reason why Shaw was sitting in the circle with me instead of lying unconscious on the side of a road somewhere.
“Of course she was odd. That was part of her appeal. Bridget was wild and fun and she loved sex. But she also had a short attention span and the relationship was over a few months after I got the tattoo. I met and married my ex-wife shortly after.” Shaw yawned and lay back on the mossy ground with his hands behind his head. He was incredibly relaxed given the situation. Come to think of it, I wasn’t opposed to a nap myself. That was odd. I rarely have the urge to sleep when I’m being held prisoner.
I lay back next to Shaw and cuddled against his side. He was warm and firm and he smelled of flesh and aftershave. He curled his arm around me, encouraging me to rest my head on his shoulder. I let out a long sigh and felt my eyelids droop.
“Why did you get divorced?” I spoke more to keep myself awake rather out of curiosity. Divorce is boring because the reasons for it usually boil down to the fact that the couple wasn’t compatible in the first place and unwilling to compromise.
“Enid didn’t like being a cop’s wife. She said it was too lonely and stressful, so she had an affair with my cousin. They got married last month.” Most men would be pissed over a family member poaching his wife, but he didn’t sound angry at all. It made me think that his marriage had been dead and buried long before they split up.
“What does your cousin do for a living?” I cuddled closer and put one arm across his chest. He felt good under my hand.
“He’s a Revenuer up in White County,” Shaw chuckled. “Apparently Enid doesn’t think that tramping through the forest searching for illegal liquor stills and getting shot at by moonshiners is as dangerous and stressful as being a city cop.”
I chuckled at that, thinking that Enid was a shallow social climber with a thing for law enforcement. The only difference between Shaw and his cousin was that the other guy was federal, and Shaw was local. It wasn’t that she hated being a cop’s wife; she wanted more prestige than what was afforded to city officers. What a bitch.
Under my cheek, I felt Shaw’s chest begin the slow rise and fall of deep sleep. I wanted to shake him awake, but I felt so heavy and tired that I couldn’t summon the energy to do it. I fought the fatigue at first, thinking that there was something important about sleeping inside the Fey Mounds that I should remember. Try as I might, I could not make the thought coherent and I fell under the wash of slumber and drifted into a dreamless sleep.

Chapter 16

I was shaken hard enough to rattle my teeth and pull me from the heavy sleep I had been buried in. I groaned and bitched incoherently as I fought to return to my comfortable slumber and was seized by my arms and hauled to my uncooperative feet. Even my eyeballs protested awareness and refused to look forward as I peeled my lids back and scowled into a face that was too beautiful to be human. He laughed at me, displaying pitch and tone never uttered from a mortal throat, and caught me when I tried to fall over. He spoke that weird language I’d heard from Bres when he was angry, and for a moment I thought I was about to be impaled on the pretty sword I saw poking over the man’s shoulder.
Another pair of these beauties, one a redhead and the other crowned with long silver tresses, stood on either side of me and gripped my arms to hold me up. A few feet away, Shaw wasn’t faring any better. Two more men were grunting and cursing as they pulled him from the ground and tried to get him to stand. Unfortunately, Shaw is much bigger and bulkier than the men trying to get him to move, and they ended up dropping him on his face. He came back up on his own, his eyes wide with shock and rubbing at his injured nose. The man all laughed at him as they took him gently by his arms and steered him out of the little circle of light.
I quickly came to my full senses once they got me moving. Not that there was anything to pay attention to. The chill darkness had enveloped us like cold water, hiding the sights and sounds of everything around us. Even our faerie escorts were lost to me, only their firm grips on my arms to let me know that they were still there. They laughed and joked among themselves, unconcerned with the strangeness of the environment as they pushed us into the cloaking darkness.
Suddenly denied my senses of sight and sound, I fought the urge to panic until I was certain that I was about to lose my mind. Then the darkness thinned and a large structure emerged to give my frantic brain something to focus on beside my growing terror. It was a massive hall, built from unfitted stone and held together with black sod and grass. It was a lovely example of Stone Age architecture, though its height and sprawl defied the tales that spoke of faerie mounds existing underground. I looked up and up and saw the tall, glittering spire that stood proudly over the hall’s entrance, but I did not see the roof of the Mound itself. Instead there was only the bright light of morning fog resting upon the top of the building and the surrounding trees that embraced it.
“Welcome to Sidhe Knockma,” said the leading guard as he opened a massive door of red yew carved with lithe figures and ivy leaves. We were herded over the threshold to walk across a smooth, warm, black floor that was polished until it gleamed like glass. Before us was an enormous chamber with walls so distant that I could not make them out with long, colorful banners hanging from the high ceiling. In the shadows above the broad strips of cloth were tiny colored lights like little stars in a twilight sky. They zoomed and danced in the floating darkness, sending sparks of glittering energy floating down onto the heads below. The taller, more powerful Fey were gathered in a group at the center of the chamber, their grace and beauty marked by the shift of their colorful gowns and sparkling jewels.
The guards steered us around the edge of the crowd to a tall throne set on a stone platform. A blonde man draped his long frame across the large seat like a model awaiting the arrival of a roaming photographer. He was dressed in rich green and blue with a thin circlet of gold and polished emeralds resting upon his arched brow, marking his position in this place. His large green eyes were full of peaceful mirth as he gazed upon the movements of his court then they settled upon the guards leading us up to him. I make it a policy to appear fearless, otherwise my enemies could use it against me whenever they liked. So I met the King’s gaze with a haughty lift of my chin and all but dared him to take offense. The King must have seen something in me, because his eyes widened with surprise and he straightened in his seat. The court sensed his movement and they turned as one to Shaw and I, raking us both with harsh and hostile stares.
“King Finvarra!” called a pompous fellow dressed in scarlet trimmed heavily in some kind of thick, brown fur. He yammered his protest while making sweeping gestures to another man in a white, blousy shirt and green trousers. That guy rolled his eyes at whatever the other was complaining of and rudely snorted a contemptuous remark that sent the first into a violent snit. The people laughed and cheered as the red fellow leaped upon the blousy shirt with a vicious snarl. He pummeled him about the head and shoulders while he raged and spat.
Amused by the fight, Finvarra let it go on for a few minutes before he called the guard to separate the fighters. As the pair was dragged off to cool down, the King called out to the court. “As a courtesy to our guests, we will speak the mortal tongue so that they may know what occurs here.” Finvarra gestured to us, and again the court treated us to expressions of contempt.
Beside me, Shaw let out an irritable sigh, a reaction I hadn’t expected from him. I had thought that a mortal with no previous experience with the supernatural beyond bedtime stories would, at the very least, be frightened half out of his wits and trying to convince himself that he was in need of heavy medication. Instead, he was regarding the court with a stoic cop’s face, as if he had seen all of this before and was already bored with it. It made me wonder if he’d lost his mind or perhaps he was that intellectually flexible.
Suddenly, the crowd shifted as people picked one side or the other of the platform. They left a long isle open between the groups and stared expectantly toward the opposite end of the hall. Finvarra called for the next complaint to come forward and slumped back into boredom. One of the guards standing with us said something in a snarky tone, to which his fellows gave him good hearted jabs in his ribs and laughed at him.
Long minutes passed while the two groups stared at each other in open hostility, until finally a man and a woman appeared, walking side by side but as far away from each other as the aisle would allow. Behind them, their entourages walked in single file and exchanged rude gestures with one another. The air grew colder at their arrival until even the warm floor seemed to chill the bottoms of my feet. The little lights that had been so excited before were slowing their activity to drift down closer to the crowd. I studied them curiously and realized that they were actually tiny people with gossamer wings sprouting from their backs.
“I’ll be damned,” Shaw whispered beside me. “Those are pixies. I didn’t think they were allowed to enter the Seelie High Court.”
“Huh?” The stories of the faerie have always been as diverse and confusing as any fantasy spun by drunken Irishmen. And in the tradition of such tales, they were wildly convoluted and contradictory. I had never been able to understand them, and so I didn’t bother to remember them.
“There are two basic kinds of faerie,” Shaw leaned close enough to speak quietly in my ear. “There is the Seelie High Court which is exclusively held for the most human-like types of fey. These people are the strongest members of the race and they run from the morally ambiguous to the perfectly benign. They spend their time seducing pretty girls and fighting demons and monsters, and only attack humans when they are provoked. The lesser fey are sent down to the Unseelie Court even though they are expected to maintain their allegiances to the same king. They don’t look human and they don’t even try to disguise themselves. They also attack humans without a reason and I have heard stories that claim that they steal, maim, and even murder. They aren’t supposed to be anywhere near the Seelie Court unless they’re called. At least that’s what my grandmother told me.”
“I’m going to have to meet your grandmother,” I answered, wondering who the hell the woman was and how she knew so damn much about faeries.
The crowd buzzed as the couple moved closer and the pixies jeered at them in tiny voices. When they came to a respectful distance from the King, they turned their faces toward him, and I recognized that the man was Bres. Among his own kind, Bres let his guard down so that he glowed with his shimmering power and seemed more inhuman than ever. He was so beautiful that he made my heart ache with dread.
Beside him, the beautiful and delicate redhead was no less a match for him. Her power blazed brilliantly over her smooth white skin and flowed down her slender body like an over gown with her anger as she flounced haughtily to the King’s platform and gave him a graceful curtsy. Not to be outdone, Bres ratchet up his own display until he looked like he was going to vaporize at any moment and he made a deep and elegant bow. Behind them, the two entourages arranged themselves among the surrounding crowds to wait for the show to start.
“What are you two fighting about this time?” Finvarra asked, clearly bored with what was happening.
“Sire, my wife has been denying me use of marital assets!” Bres declared loftily, gesturing at the woman beside him. “Furthermore, she is denying my rights as husband to make use of those who serve us.”
“Aren’t you two already divorced?” A note of annoyance sang in Finvarra’s voice.
“No my lord. You have yet to declare on some matters in dispute,” Bres replied angrily. Finvarra didn’t like the tone, and he gave the other man a fierce stare meant to warn him into better behavior. Bres flinched and growled apologies, although he didn’t look very sorry at all.
“What have you to say to this, Bridget?” Finvarra asked the woman smirking at her husband.
“It is as he claims your majesty,” she admitted easily. “Just as he has denied me access to the marital assets and servants that he holds, I withhold mine from him.”
“Exactly which assets are in contest this time?” Finvarra glanced at Shaw and I, and I knew exactly what they were arguing about.
“The human servants who stand just so beside your throne, my lord,” Bridget gestured to us, and blew a kiss at Shaw. He jerked as if he’d been slapped and his mouth dropped open as the horror of it struck him. There was no doubt that the woman was the faerie that had claimed him as her own. I watched him struggle to put a name to the woman’s face, and I assumed that she had appeared altogether different when they had their college fling.
“No wonder my grandmother was so angry with me,” he murmured as his skin turned sallow and he looked like he was going to be sick. “She knew that I had been marked when she saw it.”
“So this is a custody battle, then?” King Finvarra asked wearily.
“Yes my lord. Bridget has demanded use of my servant Rebecca Calden and has hidden the existence of her mortal from me,” Bres said coldly. “As always she seeks to betray me at every turn-”
“I betrayed you!” Bridget exclaimed in outrage. “What about your treasons? You stole my father’s cauldron from me. You-”
“You flaunted your mortal lovers in my face!” Bres shot back. “You usurped my throne and gave it to your lover-”
“You betrayed the Tuatha de Danann by granting lands and titles to the Formorian demons. If I had not revoked your sovereignty, you would have given them all of Tir na Nog!”
“Your damned bard blistered my forehead! It took years to get rid of them!”
“You seduced not one, but three of the virgins tending my flame in Kildare!”
“I still can’t sit down from the sores that damned bard gave me!”
“You sent our son Ruadan to his death!”
A stunned silence filled the court at that last accusation. Everyone held their breath and waited while Bres turned several shades of red and purple. When he exploded it was into a flurry of enraged curses and threats, spoken in the musical language of the Fey. Bridget did not tolerate it for more than a couple of seconds and soon she was screaming back and pointing her finger at him in lethal gestures. A fireball shot out of her forehead and struck Bres full in the chest, lifting him off of his feet and carrying him over the heads of his supporters. Bridget’s crowd laughed and clapped their hands while the people backing Bres stomped the flames out with their feet and propped him back up. Roaring his fury, a crispy and bruised Bres launched himself at Bridget and took her to the ground where the fight devolved into punches, swearing, spitting, and biting.
The court encouraged the pair while the pixies split into two groups and began to assault all the members of the High Court. Magic spells and bolts of lightning zoomed and crashed throughout the hall, tearing up chunks of black rock and setting clouds of pixies aflame. Bolts of electricity were followed closely by a shower of water and frogs that struck far too close for comfort and knocked me off of my feet. A body landed like a ton of bricks on top of me, driving the air from my lungs and leaving me blinking stupidly at startled frogs scattered across a wet floor.
Suddenly, everything went silent, as if the world became a sudden vacuum and sucked all of the sound of it. I felt the body lift off of me and Shaw offered me a hand up along with an apology. “Sorry about tackling you. Are you okay?”
“Yup,” I croaked, noticing that he wasn’t letting go of my hand and I had to work not to giggle like a school girl about it.
A large pixie, roughly the size of a sparrow, fluttered away from the cloud of buzzing faerie and drifted toward Finvarra. He held a graceful hand out to the pretty creature and she stepped delicately onto his palm and gave him a curtsy. He smiled gently as she went through the motions of addressing him as her liege in a high, tiny voice.
“Your majesty,” she continued as she finished formally addressing him. “There is a group of mortals attempting to enter the Mound.”
“Attempting?” Finvarra inquired with an amused lift of one brow.
“They are circling the door in the wrong direction, sire. So far they have not understood what they are doing wrong.”
“Do you know what they are after?”
“They seek the return of the immortal.” The pixie pointed a tiny finger at me. “They appear to be quite adamant about their desire to have her back. They are now calling for shovels so that they might try to dig their way in.”
“We cannot have that,” The King murmured. Her task completed, the pixie gave another curtsy and flew away to join her friends hovering over our heads. Finvarra sat back in his throne and gazed thoughtfully at nothing for a while. No one moved while he did this; even Bres and Bridget remained frozen in mid-combat while Finvarra considered the pixie’s words.
Finvarra’s attention suddenly focused, and his expression turned from thoughtful to fierce. The High Court held its breath and trembled, as if every one of them expected to be struck down in the next instant. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention, and I felt Shaw shudder in his unease.
“Far Dorocha, what business brings you into the Sidhe Knockma?” Finvarra called, his voice gone low and dangerous.
A figure oozed out of the shadows of the hall and formed into the shape of a tall, broad man. He was dressed all in black, from the ratty t-shirt and jeans to the old and worn boots clomping loosely around his feet. Even his hair and eyes were the shade of obsidian that made his snow white skin glow eerily. Once he was solid, he sauntered arrogantly through the crowd that cringed away from him to avoid his touch. He came to a stop at the platform and knelt before the king, though he did not bow his head in submission.
“This is a new look for you,” Finvarra said dryly. “I was not aware that you had taken up with the emo-goth movement. It suits you well.” Far Dorocha smirked and shrugged in response.
To my horror and dismay, I realized that I knew this man. A thousand years ago, in a time when I had gone to ground to while away a couple of decades, I had taken up residency in a small farming community in Scotland. It had been a quiet place where the people worked hard and died young in the way that peasants always did as they struggled to pay their taxes and avoid marauding Vikings. Far Dorocha had arrived as a mysterious woodsman dressed in black leather and homespun that had all the pretty unmarried girls in a romantic tizzy and their fathers in outraged suspicion. I liked him because he was handsome and didn’t talk, much less badger me with annoying questions. We had enjoyed a brief but wild fling until he left in the dead of night. A few days later, the plague had arrived and wiped out the entire village in less than three months.
I had not suspected what he was back then, and now that I was finally seeing him for what he truly was my skin began to crawl. Far Dorocha turned those black, cavernous eyes upon me and he smiled in recognition and I finally believed the tales the dying villagers had told of him. They had called him the Dark Man, the dire servant of the death goddess Morrigan. According to their stories, it was his task to obtain the things that were forbidden to his queen and to strengthen her terrible power without breaking the taboos she worked under. I still doubt that he had brought the plague to those innocent people, but he had gone to that village with a purpose. The Dark Man did not take holidays. Whatever had been his goal, he had failed to achieve it when the last villager succumbed to his fate.
Far Dorocha abruptly stood with the grace of a pouncing cat that and offered a folded bit of notebook paper to Finvarra. The King is a creature too proud to come down off of his platform so a guard plucked it from the Dark Man’s long fingers and offered it up where it could be reached. Finvarra scanned the letter and let out a curse.
“Is the Morrigans sure of this?” he snapped. “They have verified this information with their own eyes?”
Still Far Dorocha said nothing. He merely gave another eloquent shrug.
“Go to your mistress and tell her to return to the Sidhe as soon as she is able. There is much to do before Beltane.” Finvarra crooked a finger at Shaw and me. The guards pushed us forward so that he could speak to us without shouting over the anxious noise of the court. “Do you wish to ever leave Sidhe Knockma?”
“It would be nice,” Shaw growled.
“Then you must pledge to assist us in this new battle against the Faith of the Divine Inferno.”
How many crazy-assed cults did Atlanta have functioning inside its borders? “I’m sorry, but I’m already busy destroying one psychotic cult right now, so maybe your people can take care of this one,” I replied.
“They call themselves the Immortal Church of God to keep the masses complacent and blind to what they are.” Finvarra spoke as if I hadn’t just told him no. “When their leader is alone with his inner circle and draining their life force to maintain his power on the mortal plain, they are the Faith of the Divine Inferno, a group devoted to the task of bringing the Damned to the Earth and set their master, the demon Stolas, as the king of men.”
This just proves that paranoid mortals who huddle together in secret societies aren’t the only ones who believe in convoluted conspiracy theories. Apparently the things that go bump in the night believe in them too. “Let’s assume for a moment that you’re right,” I began, giving the King a look of disbelief so that he knew that I wasn’t buying the bullshit he was trying to sell. “Do you have any idea how they are going to bring demons to Earth? Because you must realize that in order to bust anything out of the Underworld, a person or creature has to have enormous power and extensive knowledge of quantum physics. What makes you think either of us can do a damn thing about it?” I jerked my thumb at Shaw as I spoke to include him in the statement without saying his name. Odds are pretty good that the Bridget chic knows Shaw’s name, after all they did have a fling way back when that had resulted in an elaborate tattoo. Still no one in the Mound had called Shaw by name, and I wasn’t about to give him away if these people were clueless. If the faeries wanted to use his name to screw with him, they were going to have to do it the old fashioned way and trick it out of him.
“You will do what we tell you to do,” Finvarra snapped.
“Like hell you will,” I retorted.
“Your immortality makes you arrogant,” the King snarled, angry because I wasn’t bowing to his whim like a goofy lackey.
“The condition does come with irritating side effects,” I retorted. “One of them is being able to tell you to kiss my ass and doing what I want anyway.” I stepped up to challenge Finvarra by invading his personal space, but the effect was spoiled by Shaw jerking me right back.
“Stop the bravado,” he hissed in my ear. “You’re going to get us killed.”
“You think that you can make your own way out? By all means, you are welcome to try.” Finvarra stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture. “Let me know if you come across the corpse of Finn Mac Cool. We haven’t been able to find him in eons.”
I looked past Finvarra and into the darkness that huddled at the end of the hall. I lied to myself and said that if I walked long enough, I would eventually find my way out of this insane place. After all, I had all the time in the world and no real need for resources. Then I caught a glimpse of Far Dorocha out of the corner of my eye. He had edged closer during the conversation, and his eyes held an eager and chilling gleam that left my blood cold. I could all but hear him anticipate my defiance of the King, hopeful that if I choose to wander the Mound on my own. Once I was good and lost, he could find me at his leisure and pick up where we had left off a thousand years ago. I’d rather go toe to toe with Stolas and all of his minions in Hell, thank you very much.
“Fine, I’ll help you. But in return you have to remove the geas that Bres put on me.” I sighed in resignation.
“Indeed?” At first I thought that the King was angry that I had not agreed without conditions, but then he turned on Bres. The man had managed to untangle himself from Bridget and the two of them were standing quietly by to watch the proceedings. “Eochu Breas, did you place this geas upon this immortal human?”
Bres was nervous enough that he had to clear his throat several times before he could speak. Bridget noticed his fear and she gloated at it. “Yes my lord. I placed taboos upon her to keep her from speaking of our activities to human authorities.”
“Did the woman agree to this?”
“No.” I snapped before Bres could lie. Bridget’s eyes glittered with glee and she had to hug her arms to keep from jumping up and down in her joy.
“It is forbidden to force such things on these modern peoples. They have machines that can detect the magic and lead them to bring war upon us. We no longer have the power to stand against the humans if they choose to destroy us.” Finvarra was really pissed off. For a moment I thought the King would solve all my problems and blast Bres into a greasy stain right then and there. But I was not so lucky. Finvarra repressed his rage and let out a heavy sigh as he turned back to me. “I’m afraid that the geas will have to remain in place for the time being. Removing such things takes energy, and we will need all the strength we can muster in the coming weeks.” He looked to Shaw and addressed him. “What say you, mortal? Will you make the same agreement as your lover?”
“Whatever gets me the hell out of here,” he replied, not bothering to tell Finvarra that we were not sleeping together. I didn’t correct the mistake either. I hoped that if Far Dorocha believed that I was spoken for, then he would stop giving me the knowing looks that made my skin crawl.
“Take the humans out of here,” Finvarra said to no one in particular. With that he turned on his heel and walked off. One of the guards approached me with a smile playing on his full lips and a lecherous look in his dark eyes.
“This won’t hurt a bit,” he told me and cupped my cheek in his palm. I felt a warm tingle spread across my face and scalp and then my eyelids drooped and my knees buckled. I had the sensation of being caught and slowly lowered to the floor as the world went dark around me.

Chapter 17

I need a vacation. I’ve been back in the world for two years now, and already I was sick and tired of the bullshit happening to me. Typically, it takes me two or three decades before I want to abandon everything I’d accumulated and go underground to rebuild my tolerance for mortal nonsense. What I was enduring now was so far beyond the pale that I was willing to do almost anything to make it go away.
Those freaking faeries left us sprawled out on the ground outside the Mound entrance for the Children of Orpheus to find. I came to at the sight one of the blonde clones whose ear I had bitten off leaning over me and I lashed out. I took the poor bastard with a fast punch to the face that broke his nose and left him laid out on the ground. I didn’t think it was too bad a shot considering that I had been in a laying position when I did it, but One Ear had been more enraged than impressed. Two of his identical brothers had to pile on top of him to keep him from shooting me again.
Shaw had come to in a gentler manner. He had sat bolt upright and gawked at the Children surrounding him and then he tried to scramble away. When it became clear that they weren’t going to let him go, he became very quiet and still. He listened intently while they explained to him who they were, and what they were doing, but I don’t think he was convinced. He stared at the men around him like he was trying to memorize their faces in case he had to describe them in detail to a sketch artist later.
True to their usual habit, the Children remained polite and cheerful in the face of my rude behavior as they herded us to a waiting car and drove us back to my apartment. Well, all of them but One Ear. He glared and growled at me from a safe distance while he held a Kleenex to his bleeding nose. His eyes had already gone a startling black and purple that made the rage burning in his sky blue eyes almost pretty. I realized then that One Ear and I were never going to be friends, so I gave him a haughty smirk that nearly drove him over the edge of coherency. He actually pulled his gun on me and had to be wrestled to the ground again. That guy has some serious anger management issues.
We were driven out of the Holcomb Bridge Road exit of the Chattahoochee National Recreation Area and then went south toward Buckhead and my apartment. At first I thought that they were going to take us to our separate homes, but then one of the big blondes, a cheery fellow calling himself Arnold, insisted that Shaw get out when they stopped at my place. No one had to tell him twice. The man had been through events that would make anyone question their sanity, and he wanted to get someplace reasonably normal. Though why he thought that I could provide that was well beyond me.
Mrs. Atwater all but launched herself from her apartment the second she heard my keys jingle in the lock and tried to hug me to death. “My God!” she gasped as she squeezed my shoulders with her arms so that they felt like they were about to dislocate. “I have been calling you and calling you! Where have you been?”
She held me at arm’s length to peer into my face for some sign of distress. “I’m fine, Mrs. Atwater. I’ve been busy.”
Atwater cocked an eyebrow at me in an expression that clearly said that she didn’t believe me then turned her attention to Shaw. “You’re the detective on Rebecca’s case, aren’t you? Have you been with her all this time?”
“Oh yes ma’am,” he assured her with a bright grin. Something about the way Mrs. Atwater had asked her question struck me as odd.
“What do you mean, ‘All this time?’?” I demanded. “I’ve only been gone a few hours.”
“I have not seen hide or hair of you in three days,” she retorted hotly. “I thought that you’d been snatched again and were suffering only God knows what kind of torture. I was worried sick!”
I had a hard time reconciling Atwater’s claim that I had missed three days with the sensation of time I had experienced in Sidhe Knockma so I let it go. I had heard that time inside the Mounds was as helter-skelter as the occupants, so perhaps Atwater wasn’t exaggerating. At any rate, I wasn’t going to argue the date with her in the middle of the breezeway where everyone could hear, not while the contents of my refrigerator were calling to me.
“The next time I leave town for a few days, I’ll be sure to let you know,” I told her as I gently pried my body from her grasp. The old broad was strong, so I actually had to pull pretty hard. She let me go with a disappointed pout, and since she didn’t have anything else to harass me with, she turned to go home.
“By the way, the workmen finished in your place yesterday. I inspected the work myself to make sure they didn’t cheat you.”
I gave Mrs. Atwater a blank stare. “Workmen were here?”
“Why yes. Didn’t you call for a contractor to fix the damage?”
“Maybe the apartment managers sent them over,” I suggested quickly as Mrs. Atwater frowned suspiciously.
“Or you have a secret admirer with as much sense as he has cash.” Mrs. Atwater tittered at the idea and blushed at whatever lewd thought she was thinking. “If I were you, I would find the man and marry him before he can get away. You have no idea how frustrating it is to have a husband who can’t do anything practical.”
“I’ll do that,” I promised in order to humor the woman. I turned my back on her and pushed my key into the lock.
“You better step up your game, young man.” Mrs. Atwater giggled, gleefully nudging Shaw in his ribs with her elbow. “You’ve got competition.”
Shaw gave her an indulgent chuckle and she disappeared back into her apartment. I had hesitated in opening the door, fearing that there might be something nasty waiting for me on the other side. Anxious and open to suggestions, I gave Shaw a questioning look.
“You first,” he replied with a shameless grin.
“Gee, thanks. How chivalrous of you,” I said dryly.
“Don’t you judge me. I’ve got two kids to think of and you can’t die.”
I couldn’t argue the point but that didn’t mean I liked it. After all, if you shoot me, do I not bleed? “You’re such a baby.”
I stepped to one side of the door while Shaw took a position opposite me. I twisted the knob and swung the door open waiting. Nothing happened so I stuck my head across the threshold and looked around. When nothing came flying out of nowhere to bite my head, I took a cautious step inside. I waited. I didn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary, so I continued on my way. Shaw followed close behind, his eyes flicking from one side of the room to another as he searched for some source of danger.
My apartment was exactly as it was before Baja and Kootch busted down my door and shot the place up. There were new doors on the cabinets, the dents left on my refrigerator by bullets were gone, and my counter tops had been repaired or replaced. In the living room, the blood had been washed away from the couch and the carpet as if it had never been there.
“Can I borrow your phone? I gotta call my children and try to explain why I wasn’t there the other night.” Shaw didn’t sound happy about having to make the phone call, but I gave him permission to use my landline, pointing at it as I did so. While he dialed the number I began a methodical search of the rest of my apartment to make sure nothing was missing or lying in wait to attack me. I discovered a small brass plate etched with strange geometric patterns and some kind of weird plant placed on a shelf in my living room and then another in my bathroom. Otherwise, there was no evidence of theft or tampering with my things.
I set the brass plates aside and tried not to think of where they came from or what they meant. I was hungry and sore from lying in the dirt, and all I wanted was food, bath, and bed. I told myself that the plates could have been left behind by ordinary contractors as some kind of weird business cards and I nearly choked trying to swallow my own lie. I didn’t want to contemplate what new catastrophe was brewing until I’d had some peace and rest. But like always, the lies didn’t do me any good. I was still tight with the anxiety of what might be coming.
I returned to the kitchen to find Shaw staring at the phone in open mouthed astonishment. “Are you okay?”
“Enid just thanked me for showing the kids a good time,” he replied, setting the phone on the counter like it had suddenly grown legs and feelers.
“Is that a bad thing?” It sounded like a good thing to me. Why should he be all worked up about not being in trouble? My belly gurgled at me and announced that I needed to put food into it. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Yes please,” Shaw said and continued his explanation. “It’s not a bad thing except we were in the Faerie Mound when I supposedly showed the kids a good time.”
“Uh-oh, are they alright?” I understood his fear. If he hadn’t spent time with the kids, then who did, and what might have they done to the little ones? It was enough to freeze the blood in the veins of any parent.
“They seemed okay when I talked to them.” The horror of all the possibilities flashed across his face as each one occurred to him in rapid succession. “What if it wasn’t my children that I talked to?”
“Who else would it be?” I gave up trying to find anything edible in my refrigerator and decided to order a pizza. I picked up the phone Shaw had put down and dialed.
“I don’t know,” he sighed. He rubbed at his face in frustration and then threw his hands up in disgust. “The last few days have been…bizarre.”
If that wasn’t the understatement of the century, I didn’t know what was. I ordered the pizza without making further comment and then I pulled two beers from the refrigerator and put one in front of Shaw. After what we had been through the last couple of days, I figured that we needed the booze to calm our nerves. He stared at it for a moment like he was about to refuse it but then he picked up the bottle and sucked down half of it in long gulps.
“Be careful Shaw. If Mrs. Atwater is right about how long we’ve been gone then we haven’t eaten in three days. You’ll get drunk and pass out if you aren’t careful,” I told him taking a drink from my own bottle.
“God I hope so.” He grunted, draining the beer completely. “Do you have any more of these?”
“It’s barely noon. The least you could do is wait for the pizza to get here,” I said, fetching another beer and setting it in front of him. A lot of people would have tried to take care of him and refused to give him more booze before food arrived. But hey, Shaw’s a grown man, who am I to tell him what to do? He can get shit-faced before two o’clock if he wanted to. There are worse ways to cope. Shaw drank his second beer more slowly, though it was gone by the time the pizza guy knocked on my door. I didn’t bother to get plates out for this, Shaw and I simply dug into the box and inhaled the cheesy goodness.
When the meal was finished and Shaw was nursing the dregs of his fourth beer, I folded the box up and jammed it into my trash compactor. Shaw sat unsteadily with a curious expression as he watched me bustle about doing ordinary things.
“So,” he began in a voice that was beginning to slur. “Did you ever meet Attila the Hun?”
I thought about it a moment, trying to remember where I had been when that guy was rampaging halfway across Europe. “I was living in what is now Belgium when Attila came to power. Since I am as much a Hun as he was, I had persuaded my husband to accompany me to Attila’s court (and I use the term loosely) so that I could see the man who had united the tribes.”
“Huns are nomadic. I thought you said you grew up in Budapest,” Shaw said, his eyes crossing in his effort to think straight.
“I am a thousand years older than Attila, and my people weren’t quite Hunnish at that time. That came later when the warriors came south out of the winter lands and bred with the women of the village.” I laughed at him. He was so silly trying to maintain an intellectual conversation with me while his brain was pickling.
“But that was them, not you.”
“It didn’t change the way I think of myself or the people I was born to.” I felt a pang of sadness then. It wasn’t as sharp as it had been when the grief was still new, but it was still there. “If they were Huns, then so was I.”
“Did you get to see him then?”
“From a distance. My husband had heard the rumors of what Attila did with women he found beautiful, and my husband thought me very beautiful. He did not permit me to go where I might be seen. We stayed only a few days to resupply, and then we went home.”
“What happened to your husband?” Shaw had fallen into that sympathetic tone people use when they think they’re about to hear something tragic.
“He got dysentery and died while we were on the road home.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? The man was an ass. It was a miracle that he lived long enough to hit puberty,” I snorted. The man I spoke of had been my thirty-fourth husband, a merry man who liked war and women. When he wasn’t chasing hapless peasants around with his axe, I found him rolling around a haystack with one kind of slut or another. Sometimes it was a slut and a whore. Maeric had always been a lucky bastard; until he got dysentery, that is.
“But you were married to him,” Shaw said lamely.
“Marriage wasn’t the same then as it is now. A woman wasn’t her husband’s companion, she was his property. We hadn’t been given any choices of husband either. Most of us married whoever we were told to marry. Those poor women no one wanted eventually went homeless or became prostitutes,” I told him. “I married Maeric because I had to if I wanted to continue to live with people and travel without getting raped every other day. Trust me, Maeric had been an okay man for that day and time, but if he hadn’t gotten sick and died, I would have strangled him myself.”
“Oh.” Shaw didn’t know whether he should be shocked, apologetic, or laugh his ass off. So he drank down another beer. “How many times have you been married?”
I took a moment to make a rough count. “I’ve been married somewhere around seventy times.”
Shaw made an exclamation that would have offended me if I had been monotheistic in any way, shape, or form. Lucky for him, I am pagan bordering on atheist so all he got was a scowl from me. “Watch your mouth.”
“Sorry. Seventy marriages are mind boggling. How in the hell did you pull that off?” Shaw grinned at me like a maniac. I took the fresh beer he had gotten from the refrigerator out of his hand and poured it down the sink. If I didn’t want him puking on the kitchen floor, then it was time to cut him off. He didn’t stop me; he simply leaned against the counter with a lopsided, expectant expression and waited for me to answer him.
“I’m over two thousand years old.” I spoke slowly so that his addled brain could keep up. “It isn’t that difficult if you think about it.”
“I guess not. Did you love any of them?”
I wasn’t going to answer that question, it was far too personal. I had loved my first husband; he had been the only one of my choosing for the next fifteen hundred years. After that, I married whoever was most convenient, or whoever I was pushed at for political and financial reasons. Sometime after the Renaissance I had been given a little more freedom in spouses since I had acquired a massive fortune and was not a member of the royal elite of any country.
“Did all of your marriages end in death?” That was a loaded question. Shaw wanted to know if I’d been divorced seventy times or if I had stayed in each marriage and watched my husbands die or if I had widowed myself.
“Sometimes I left if the neighbors were getting suspicious because I wasn’t aging. Sometimes my husband got a filthy disease and I left before someone thought to accuse me of murder or witchcraft. Once in a while I killed them if they were really asking for it. Only a few times did I did stay until they died of old age.”
Shaw was back to giving me that horrified look that meant he didn’t know what to do with the information I had given him. I should have let him keep his beer. Puke on my floor is preferable to the expression of shock and pity he was wearing now. “How do you deal with it all?”
“You get used to it, eventually.” I replied truthfully. I will admit that the first hundred years of watching those I knew and love grow old and die had been the hardest of my life. Once I got used to the knowledge that this was the way it was, I protected myself by refusing to get too close anyone. Marrying men I didn’t particularly like was a way to blend in without getting hurt. It hasn’t always been easy, and I’ve been known to get dangerously attached to a person from time to time, but it does get better.
Between my morose answers to his questions and Shaw’s odd state between buzzed and smashed, the mood had become sad and awkward. Shaw changed the subject by circling around to his original question. “So what was Attila the Hun like?”
“He was like any other barbarian of the day. He was burly and smelly and liked to kill stuff but hated to bathe. Attila was merely more aggressive and smarter about it and so he got to be king.” I shrugged. The pizza and beer, combined with a couple of days without sleep was catching up to me. I needed to go to bed. I eyed Shaw and found him still staring at me with a strange mix of sympathy and astonishment. I considered offering to drive him home, but I knew that I would fall asleep at the wheel at some point during the trip and crash my pretty car. Besides that I wasn’t sure if I’d pass a sobriety test if I got pulled over, and it would be inconvenient to lose my license over a DUI. Calling a cab for him wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities, but I didn’t know where Shaw lived and I doubted that he’d be able to make it through his front door without falling over.
While I had pondered the problem, Shaw had moved without my noticing until I was blinking at his chest. Startled, I craned my head back to look him in the eyes and thought, ‘Wow, he is really tall.’
He touched my face lightly, tracing the curve of my cheek and jaw with his fingertips. When I didn’t protest he took another small step forward until there was only a hard breath’s distance between us. I remained as still as I could to keep from spooking him, feeling my face heat with the flush of excitement and listened to my heart speed away in the cage of my chest. His hand moved until his fingers caught in my hair and he bent his head. I went up on tip toe to meet him halfway and to leave no doubt in his mind that I wanted him to kiss me.
His lips were soft and almost chaste against mine as he buried his fingers in my hair and gently held me. I let my fingers trail across the hard muscles of his chest under the thin fabric of his shirt and delighted in the heat radiating from his flesh. My mind quickly turned to more lascivious things, and I decided that I’d rather not engage in them on the hard kitchen floor or on the counters where I prepare my food. Shaw let me go as I stepped out of his embrace and turned to leave. After a few steps I realized that he was not following me, and I turned to find him where I had left him, looking chagrined.
“Are you coming?” I asked him over my shoulder. A brilliant smile stretched across his face and warmed his handsome features. Gods he was sexy when he did that.
Without answering, he hurried forward and took the hand I offered and went with me into my bedroom.
What happened next is not what you think. Obviously I have the moral fortitude of a gerbil on boner pills, and I had every intention of carrying out my promise to Shaw, but alas it was not meant to be. Several days spent in a faerie Mound combined with half a pizza and too much beer overwhelmed him and put Shaw snoring on his back before I could get his clothes off of him. It was probably just as well. He seems the type to stick to a woman like an industrial adhesive after a passionate exchange, and I didn’t know if I liked him that much, yet.


Chapter 18

I didn’t like that The Children had my phone number. I didn’t need to be available to them whenever they got a wild hair up their ass and decided to talk to me. It had only been a week since they made first contact and I was already sick of them. I stood in the middle of Shaw’s living room, waiting for him to finish his shower and change into clean clothes as I scowled at the text message I had received from Alejandro.
Get out now. The Divine Inferno is coming for you. Come to the safe house ASAP.
I went to the front window and peeked out between the blinds to the street beyond. Shaw lived in an eighty year old duplex near Druid Hills that was surrounded by massive old oaks and pretty, flowering bushes. The sun was well above the horizon so most of his neighbors were engaged in the daily routines of vapid labor to earn the wages that made their semi-comfortable lives possible. The street was empty and quiet without a sign that someone was out to get me.
A sharp bang echoed from the back of the house and startled me badly enough that I jumped three feet into the air. With my heart hammering in my chest and my mind buzzing with curiosity, I hurried through the breakfast nook and into the tiny kitchen as the door vibrated with the force of someone pounding on it. There was a mousy woman holding a toddler on the other side.
“Is Phil here?” she demanded in a high, shrilly voice. Her large eyes were owlish with fright as she scanned the room behind me in search of Shaw.
“He’s in the shower-”
“Please let me in!” The woman pushed past me before I could answer and slammed the door closed behind her. She stared breathlessly at it for a moment, and then her small hand whipped out and locked the deadbolt and then the knob for good measure, but it still wasn’t enough to make her feel secure. She practically sprinted to the front door and locked that as well. Her hand was shaking when she lifted the chain and slid it into the runner and then she sat on the couch and burst into tears.
The toddler squirmed and whined to get down and the woman let him go, though she snagged his shirt in her fingers to keep him close. The boy didn’t seem to mind, he took to examining the darkness under the couch.
“Are you okay?” I asked, uncertain of what to do with the unknown woman. She shook her head and wiped tears from her cheek with her free hand.
“Could you call the police for me, please? I left my cell phone at my house when I ran.” Her voice trembled nearly as badly as her hands so it was difficult to understand her.
“Cindy?” Shaw appeared out of his bedroom, still dripping from his shower and pulling his t-shirt over his head. At the sight of him, Cindy fell to hysterical pieces so that even her son felt her fear and cried with her. “What’s wrong?” he asked when she paused for breath.
“There are men in my house!” Cindy was gulping a lot of air in a valiant attempt to get a hold of herself. I half expected her to explode from it. “I don’t know what happened. One minute I was putting a cartoon on for Clay so I could shower, and the next minute five big men come busting through my door, screaming and yelling about abominations. I didn’t know what to do, so I grabbed Clay and ran out the door.”
“Call the police,” Shaw told me. He went to a closet inside the breakfast nook and took out a gun safe stored on the top shelf. Cindy’s eyes bugged as he took out a revolver and loaded it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded, knowing full well that he was going to go to Cindy’s house and start shooting people if he had to. That would not be a good idea. If he wasn’t already in trouble for the unwilling lies I told at the Immortal Church of God, then he was going to be in it up to his eyeballs if he killed someone off duty.
Shaw gave me a look that was all the confirmation I needed. “Call the police.” He repeated. “Tell them that there is already an officer on the scene.”
“You aren’t going over there,” I snapped. “Those are probably the cult members Ryerson sent looking for us. If you wait here the incompetent jack-asses will either go away or come to us. If you shoot them here, it’ll be easier to claim self-defense.”
Shaw closed the revolver with a snap and went out the back door without another word. There is no arguing with some people. I ground my teeth in frustration and Cindy spoke in a tiny voice. “Cult members? What do cult members want with me?”
I started to correct the woman, but stopped. The less she knew, the better off she would be. “Stay here. I’ll be back.” I growled at her.
“You’re leaving me? Where are you going?” Cindy was getting hysterical again.
“Stay here and do not call the police! I’ll be back as soon as we’re done.” I slammed the door closed behind me and hoped that the woman did as I told her. I planned to do something very stupid, and the last thing I needed was to have to explain it to the cops, and then to a lawyer, a judge, and a jury.
Happily, I had woken up sufficiently paranoid that I put an inner pants holster, complete with a semi-automatic pistol under a roomy shirt before I left my apartment. As far as I knew, Shaw didn’t know that I was carrying it, though he did give me a look when I put a collapsible baton into my purse on our way out of the door. In the interest of not accidentally shooting Shaw before I knew where he was, I left the safety on when I pulled the gun and held it pointed at the floor in a two handed grip as I followed Shaw to the little cottage that shared his backyard.
He scowled at the gun from around the back door as I lifted my weapon on my approach. “I told you to call the police,” he hissed at me. “You better have a permit for that.”
“Of course I do,” I hissed the lie, keeping my voice down. “I’m going to corner one of these bastards and find out what Ryerson wants with me.” Without waiting for him to tell me no, I took the lead deeper into the house. I moved almost silently, easily falling into the old stalking habits I’d learned when I had to hunt for my food. I listened and watched everything as I moved, sorting out the slightest flicker of movement from the corners of my eyes and identifying every small sound that met my ears. A lot of the noise I heard was Shaw clomping over the hardwood floor behind me.
“What do they teach you about sneaking up on people in cop school?” I snarled at him in frustration. “If you can’t be quiet, then be still.” Shaw glared at me but stayed silent, his gun pointed harmlessly away from me to avoid shooting me by accident. I doubted Shaw ever shot anyone he didn’t mean to, but it was good to know that he put safety first.
I found a corner and squeezed my body into it to listen. So far, I hadn’t heard anyone but Shaw, and I’d seen nothing to indicate that the intruders had been looking for anything. Not that I could tell for sure, Cindy wasn’t a very good house keeper. There were dirty dishes piled in her kitchen sink, and her floor looked like a tornado had thrown up on it. A pile of clean laundry sat on her tiny table with some of it folded neatly in the basket sitting in the chair. I assumed that the living room was beyond the kitchen, then perhaps the bedrooms, living room, and front door.
Shaw positioned himself so that he was behind a wall and could see through the door beyond me. He met my eyes and shook his head, indicating that he didn’t see anyone without speaking. At least they taught him that much in the academy. I nodded and listened to the sound of Cindy’s hot water heater turning on, and her air conditioning blowing air through the vents. We waited for anything to happen, but the longer we waited, the more apparent it became that no one was there. I stepped out first and stood in the living room door way, making a lovely target out of myself.
When no one shot me, Shaw eased out from his cover and looked around. Like the kitchen, Cindy’s living room was a mess. Toys and dirty dishes were strewn everywhere, and cluttered the battered end tables sitting next to her threadbare couch. Next to the easy chair was an accordion folder full of carefully organized doctor bills and medical records. A peek at the name on the paperwork left me feeling guilty. Cindy was the single mom of a son with a serious heart defect. She didn’t need my crap overflowing onto her.
Wherever the intruders went, they had realized that they had the wrong address and had moved on. That they were looking for me in Shaw’s neighborhood meant that they were getting smarter and were having me followed. The alarm bells went off in my head as it occurred to me that the men had left Cindy’s house so that they could get the correct address and attack Shaw. My heart pounded at the thought that poor little boy would be subjected to those mad men. There was no telling what they would do to him.
“We better get back,” I announced as Shaw returned from Cindy’s bedroom. “If these guys are looking for us, it means that they know they were in the wrong house.”
“They’ll go to my place next,” there was real fear in Shaw’s voice as he jogged to the back door ahead of me. He broke into a run once his feet touched grass and I rushed to keep up with his longer strides. But he was faster than I and he reached his kitchen door first.
Cindy was a nervous wreck when we returned and had taken to compulsive cleaning to cope. We found her cleaning the cabinet beneath Shaw’s kitchen sink with Jim pounding on the pots with a spoon. She shrieked in terror and banged her head on the cabinet top as soon as we came in and she screamed again when she saw the gun Shaw held openly in his hand.
At the sight of her understandable response, I discretely put my pistol back into its holster at the small of my back. Shaw rushed to the front door to look out while I did my best to calm Cindy down.
“Did you find the men?” she gasped once she could think coherently.
“No, they’re gone. I think they knew they had the wrong house. They won’t bother you again,” I assured her.
“Who’s house are they looking for?” Cindy scooped up her son and held him tightly while he squirmed and complained. She was suddenly much calmer now that she knew that she wasn’t the target of a pack of lunatics.
We were standing in the middle of the kitchen when we should have been crouched on the floor and away from the windows. Even with the blinds down, there was a chance that someone could see us moving around. They definitely saw us cross the yard and go into the house. My back itched at the thought that there was someone waiting to strike at us through the window, and I fought the urge to fling myself onto the floor and crawl around like a baby.
“Get Clay home and call the cops now.” I pushed Cindy toward the door. I heard footsteps approaching and turned to see Shaw entering the kitchen with his revolver held at his side.
“I don’t see anyone,” he began. A sharp crack of breaking glass stopped him, making all three of us jump, and I felt as if I’d been punched in the back. I gasped and staggered, only vaguely aware that Cindy was screaming again as searing pain streaked along my back and chest and my lungs felt like they were being crushed in a vise. Stunned, I looked down to see a slender shaft of sharpened wood protruding from my upper chest. For the life of me I couldn’t understand how the thing got there and then another appeared just below my left breast. My body shuddered and wracked itself in shock and pain, and my legs took on a mind of their own and decided that this was a good time to give up.
I had enough sense to twist and hit the floor on my left side so that the projectiles weren’t disturbed and made my injuries worse. I fought for every breath through my compromised lungs and my limbs flopped helplessly against the floor. Every uncontrolled movement brought terrible pain through my torso and I screamed in agony.
Suddenly Shaw was there, staring horror into my face and calling my name. I tried to focus on him but couldn’t. My body was trying to repair the damage caused by the wooden shafts, but implements only tore open new wounds as soon as my flesh tried to close around them. Desperate to make the pain stop, I struggled to my knees and grasped the wood in my fingers. This was going to suck.
Shaw saw what I was doing, and grabbed my wrists to keep me from pulling out the shafts. “Stop! You’re making it worse!” he said. Then he rolled me against his legs and snapped the arrows flush with my back and threw the fletched pieces away.
Poor Cindy had enough. She clutched Clay to her chest and ran screaming from the kitchen, going out the back door and surprising the crap out of the men lurking just outside. They watched her speed past with their mouths open, and then they traded looks with us.
“Oh shit,” Shaw murmured and raised his gun. The men reacted by raising the rifles in their hands and shooting at us. Shaw scrambled to get out of the line of fire, dragging me along behind him while he fired three poorly aimed shots over their heads. They ducked back outside while we made it to the living room and cowered behind a wall. By some miracle, we managed to avoid getting shot. Or perhaps it wasn’t miraculous and these guys are that incompetent.
“Give us the woman and we will let you live,” called one of the men from the kitchen. “We’ll even speak with your supervisor and get you off the suspension without a mark on your record.”
Shaw opened the revolver’s cylinder to count bullets and said nothing to them as he snapped it back into place. “How are you doing?” he whispered to me. “Can you hang in there?”
I nodded, trying to shift my weight so that I was more comfortable. The shafts hurt with every shuddered breath, but shock was setting in and I wasn’t feeling quite as much as I was before. That meant that I was going to pass out from blood loss soon. We had to get away before that happened. Otherwise I might wake up with my head separated from my body. I hate it when that happens.
I was lying on my back on the floor, staring at the empty space under the couch. I thought I saw something catch the light and reflect it back in a dull, yellow burst. Curious, I plucked it from the shadows and examined it. My wandering mind was fuzzy, so it took me a minute to realize that it was one of the strange brass discs I’d found hidden in my apartment.
“You don’t know what she is, detective!” A man bellowed, bringing my attention back to the danger of the moment. “That woman is an abomination, a creature in open defiance of God’s natural laws. By protecting her, you are subjecting yourself to the eternal fires of Hell!”
Shaw gave me a look of disbelief and he shook his head in disgust. “What did you do to these people?”
“Not half as much as I’m going to do to them,” I croaked. The sharp pain was evolving into a profound ache, and I tried to push myself up into a sitting position and failed. My body refused to cooperate with me, and I was forced to remain as I was. Had one of the projectiles pierced my spinal column and left me paralyzed? The thought wasn’t terrifying, I’d taken that kind of injury before so I knew that I’d eventually recover, but it does make life terribly inconvenient in moments like this. I concentrated on each of my limbs, feeling the rough fibers of carpet against my arms and fingers and then the tight binding of my shoes over my feet. I wasn’t paralyzed, so the only explanation for my lack of ability was that I was bleeding out, and my brain had shut down the connections to my limbs in order to stay awake.
“We ain’t warning you again, detective. If you don’t walk away from this now, we are gonna be forced to assume that you have made your deal with the devil and send you on your way to meet your fate. We know you’re a good upstanding man who can still be saved. No one wants to see you burn.”
“Can you walk?” Shaw asked me, ignoring the lunatic trying to appeal to him.
My lungs chose that moment to collapse, leaving me writhing painfully and fighting for every breath. Blood flowed up to fill my mouth, choking me and making lights burst before my eyes. I was vaguely aware that Shaw touched my throat to check for a pulse. He swore violently as he pulled on my arms and pressed his shoulder against my belly and lifted me off the floor. The movement brought renewed pain, and I managed a strangled moan that soaked his back in streaks of my blood.
I don’t know how he got us out of the house without getting shot or getting caught by the police. I vaguely remember hearing the thin sound of sirens and thinking, ‘Cindy managed to call the police. I wonder when they’ll get here?’, right before I fainted on our way to the front door.


Chapter 19

I opened my eyes on a strange room. The walls were painted in a dark, rich plum and there were large bouquets of fragrant flowers and herbs set in large, antique vases sitting on every available surface. I was lying in a large bed with an arching canopy and hung with heavy, velvet drapes tied to the posts with strips of satin. Across the room was a large picture window that took up most of the wall and granted a sweeping view of a flowering garden crowned with lush, exotic trees.
I pushed back the quilt and sat up. I discovered that I had been dressed in a white, cotton nightgown cut in the old Victorian style that covered me from neck to ankles. The nightgown had delicate lace trimming the cuffs and collar, and there were seed pearls decorating the satin slippers on my feet. I have never awakened in a strange place wearing strange clothes and had it end well. I scowled at all of this, wondering what fresh, new Hell I’d awakened to now.
“You’re awake.” Shaw was sitting in a small chair beside the bed. It was a delicate piece that was unable to contain his tall body, so he had been forced to slump in it with his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles with his elbows propped against the arms. His face was tired and haggard so that even his luminous eyes looked dull and gray.
“Where are we?” The room had the same kind of flare that Bres favored, but it was more subtle and homey than anything that maniac would come up with.
“We are at Bridget’s house.” Shaw said with a haunted look.
“Bridget from the faerie mound?” I asked. “What in the world made you think it was a good idea to bring me here?”
“I didn’t. One minute I was putting you into my car and the next my college girlfriend was suggesting that it would be better if we hide out at her house. It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said, making an unhappy face. “How do you feel? Are you all healed up now?”
“I’m all better,” I said unbuttoning my collar to look at my chest. There were two new, shiny, pink scars where the cultists had shot me. “I wonder why they used sharpened sticks if they had guns and ammo.”
“Maybe they think you’re a vampire,” Shaw shrugged. I thought about it and agreed with him. It’s hard to say what kind of assed-backwards logic cult members used. These are the kind of people who talk to burning bushes and try to heal leprosy by hoping really hard. “You know, it’s bad enough that you’re immortal, do you have to heal like a comic book super hero too?”
“I don’t usually do this well. I think my speedy recovery time is a side effect of Bres’ magic.” I slid out of the bed and looking around for a way out. There was a door a few feet away, but I wasn’t going to trust it. It has been my experience that the female of any species tended to be more aggressive and ruthless than their male counterparts. I did not want to see how much crazier Bridget was than Bres.
I went to the window and looked out, wondering if we could smash the thing and make a run for it. I didn’t see a fence or guard dogs or anything potentially dangerous, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t there. I’ve learned that it doesn’t pay to take anything associated with the fey for granted. They had way too many tricks up their sleeves.
“By the way, I’m sorry about last night,” Shaw began awkwardly. “We’d been up for three days and I had way too much to drink.”
“It’s fine,” I told him absently, still examining the exotic plants beyond the window. I touched the glass and felt a pleasantly warm and tingling sensation slide along my hand and arm. I was suddenly wrapped in the smell of freshly baked vanilla cookies and spicy pumpkin bread. Of course all of my alarm bells went off, but I was too content to pay much attention to it. It was nice to relax for once. “It’s happened to me before, and it’ll probably happen again. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’d like to have a chance to make it up to you.” I felt rather than heard him approach me from behind. He was close enough that I could feel the heat of his body and that a hard thought would press him against me.
“We’ll have to see what the future brings,” I said coyly smiling to myself. My cool melted away as he ran his fingertips lightly up and down my arms. I shivered and leaned back against him and he wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his lips against the curve of my neck and shoulder. I cuddled against him and tilted my head to the side so that he could kiss as much of my neck as he wanted.
Things got a bit sweaty after that, and in retrospect, I realize that it had been a dumb thing to do. It’s rude and tacky to do that kind of thing in someone else’s house, not to mention that it was dangerous under the circumstances. If anyone wanted to fill us both full of holes, we wouldn’t have noticed until damage was done. At least this time I got most of Shaw’s clothes off of him before Bridget came barging into the room. She pointed and laughed while Shaw swore and glared at her and tried to salvage his shredded dignity.
“I know that you two really needed this down time, which is why I put both of you in here,” Bridget said as if a half-naked man wasn’t glaring daggers at her. “But the Morrigan Mob is dropping by for dinner and I thought it was best if the two of you weren’t here when they arrived. They don’t like anything they can’t kill, and they most especially hate men. Now get out.”
Bridget was wearing her human form, which meant that she had toned down her faerie attributes such as glittering and her beauty was somewhat less hypnotic. She still remained recognizable, though. Her red hair was still long and luxurious and her large green eyes were still luminous. She did have eclectic taste in clothes, though. She wore a thin linen top that had seen better days with its sleeves ripped away and a tear in the neck line that left half of her bosom exposed. Bridget gave me a pair of faded bell bottoms that smelled like they had been in a musty trunk since the seventies, and a calico blouse with a pattern that looked like it was designed by a schizophrenic tripping on LSD. Bridget was better endowed through the chest and she had narrower shoulders and hips than I, so the clothes stretched and gaped in all the wrong places.
“By the way,” Bridget said, fishing into the pocket of the long, paisley skirt she was wearing and bringing out the bronze medallion I had found under Shaw’s couch. I found this in with your things. You might want to find out what it is and what it’s used for.”
“Don’t you know?” I asked. Bridget scoffed and rolled her eyes at me. It was a perfectly reasonable question. The faerie was much older than me and she took part in all kinds of insanity. For all I knew, she instigated more than her fair share of it.
“I do. But I’m functioning under a couple of geas of my own.” She smiled brightly at me while she said it and I wanted to slap her.
“What kind of a geas?”
“The kind that leaves you shit out of luck. Now get going before the sisters get here and blast our Philip into a greasy smear on my carpets and send you off to play with some very unpleasant creatures.” Bridget shoved me out of the room as Shaw emerged from the bathroom with his clothes back in place. He gave a Bridget a dark look that made her beam brightly and clap her hands gleefully. The woman is nuts. It’s no wonder Shaw dumped her.
Her house was surprisingly small and ordinary and could have fit into any American suburb. It had a second bedroom and a spare bath down the narrow hallway. However, Bridget had installed every amenity she could cram into the small space. The carpets were thick and plush, and her appliances and fixtures were the best on the market. Her home was lovely, but it was also full of unhappy surprises. Far Dorocha emerged from the kitchen pantry with an irritated expression that turned to surprise when he saw me and Shaw. As usual, he did not speak, but lifted his brows in question at Bridget.
“Don’t you start with me,” Bridget snapped at him as she pushed us past him. He stepped aside to give us space to move and met Bridget’s ferocious gaze with a bland smile.
“Perhaps I shall start with you then.” A woman appeared out of a coat closet to menace us with her stark and terrible beauty. She had gone for the dominatrix look with a terrible vengeance, donning her slender curves with glossy, black vinyl and leather accented with studded jewelry. Her ebony hair was as glossy and sleek as the rest of her, and her white skin was stained with the thick, dark make up favored by those who want to lurk in the darkness or wished they were undead. Instead of appearing cheap and mean, she looked like she intended to garb herself in an elaborate warning label. I for one was grateful for it. There is nothing more convenient than a bad person letting you know they were bad before they opened their mouth to speak to you.
“Does Bres know that you’re playing with his toy?” The woman’s Irish voice was low and oily, like a snake slithering out of a bog. “He’ll lose his mind if he finds out.”
“I suppose that you’ll tell him unless I do something for you.” Bridget gave us a hard shove at the front door. “Isn’t that right Morrigan?”
“That’s usually how it goes.” Morrigan snagged Shaw by his shirt and dragged him back toward her. He seized her wrist and twisted it to make her let him go. She laughed in his face. “You better get this one clear before Nemain arrives. You know how she likes the spirited ones, especially when they’re pretty.”
Shaw had enough of Morrigan, and he twisted in her grasp and hit her chest hard with the heel of his hand. Morrigan staggered and snarled, grabbing Shaw’s arm and digging into his flesh with her long, black fingernails. They snarled into each other’s faces and I reached for a weapon I didn’t have anymore.
Morrigan’s face went slack with astonishment seconds before a shock of white light erupted between them, forcing them apart and knocking Shaw to the floor. Morrigan bent double, cradling her arm against her middle. Behind us, the Dark Man let out a cry of pure rage, and launched himself at Shaw.
Bridget was quite put out as she plucked the furious faerie out of the air and tossed him onto the floor and pinned him there with her foot. “Do you mind?”
Morrigan’s eyes were shining as she flexed her burnt and blistered hand. “I’ll trade you my man for yours.”
Morrigan’s offer sucked the fight out of her Dark Man and he lay still with his broken heart on display on his sleeves. His mouth moved wordlessly as he pleaded with his dark lady to keep him. But Morrigan’s eyes were for Shaw. The woman was practically drooling on him. I really wished for a gun loaded with thumb tacks and rock salt so I could leave my mark when I ran that bitch off.
“Piss off.” Bridget gave Far Dorocha a nudge with her foot and let him up. He sat up and buried his face in his hands and wept. The man was pitiful. “I don’t want your broken doll, and I’ll not hand another to you to destroy. That one will not serve you.”
“I could simply take him from you. I am one short since Bodach Glas was arrested by the FBI. This one would fill his place nicely.”
I shuddered at the mention of the Gray Man. Of all the fearsome things whispered of in Irish hovels as the peasants huddled close to their little fires, Bodach Glas was the most terrible. The stories claimed that he arrived with the heavy mists that cloaked the Emerald Isle, leaving death and dismemberment in his wake. No one was spared where the Gray Man tread; not women, children, or the scrawny family cow. Now he was in the custody of the FBI. I wondered how the mortals were going to deal with that when they figured out what they had caged.
“We both know that you will lose in a fight against me,” Bridget replied calmly.
“I am the Mother and the Mistress of Death!” Morrigan spat, challenging her.
“So what? I am Inspiration, Health, and the Arts of the Fire among many other things,” Bridget retorted haughtily. “As it so happens, I’m also a Saint among the Christians. Can you beat that?”
Morrigan stamped her foot and threw her hands up in defeat. “No.”
“Then don’t make threats until you learn new tricks.”
As the women were squaring off, Shaw slowly climbed to his feet and moved to my side. Pulling on my hand, he drew me back until we reached Bridget’s front door. I followed him closely, happy that Bridget had indulged in the finest carpets possible. It made it easy for us to sneak out before they could remember we were there.
The outside of the house was a different matter altogether. The pretty garden I had spotted from the bedroom was only one small part of the property. Everywhere I looked there was something big and green growing wildly out of control. And the smells! My nose was picking up things I hadn’t smelled since the Industrial Revolution took hold in Europe. It was rich and earthy and purely unlike anything I had known for centuries. I paused in the middle of the walk to close my eyes and enjoy the lost sensations and old memories that came with them.
“You might not want to linger too long,” Bridget was leaning on the frame with her arms crossed under her breasts, watching us go. “The Morrigan Mob has a hound they keep around for hunting and battle. I haven’t seen it around lately, and I’m missing my goat and a potbellied pig. My guess is that the dog got them and from the size of the beast, he’ll still be hungry. You might want to think about running for your car.”
Shaw gave her a comically horrified look then turned and started jogging. Realizing that this wasn’t a faerie prank, I hurried after him, keeping my eyes moving for some sign of something ugly to leap out at us. The dog exploded out of a bush in a shower of leaf and flower and bounded toward me with its slavering jaws open wide. It was as big as a horse with a matted black coat clotted with mud and eyes that burned with rage and hunger. It bayed and snarled as it hurtled toward me, its massive paws tearing at the earth and throwing it up in a shower of clumps behind it. I stared at it in terror for a second before I turned and ran, screaming my lungs out as I went. If I wasn’t already immortal, I would have been in absolute fear of my life instead of just my limbs.
Happily, the fearsome dog came to an abrupt halt as soon as it reached a bed of daffodils and lilacs, and barked at me in frustration. Bridget’s mocking laughter slid through the air and taunted me. “The bitch is out of her mind!”
“And my buddies told me I was nuts to dump her.” Shaw had parked the car nearby and left the doors open and the engine running. He grimaced at the slathering, yapping beast. “Bridget’s got some kind of invisible fence up to keep the dogs out of the flower beds. It won’t go past the lilacs. We should get going before it decides to start digging.”
“You know this thing?” I couldn’t bring myself to call it a dog. It was too big and feral to be anything so tame and loveable. The animal looked like a cross between a boar, a cat, and road kill.
“She had it when we were dating, but Bridget didn’t let it run loose when I was here.” Shaw spoke frankly, but his posture stiffened as if he expected a fight out of me. Some women didn’t like it when their men talked about past girlfriends, especially when the ex in question was more beautiful than they were. I’m not the type to get a hair up my butt over something so silly, but then I have a longer and more varied history than anyone. Who am I to cast stones? Besides, a few half completed rolls in some bedding didn’t mean I was going to keep they man. It definitely didn’t mean that I was going to feel jealous.
I jumped into the car, not caring that I was sitting on vinyl seats that were covered in my dried blood. Shaw threw the car into gear and pressed the gas to the floor. In minutes, the hound, house, and crazy faeries were out of sight and out of mind.
“Where do we go next?” Shaw asked, steering the car onto the main road. After a mile he slowed down and seemed to relax a bit.
I pulled the medallion out of my pocket and ran my thumb over the strange etchings of a plant drawn around the geometric design. I knew that Harry was the man I could take it to without fear that he would go to the cops or talk to crazy cult members. That sort of thing is bad for business. Aside from dealing in art and antiques, both legally and black market, Harry made a hobby of researching obscure artifacts and learning the purpose and stories behind them. If anyone knew what this damn thing was and why it was in Shaw’s house, he would know.
“Do you know Cervantes in Little Five Points?” I asked.
“The illegal antiques dealer posing as an art gallery?” he asked. “I’ve been in once or twice. Why?”
I pretended that I didn’t hear that. “Harry Cervantes does more than import and sell antiques. He also knows everything he can find about each piece that he sells. He says that the history increases the value of the pieces and keeps his clientele loyal. Bridget made a point of telling us to look into the medallion, and since she can’t or won’t tell us about it, then Harry will be our next best source.”
I didn’t know if he was angry or that he was simply tired, but Shaw didn’t speak as he got onto the freeway and headed back into the city.

Chapter 20

“Harry isn’t answering his phone,” I muttered as I clapped Shaw’s cell closed and put it in the cup holder next to the seat.
“Is that a problem?” he asked, pulling his sunglasses off of the dashboard and slipping them onto his face.
The sun was dipping toward the horizon, painting the world in shades of orange and gold and making it nearly impossible to see the other cars on the interstate. The bright light did nothing to dampen the warrior spirit of Atlanta rush hour traffic. Motorists circled each other in a dangerous dance as they fearlessly changed lanes in a majestic effort to shave ten seconds off of their travel time. They honked their horns like vicious battle cries, determined to make their opponents bow to their indomitable will. Most times everyone succumbed to the horn honkers, but once in a while one of the stubborn (or perhaps deaf) elderly, or the vindictively slow refused to bow down and were brutally punished by getting folded into two tons of crushing death. Unfortunately, these moments of freeway conflict were much like a bar brawl. Once the first punch is thrown (or the bumper is dented) the fight spreads to consume people who were only passing by, and the next thing you know, there are piles of walking wounded everywhere. And like all exercises in Darwinian Theory, only the fastest, strongest, and most vigilant of the species would make it home for another opportunity to reproduce. They won’t go for the reproductive opportunity because everyone is too stressed out from fighting rush hour traffic to do anything but suck down dinner and go to sleep.
“Kind of,” I sighed uncomfortably. “Harry is always making his next big deal or buying the best thing to come out of a dig. I’ve never known him to miss a call.”
“Well if it’s all the same to you I’d rather we didn’t go to him for information. I don’t like Harry Cervantes.”
“Have you met Harry?” I asked. I don’t know why I was surprised. Shaw is a cop, and Harry is a criminal. It makes sense that one of them would know about the other. Still, I thought Harry was slicker than to get noticed by the police. Shouldn’t he have a contingency plan for this sort of thing?
“I know of him,” Shaw said. “Cervantes was investigated for theft through fraud last year. Somehow he managed to make every paper trail lead to nowhere and every dime he made could be legally accounted for. We even consulted with the FBI and called in forensic accountants. We never found a damn thing.”
“Then why were you looking into him if he was clean?” I can admit that I was relieved. Harry was the best at the acquisition of the hard to find that I have ever known. I would miss him if he was gone.
“The High Museum of Art suspected that he had tried to broker a deal with them for a counterfeit Rembrandt. They filed a complaint.”
That was unusual for Harry. Sure he sold counterfeits, but he would never try to pass one off to people who can spot the differences between the fakes and the genuine thing. I wondered if this is the reason why he wasn’t answering the phone.
“So do you have any ideas of where to get information?” I was at a loss for ideas. Sometimes the shit piles up so deep that I don’t know where to start digging first. For once I had someone to ask the “Now what?” question. Usually I am alone when this sort of thing happens and I have to sit around and ponder until an idea dawns on me or something tries to kill me. This was kind of a nice moment for me.
“We should find something to eat,” Shaw said after a moment’s thought. “Then we can find somewhere to crash for the night. We can decide what to do next in the morning.”
I didn’t like that he had suggested that. I needed to do something productive. The last week had been nothing more than one kidnapping after an assault after an assault that left me bloody and wondering what was going on. That is no way to get things done. Passive is alright for marriage, but when things get this bad, a woman has to get up and do something about it. But since I had nothing better to suggest, I remained silent.
Bored, I took the medallion out of my pocket and examined it again. It was a thin piece of bronze that had been hammered into a crude circle the size of a fifty-cent piece. The etchings looked as if they had been hastily scratched into the surface with an edged blade, with enough skill that the pattern was more sophisticated than the tools. One side depicted a stylized drawing of a nightshade plant arranged in a geometric pattern that once meant something to me. I thought hard, trying to remember where I had last seen it. I recalled a towering stalagmite, thick with warm water and slick with cave moss growing from a yellow pool filled with sulfur. Near the top were raw cuts in the rock like the one on the bronze disc, and I didn’t know what they meant then either. All I know is that it had been terrifying to see it and I had run away. But I had been young then, and everything I found in dark places had frightened me. Now the pattern was only a curious thing, the mark or symbol of a group that wanted to hurt me. Symbols are meaningless and they cannot hurt me if I don’t believe in them.
I flipped the disc over and stared at the scratches there. There was a single word inscribed there, written in the ancient Norse runes spelling ‘contempt’. I grunted and felt my brain tickle with forgotten knowledge and I gave up. If it is as important as Bridget implied, then it would sort itself out soon.
Shaw pulled into a drive-thru and bought burgers and fries, and then he took us up the freeway to a seedy hotel just outside of Lawrenceville. The place was two years of neglect away from become a large hovel with a sagging roof and a weird smell. I’ve stayed in places like this before, but I can’t say I’ve ever slept in one. They attract all kinds of unsavory types and the locks on the doors are always lousy. No one with any brains will sleep in a place like that. Of course if a person was really smart, they wouldn’t go near these hotels at all.
“Are you sure about this place?” I asked grimacing at the weeds growing in the cracks in the parking lot and the familiar smells of vomit and beer coming from one corner of the building.
“The better hotels won’t let us rent a room if we don’t have a credit card, and the police will get our location the second we use anything but cash,” Shaw told me. “If you want to go into hiding, it’s this or a camp ground.”
I would have preferred the camp ground, but since I didn’t have a tent and no means to make one, I reluctantly followed Shaw into the closet disguised as the hotel lobby. People will brag about their ability to survive in the wild with only a pocket knife and a magnet like it’s some great accomplishment. It really isn’t. People have been scraping out a living in all kinds of terrain with much less for thousands of years. The trick is not to go around stinking like something’s dinner. But in the cities, you don’t have to smell like food, you just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. On top of that, human predators are nearly impossible to spot. They do have obvious hunting grounds though, and I do my best to avoid them.
“I hope you brought your wallet,” I muttered to Shaw as he approached the counter attended by a sickly youth of no determinate gender gone twitchy from addiction.
“I did. Where’s yours?”
“I assume it’s at your place where we left it while we were running for your life,” I replied. The addict flinched and picked at the side of his face and grimaced. I stared at the decay of teeth and gums that was the hallmarks of meth-mouth. Ugh.
“I’ll take care of it,” Shaw growled, digging into his back pocket. “Hope you don’t mind sharing a room.”
“Like I’m going to bitch about sharing a room,” I retorted, wondering what bug was crawling up his ass. “You’ve seen me mostly naked twice already and you had fingers in places I’d rather not talk about. Shut-up and pay the man.”
Meth-mouth guffawed lecherously while Shaw grimaced and blushed with embarrassment. Business was conducted brusquely; the hotel did not require us to sign any paper work, but did want payment up front. Shaw handed over the money without negotiating, and received an actual key rather than a programed card that the reputable establishments used. We took three flights of stairs to our floor because we didn’t trust the elevator after it landed with a bang and the doors got stuck in their tracks.
Once we got inside the room, Shaw slid the deadbolt into a flimsy door frame that would collapse under a firm kick and engaged the fragile security chain. Feeling a great deal less than secure, I grimaced at the door and turned my attention to the rest of the room. The place was filthy from neglect and time, with threadbare carpets and chairs upholstered in cracked vinyl. There were stains on the bedspread and floor that defied identification, even if I wanted to know what they were. The bathroom was worse than the bedroom. The porcelain sink and toilet were cracked and stained brown and yellow, and the mirror was cracked and corroded while the tub had large patches of exposed fiberglass. I didn’t dare look at the floor in there.
I came back into the bedroom to find Shaw eating his burger and watching the television. The appliance was reasonably new, though the porn on its screen might have been from the seventies.
“What are you watching that for?” I demanded, irked by Shaw’s blatant vulgarity. Suddenly I was real glad that I had twice failed to do the nasty with him.
“This is the only thing the television gets,” Shaw replied. He picked up the remote and flipped through the channels, showing me one triple X movie after another. The actors were so shameless in their debauchery that they made my eyes bug and my skin warm with embarrassment. And that’s saying something. After twenty-five hundred years, I thought I’d seen it all. Clearly, a few things were invented when I wasn’t paying attention. I wondered how the actresses avoided hospitalization.
“Turn it off,” I snapped. I opened the bag and fished out a hamburger and sat in the chair next to Shaw to eat it. He clicked the TV off and we fell into a tense silence. Since I didn’t want to fight with Shaw I pretended that the quiet was brought on by eating rather than because we were getting on each other’s nerves. We were cramming bags and wrappers into the tiny garbage cans when Shaw’s cell phone vibrated and went spastic with boinging noises. He checked the screen and ground his teeth angrily for a few seconds and flipped the phone open with a snarled, “Hello?”
The only reason why I could hear the high, feminine voice speaking at machine gun speed was because the woman was screaming. I thought it was amazing that she didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen as the shrill stream of words continued unabated for several minutes. Maybe she had learned to inhale and speak at the same time. If so, it was a nifty trick. Shaw wasn’t nearly so impressed as I was. He scowled as soon as the woman started in on him, and his expression got darker with every word she spoke.
Finally, the woman stopped her nattering and waited for him to answer. Shaw took a minute to smother his temper and make sure she was finished before he answered her.
“I didn’t forget that the kids were coming,” Shaw said through clenched teeth. “I wasn’t home because…something came up.” Even I flinched at that load of crap. I understood why Shaw didn’t want to tell people that he had been snapped up by a bunch of freaking faeries, but if your ex is pissed because you didn’t show up to visit your kids (especially if they came to you) then you better have a damn good reason for not being there. At least have a better excuse than “Something came up”. Shaw is a retard.
The woman on the phone took it worse than I did. The woman launched into a tirade of rage spoken entirely in fluent shrewish. Shaw listened to it for about five minutes and then hung up the phone and tossed it on the bed.
“Are you sure that it was a good idea to hang up on her?” I asked. “She’s pretty pissed.”
“Enid is always pissed off,” Shaw snapped and collapsed on the bed. “But she managed to tell me that the kids are okay, so I’m happy. She can get as mad as she wants.”
“What do you think she’ll do?” I asked. Women as angry as Enid always do something about it. Hell, if I thought my kids had been left standing on their father’s doorstep for no good reason, I’d do something about it too. Shaw was screwed, and if the tension in his face was an indicator, he knew it too.
“She’ll probably haul my ass to family court and try to strip me of my paternal rights.” He groaned and rubbed his eyes with his hands in despair. “She’s been trying to get sole custody since we separated.”
“I’m sorry.” I wondered what Shaw did to turn his wife into a bitter shrew. Unless she is a psychopath, a woman doesn’t harbor that much rage for the man who was her husband and father of her children unless she feels justified. While half of those reasons are stupid, the other half are very good. I wondered which category Shaw fit into.
It’s a universal truth that you never, ever tell a man that he is to blame for a vicious ex. They never take it well. The only thing left to do was soothe his battered ego and hurt feelings then hope that he got over it quickly. “Maybe once all of this is over, we can find a way to tell Enid what happened that will simultaneously make her see reason and spend less time plotting your demise.”
Shaw gave me a dubious look that implied that I was delusional.
“Or, maybe I can plant heroine in her car and call the DEA,” I added with an evil grin. That got a wry smile out of him and he favored me with a chuckle. “Why don’t you find a clean corner of this bed to sleep, and I’ll take the first watch.”
“First watch?” Shaw sat up in with a curious expression. “Don’t you think that’s a little paranoid?”
“No. If meth-mouth downstairs is anything to go on, this is a rotten neighborhood full of poor, desperate, and violent people. We are in a crappy hotel with flimsy locks on flimsy doors. Only an idiot would sleep unguarded.” I told him. “You don’t know what might break through that door.”
“Maybe. But what are you worried about? It’s not like anyone can kill you.”
“True, but we have faeries and rabid cultists out to get us; both of which can kill you and make my life miserable for a very long time. We can’t be too careful.”
Shaw growled and dug the discarded fast food bag from the trash. He opened it and withdrew the salt packets that had been thrown in with our fries. Putting the others onto the small table near the door, Shaw tore the top off of one and sprinkled the contents halfway across the threshold before taking another and finishing the job. He did the same with the room’s one window and then threw the rest on the floor around the bed.
“Happy now?” Shaw demanded. He sounded very condescending as he put the trash back into the tiny can. He turned to the bed and pulled the sheet and blanket from beneath the lumpy pillows. To my surprise the sheets were pure white and new. Maybe there was a hotel faerie somewhere that took pity on people like me and magically cleaned sheets to spare us the indignity of a bizarre abscess in a delicate body part.
Shaw stripped off his shirt and tossed it aside and his jeans quickly followed. I got a delightful view of his backside with the smooth ripple and play of muscles along his shoulders. He slid into the bed and pulled the sheet up to his waist and lay back with his hands behind his head, posing so that I couldn’t do anything but admire him. He patted the pillow next to him and gave me a wink. “The salt will keep the big bad monsters away. Come to bed now.”
Something about the way he said that rubbed me the wrong way. “Salt won’t keep cultists from storming the room. And don’t you talk down to me.”
“You’re acting like a hysterical victim when there’s no reason to do so.” He threw his hands up and rolled his eyes at me. I would have liked to lift my hand and roll those eyes out of his head. But I couldn’t, so I scowled.
“Stop talking.” I was careful to keep my voice low and even. I didn’t want to fight. I wanted him to shut up and go to sleep so that I could have some peace and quiet. Shaw stared at me like he was the one who had been insulted, and then rolled over with an irritated sigh. I stared at his beautifully broad back and I wondered how many holes I could put into it before he could stop me.


Chapter 21

I frowned groggily at the walls as they ran red in gory streaks. Thick, black liquid oozed from the cracks in the floorboards and spread slowly across the floor. The salt around the bed sparked like an over loaded circuit while the door and window burst into pretty green and blue flames. I blinked at it and could only feel disgust. This is what happens when faulty wiring and corroded pipes were allowed to decay unchecked. Our room had become a cesspool of filth and flame, and if I wanted to keep Shaw alive, it was time to leave. But not before we got our money back.
“Wake up.” I grabbed Shaw’s toes and gave them a firm shake. He woke with a startled snort and blinked at me in surprise.
“What is that smell?” he gasped, struggling to force his fatigued mind to function.
“The room is on fire and the pipes are seeping sewage onto the floor. It’s time to check out.” Something dripped onto my head from the ceiling, burning my scalp as slime soaked through my hair. My skin crawled and my stomach lurched in disgust and I hurried to the bathroom to towel off.
I used a threadbare towel to scrub the gunk out of my hair as Shaw let out a string of frightened curses that was astonishing in their creativity. I started to chuckle and tease the poor mortal who was convinced of his impending doom, and then stopped. Before my eyes, the cracks in the mirror were disappearing, as if someone was dragging an eraser across the glass and removing the jagged lines.
I locked eyes with my reflection, finding her sad expression wildly contrary to my astonishment. She wept big tears of blood that spilled down her wan cheeks and dripped from her delicate chin. She gave a sobbing cry and pressed mutilated palms against the glass in a silent entreaty.
Horrified and unwilling to remain within easy reach of my doppelganger, I took a wary step away from the sink. I heard Shaw go silent behind me as a high, childish laugh speckled the air like hailstones. My reflection flinched in terror and fell to piteous wailing as she searched the room behind me.
“Speak your name,” she pleaded. A thin black liquid spilled from between full lips to mix with the gore staining her calico shirt. “Make it go away, please! Speak your name!” She beat at the mirror in her despair, further splitting the battered flesh of her hands and leaving bloody prints.
I shook my head, refusing to utter the syllables it wanted. I have put too much effort toward hiding that name to give it up so easily. My reflection grew angry with my stubbornness and she balled her delicate hands into fists and she pounded the mirror. Her mouth opened to scream her rage, and it became a great gaping maw filled with rows of broken teeth and a great lolling tongue.
“Speak your name!” she shrieked in a voice that stabbed at my ears.
“Do you really think that a few cheap parlor tricks will make me buckle?” I snarled back. “I am over two thousand years old! I am endless in a world full of endings! You cannot do anything I cannot endure! Be gone!” I flung a dismissive hand at the enraged creature and turned my back on her.
The sludge covering the floor had risen to a foot in depth. It rippled and churned with the turmoil of unseen beasts hiding beneath its surface. The filth stopped at the edge of the carpet, as if there was a glass partition keeping it from spilling over into the bathroom. I saw a great roping beast, like an eel made from dead, rotting flesh. But the eyes were horribly human, blinking maliciously in the brief second that it made itself known.
“Rebecca.” Shaw’s voice was low and strained, as if he was afraid that he would draw the beasts to him if he spoke to loudly. He was fully clothed and standing on the bed with his revolver held at his side. “Are you okay?”
I nodded and started to verbally assure him, but I was interrupted when Shaw’s expression suddenly grew cold and he lifted the revolver and pointed it at me. Stunned, my brain jabbered hysterically in an effort to explain or excuse his abrupt betrayal. Had Shaw decided that the insanity would end if he put me down? Or had he succumbed to some whispered promises that I could not hear? Why would he take me out now, after he had done so much to keep me safe and mobile? Perhaps he was taking advantage of my immortality, and he planned to shoot me in an effort to keep my secrets from my enemies. Even I cannot talk with a bullet in my brain.
I stared down the barrel of his gun and waited for the bullet to strike. Shaw’s face grew slack and lifeless, and then he pulled the trigger. In the close confines of the room, the revolver echoed off of the walls like a cannon. I jerked with anticipation as my ears pounded with pain and heat sliced my left cheek. I heard the sharp snap of breaking glass and then the crash of mirror falling from its frame. Confused because I was not wracked with pain, I gaped at Shaw.
“Take one step to the right.”
I took four steps to the right. Shaw pulled the trigger again and I looked for Shaw’s target. My reflection was crawling out of the mirror when he shot her, and she lay on her back on the floor. Her legs were splayed awkwardly from her fall from the sink, with one arm was stretched toward me and her long fingers twisted into claws. The lids of her eyes drooped lifelessly and the purple orbs beneath the thick lashes gleamed like cheap glass in the weak light. I stared dully at her and knew how I would look if I died.
Dread seized me and held me where I stood. For the first time in my life, I could consider the idea that my body could lay like so much meat, exposed to the elements to eventually rot away into nothing. Tears of despair and true fear choked me, and I finally understood what it was that mortals feared. It wasn’t death itself that frightened them so; it was the idea that there was nothing else in the Great Beyond once their flesh was gone. It was a terrible burden, and I wondered how so many billions have managed to live under such an appalling yoke.
“Rebecca.” I turned to the sound of Shaw’s soft voice. The muck had stopped flowing, as if the reflection’s demise had plugged the flow of power into the room. The fires dwindled around the window and door, and I could swear that the walls were scabbing up. Shaw stepped gingerly off of the bed, holding the revolver so that it was not aimed at me, and he held out his empty hand. “Let’s go find a safe place to sleep.”
Stunned by the morbid revelation I had endured, I nodded dumbly and turned for one last look at the corpse. The dull eyes suddenly flared open and the limbs twitched. Startled, I jumped back and watched in horror as the thing twisted and contorted its slender body until it stood upon its hands and feet like a deformed dog. She snarled and then leaped at me like she had springs in her joints. Strong hands seized my arms and yanked me out of her path before she could reach me.
Shaw held me tight against his body as the creature zoomed by and landed in the muck with a thick sucking sound. Thrashing and howling, she rose up like a rag doll held in the hand of a cruel child. Her arms hung loose at her sides and her head flopped sideways against her shoulder. She grinned maliciously at us as her head straightened with sick popping sounds.
“Speak your name, and you may have peace.” Her voice was not my voice. It was like breaking glass being torn through a howling cat. She laughed as she flopped about the room, then set to twirling maniacally with her arms spread wide. “I offer you eternal peace! You have only to speak your true name!”
“NO!” I wanted no part of what the monster had to offer. I’ve heard enough stories about deals made with demons and how terribly they can be twisted. Besides, I craved no peace. It’s boring and I had no need for it until now.
The creature stopped spinning and glared murder at me. Her eyes bled from purple to glowing yellow and I felt…odd. I had the sensation of being pinned into place like a bug on a specimen card. Even my arms would not move so that I could cover my eyes with my hands. I could only remain standing where I was with my unwilling eyes looking forward to the horror before me.
Behind me, I felt Shaw jerk like he had been slapped and his fingers dug painfully into my upper arms. I made a whimpering sound as he held me tighter and tighter and his fingertips pressed into bone. He trembled violently and his breathes came in harsh, ragged gasps that blew warm gusts against my ear.
“No.” He hissed, shaking his head so that I could feel the soft tickling of his hair against my cheek. “Stop it.”
The creature’s head turned this way and that, as if she couldn’t believe his response and wondered at it. Her yellow eyes grew large until they bulged from her eyes sockets, and the sludge flowed away from our ankles to slowly cover her legs and hips. The mess enveloped her rest of her body quickly to seethe and bubble gruesomely around her. She never took her eyes off of us as she was consumed and they glowed with the sharp contrast of the black surrounding them.
Shaw moaned in despair and began a mantra of “No, no, no”. He wrapped his arms around me as a father might do to protect his child, and hugged me tight to his chest. Still deprived of movement, I got to watch the creature undergo a hideous transformation.
A pair of massive, twisted wings with ragged feathers burst from the oily cocoon like a gruesome bug and splattered clear goo against the walls. The rest of the muck fell away in thick, wet clumps that returned to its fluid state and spread across the floor. The rest of the beast emerged as an enormous screech owl, standing several inches taller than I and fat enough to eat me for its supper.
“Dear God in Heaven,” Shaw called in a cry for mercy from his faith rather than a blasphemous curse of horror. Before I could truly comprehend what it was I was looking at, the owl whipped one twisted wing and struck.
I felt like I had been punched in the chest. My body went rigid and I felt the terrible pain of my shattered sternum. I opened my mouth to scream, and found that my lungs had been punctured and I could not breathe. I was jerked away and my back hit the wall with a bruising thud that stole my remaining strength from me. I slid limply down the wall and sat uselessly in the swirling muck.
It might have been my compromised lung function, or hallucinations brought on from the pain wracking my body, but what I saw next defied reason. Shaw let out a bellow that I’d last heard on battlefields swarming with barbarians. He rushed the glowering owl and barreled into it, using his broad shoulders as a battering ram. His arms wrapped around the beast in a wrestler’s hold as the beast snapped at his neck and shoulders with its curved beak.
He managed to stay out of the bird’s reach as he swung the animal around and tried to drive it to the floor. The bird greatly outweighed him, and so he only managed to throw it off balance. The creature buffeted him with its wings, struggling to be free of the man and then kill him. Shaw let out a cry when one long, spindly leg appeared out from under the grotesque body and raked his belly with his claws.
Shaw thrust the owl away from him as the skin of his belly separated in three ragged slices and he bent over his wounds in agony. The owl tottered a few steps and lifted its terrible wings in a posture that was as ungainly as it was ugly. It lowered its head low with its ratty tail feathers fanned as it circled Shaw in a predatory dance.
Gasping with pain and shock, Shaw straightened as much as his wound would let him and moved with the beast, always keeping it at his front and watching for it to attack. The bird lurched forward, opening its great hooked beak wide to bite and break bones. Shaw threw his arms up to ward it off, his tattoo a great emblem of color that suddenly sprang to life in a white blaze.
Blinded, the owl shrieked and cowered behind its wings. Shaw ran forward with his fist raised, and he delivered a mighty blow to the monster that drove it to its knees. The bird cried out again, and Shaw thrust his hand and arm through the wings to make contact with its skull. The thing let out one last shriek and collapsed onto the floor and was still.
Suddenly I could move and breathe. I looked down to find my shirt covered in my blood and a hole in my chest that was rapidly closing. Gasping and dizzy, I thanked whatever god would listen for my immortality and that I had not been allowed to die in this wretched place. I fought to get to my feet but found that my legs were not yet able to hold me, and I fell back down on my butt in the muck.
The window and door exploded in gouts of heat, glass, and wood, sending bits of flaming shrapnel into the room and peppering our bodies with shallow cuts and tiny bruises. Heat filled the room with smoke, and Shaw hurried to my side and tugged at my arm. He finally scooped me off of the floor, only to turn and find that there was no passing through the flames and out of the room.
“Can you move yet?” he demanded, putting me down on the bed.
“I think so.” To prove it, I grabbed the edges of the comforter and wrapped it around my body while Shaw did the same with a thin blanket and sheet. Before I could protest, he slung me over his shoulder, pulled the blankets around his face as best he could, and ran into the flames.
I felt searing heat blast my backside, and then we burst into the blessed coolness of the hallway with the blankets on fire and our clothes smoldering. Shaw threw me to the ground and followed me to roll around on the floor to smother the flames. But the evil fire would not be denied, and it persisted in its consumption of his body. Shaw let out a scream of agony that provoked one neighbor to demand silence in somewhat rude and colorful language, and drove another into the hallway. I was too busy with my own burning body to do much more than vaguely acknowledge the pounding of feet across the floor, and then I was drenched in water cold enough to stop my heart.
The feet moved off to where Shaw was writhing and poured more of the icy water over his body. Shaw shrieked louder than before and then passed out. I laid there in shock and stared at the ceiling, relieved to be out of that room and in one piece. Then the pain of my blistered skin flared, and I didn’t think about anything else for a few moments. I’ve had plenty of burns before, some I got when the Catholics went on their witch burning kick and I still wore faded scars from a trip into a volcano. The new burns hurt like hell, but they were no worse than anything else I’d ever endured. But no matter how many times I experience it, maintaining coherent thought was all but impossible for the first few minutes after the flames were extinguished.
A face appeared over mine. It took me a few moments of breathing exercises before I could make my eyes focus, but when I could finally do it, the face was young, beautiful, and female.
“Mabel Fortuna?” I croaked, recognizing her high Latin features and delicate bones. She was actually flattered that I had recognized her and she blushed. She shouldn’t have been so happy about it. I remember everyone who had the potential to be a pain in my ass. I groaned and started to sit up.
“Oh don’t do that!” she cried, gently pressing my shoulders back to the floor. “You’re badly hurt and you might make it worse.”
Irritable, I pushed her away and rolled onto my hands and knees. The move hurt so much that I had to grit my teeth to stifle my groan. Mabel hovered too close, uncertain of what the right thing to do was, but worried that I’d beat her up if she did the wrong thing. She shouldn’t have worried. I would have hit her no matter what she did.
I managed to get up enough to sit on my knees and found Alejandro stepping out of the open door of our room. “What were the two of you doing here alone?” he snapped, his dark eyes glittering with anger. “Why didn’t you seek refuge at the safe house?”
“Because if I wanted to spend the night in the company of stalkers and conspiracy theorists, then I’d turn myself in to the cops,” I growled back. I was in no mood to sit through a lecture. Alejandro scowled at me and knelt beside Shaw and examined him. Shaw was shivering and he bitched whenever the other man touched him. He didn’t appear to have suffered significant harm from our dash through the blaze, but his right forearm was roasted and blood seeped from the wound on his belly.
“We should take him to the hospital,” I said, wondering what I was going to tell the doctors. I missed the days when physicians didn’t want to know how their patients got hurt. Now they wanted to know every dirty detail and then they called the police. It made finding good healthcare all but impossible.
“No.” Alejandro shook his head and knelt down. “His injuries are superficial and with that faerie mark he wears, most of it should heal before he can get an infection. We’ll get Detective Shaw back to the safe house and treat him there.” Alejandro gave me a look that dared me to argue with him. I just sighed and looked away. I was too tired and hurt to fight anymore.

Chapter 22

The Children of Orpheus were in a gleeful snit as soon as they knew I was in residence. Everywhere I went, a herd of novices followed me around like a bunch of groupies, giving me no privacy or peace of mind. They giggled and scratched in the notebooks clutched in their sweaty hands while I gritted my teeth and fought the urge to throttle them.
“That ought to do it,” the nurse told me as she finished taping gauze to the burns on my back. The comforter and my clothes had protected me from the worst of the worst of the fire in our escape, but I’d still managed to suffer second degree burns, mostly on my backside. They hurt like crazy, but the blistering was minor and I would heal quickly. “Housekeeping should have a room ready for you, and they’re sending two associates to your apartment to gather clothing and your personal items.”
“How is Shaw?” I asked, accepting the loose t-shirt and slacks the nurse handed me. It wasn’t much but they were better than the psychedelic rags Bridget had given me.
“Given the severity of his injuries, I thought Detective Shaw would be in bed for weeks recovering. But he is healing almost as fast as you are which has all the Children in a tizzy trying to figure out why. The popular theory is that he is a newer, younger version of you,” the nurse replied. “Personally, I think that if there were more immortals like you in the world, we would have found them by now. I think he’s healing up fast because of faerie magic.”
I should have known the Children would figure it out. If they knew that much then they probably knew about the geas too. I think it went without saying that the Children would try to break it in the hopes of blackmailing me into helping them with whatever brand of stupid they had going. I supposed it didn’t matter since I had no intention of accepting help from them. I would find my way out of this mess like I always do.
“Where are you going?” the nurse asked, discarding the trash and hurrying after me.
“I’m going to check on Shaw and then I’m going to bed.” If I had a room in the safe house, then so did he. Once I made sure he was settled in, I would find an empty bed and go to sleep.
“I’m afraid you can’t do that right now,” the nurse said anxiously. “Since the demon has attacked you openly, the Conservatoris think that the attacks will escalate. They are insisting that you and the detective remain here under protective custody. The Great Bard has agreed to their demands and is taking every precaution to ensure your safety.”
“The Conservatoris?” I didn’t like the sound of that. There was a time when I made it my personal goal to kill every last one of them in as gruesome and horrible a manner as possible. I had been a bit enthusiastic in the completion of that mission, so I doubted that their descendants were overflowing with goodwill for me.
The Conservatoris had organized in the months after Christ was crucified, swearing vengeance against the followers of Judas Iscariot for his betrayal of their Savior. Gossip on the streets of Rome described Judas as the least dynamic of the Apostles and had no followers to speak of. The Conservatoris had not believed that was possible. After all, Christ had been the son of God, how could one puny mortal plot to kill him without help? When they sat down and thought about it, they came to a single conclusion. If there were no disciples to help Judas, then he had to have had otherworldly assistance. And who had better motive to destroy Jesus than Lucifer?
With that assumption firmly in their minds, the Conservatoris went looking for an army of demons that didn’t exist. Their search created hysteria among the ordinary peasants, and fearing the Conservatoris terrible wrath, they welcomed them with open arms. First they feasted the monsters, and then they pointed out the unloved and unwanted citizens of their village, claiming that those individuals were demons in disguise. The Conservatoris went to their work then, and in the clutches of their misguided religious fervor, they often slaughtered whole villages.
While the Conservatoris were out slaughtering the rude and crude of the ancient world, I was minding my own business as a domestic slave for a wealthy merchant. I had been taken while travelling through the Caucus Mountains, and when I was sold, I became responsible for the health and care of the master’s three children. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the sweet-natured scamps, and there wasn’t anything that I wouldn’t do for them; even when it meant enduring the yolk of slavery to watch them grow.
Like any scion of the wealthy, my master’s children were often targets of kidnapping for ransom. The eldest of the children had been snatched during a shopping trip, and I had been enthusiastically violent in his recovery. In the ensuing battle, I received a stab wound to my heart in full view of the boy, and he watched as I did not die.
Impressed by what he had witnessed, the eleven year old told the story to anyone who would listen; elaborating the details each time he told it. Soon, the entire city believed that my master was in possession of a Magyar warrior girl who was a powerful witch enjoying the favors of her native gods. It wasn’t true and my master knew it, but it didn’t stop him from trotting me out and showing me off for important dinner guests.
It didn’t take long for the Conservatoris to catch wind of my growing legend and skulk into town to investigate. I heard rumors of their interest in me, but I thought that my master’s prestige would keep me safe from their evil. But in the dark of one moonless night, they snuck into our home and slaughtered everyone in residence, including the children I loved so well. Enraged, I had emerged from the blood bath and swore to butcher the men who had killed them.
I cornered the assassins some weeks later, and they begged for their worthless lives. They told me that they had merely slayed demons in the name of their God and that they were guiltless of any sin. I was disgusted by their cowardice and bloodlust, and I spent several hours carving them up. Then to make sure the rest of the cult got my point, I left their mutilated bodies hanging by their entrails from the pillars of the public baths.
For centuries after, I hunted the Conservatoris and killed them whenever I found them. I left each corpse in the same manner as I had left the first at the baths so that my enemy always knew who was hunting them. Finally, the group disbanded when I decapitated their leaders and left their heads on spikes all over Paris. The remaining members disappeared within the ranks of the Templar knighthood and most of them were killed off during the Crusades. I was contented with that, and I left them to time and their fates.
Now they were allied with the Children of Orpheus and demanding that I suffer their protection. I remember how they do things and how long they hold grudges. The last thing I needed right now was to end up in a plastic bag somewhere wondering how I was going to get my bits and pieces back together.
My ugly thoughts were clear on my face and I saw the nurse’s eyes go wide with fear as she quickly moved out of my reach. “Who are the members of the Conservatoris now?” I demanded coldly. “And why are the Children of Orpheus in league with them?”
“You’ve already met them,” the nurse stammered. “They are the uniformed men the Vatican sent to help us.” She was speaking of the big, blond clones in their black and white uniforms. I knew that they were part of something insidious; I simply hadn’t bothered to imagine what it was.
“The Vatican sent them.” I repeated with disgust. “Since when does the Pope employ assassin cults?”
The Catholics were guilty of a lot of things, but they had always stayed clear of the obsessively homicidal lunatic set. Involvement with those types destroyed their beloved Plausible Deniability. Maybe the Catholics have managed to tame the Conservatoris through time and faith. The promises of Heaven or the consequences of Hell can be very powerful things in the right hands. With any luck, they would behave themselves and I won’t have to start piling up the corpses again.
“I really don’t know when the Pope started hiring assassin cults. I’m Methodist.” The nurse replied chuckling. “All I know is that a few years back, the Great Bard decided that the supernatural stuff was getting too dangerous, and he applied to the Archbishop of the Atlanta Diocese for help. Last year, the Conservatoris arrived with a letter of introduction and they’ve been here ever since. The only time one of them has been violent is when you bit Oscar’s ear off and he shot you.” She said that last part like she thought it was funny. What a bitch.
“I do not need protection from anyone, especially from the Conservatoris,” I snapped and returned to my search for the exit.
“I don’t think they’re going to give you a choice in light of recent developments.”
“Oh yeah? What developments are those?”
“You and Detective Shaw have clearly been attacked by a demonic entity that has a purpose for you, and will not leave you alone until it has achieved its goal. There have been reports that creatures from the Unseelie Court have infested the city and are causing trouble. There is more demonic activity taking place near the Old Decatur Cemetery and it is drawing the attention of the local police force. Four members of the Children have been assaulted by the Immortal Church of God, and three have been killed. The Great Bard has ordered everyone out of the field and back to the safe house for debriefing by the Conservatoris.” While she had recited her gossip with gleeful relish, I had managed to walk out of the infirmary with her without her noticing.
The hallway damn near stretched into forever, and it was wide enough to allow four people to walk side by side. The doors were placed in an eclectic manner that defied the rules of reasonable architecture. Even the floor didn’t make sense. It went from glossy hardwood to rich, colorful mosaics, then rickety rough boards and cheap, cracked linoleum. The longer we walked the weirder it got and soon there were windows showing brick walls and doors held stairways to nowhere. I had no idea that all of this was inside the confines of the building. How do they hide it all?
“Is everything okay?” the nurse asked. She looked entirely too amused by my confusion.
“Where are we and how the hell do I get out of here?” There was no point in denying that I was confused, she already knew.
Smug, the nurse walked to a door at the end of the hallway and opened it. “This will take you upstairs to the main floor. A pair of Conservatoris is waiting to take you to your room to get ready for the cleansing. Try not to bite any of them.”
“Smart ass,” I growled and bumped the woman with my shoulder as I passed her. Gasping with surprise, she staggered and had to grab the door to keep from falling over.
The nurse gave me a scathing harrumph and slammed the door closed, leaving me in total darkness. Unperturbed, I climbed the stairs in the dark, using my hand on the rail for guidance. The door at the top opened at my approach, and I was momentarily blinded by the sudden bright light. With a yelp, I was yanked out of the stair well and hauled across the floor to stand next to a hulking blond man.
His blocky face was flat and emotionless, but I know barely repressed rage when I see it. The cloned blonde’s blue eyes burned with it until they seemed to glow with fury. And the cause of his fury was not hard to guess at either. He had a wad of bandages taped to one side of his head so that his hair stuck out in awkward tufts.
“Hello Oscar,” I said smiling cheerfully. “How’s your ear?”
I said it to get on his nerves and it worked better than I hoped. Oscar bared his teeth in a vicious snarl and wapped me up side my head. I rubbed the offending spot and gave the man a reproachful look. I didn’t make a move to retaliate. The big lug nut wanted nothing more than to beat me up, and I would give him the excuse to do so if I hit him back. It was much more fun to get under his skin and work his last nerve by simply pouting. So I did that.
Seconds before I was certain Oscar’s brain was going to shoot out of his one good ear, one of his brothers intervened and put a stop to it. The fellow was an exact copy of One Ear in every way but personality. This one wore a wry grin and he slouched as if he understood that he was thuggish and he wished he could be someone else. He was still intimidating, but in a cheerful, schleppy kind of way.
The Newcomer shooed Oscar off with a casual wave of his hand, which of course pissed him off even more. He ground his teeth hard until it sounded like they cracked, and then stalked out of the room.
“I understand that you are called Rebecca Calden for the time being. My name is Arnold and I’ll be in charge of your security detail.” Arnold’s face warmed with a friendly smile as he offered me a hand that I stubbornly ignored.
“I don’t need or want anything from the Conservatoris,” I snapped. “Go away.”
“I don’t blame you for the malice you feel toward our order.” Arnold paused to let me snort in contempt. “And I agree that you were given just cause. Rest assured that the order’s time as mindless heathens and terrorists have long since passed, and that we have taken strict vows of honor and chastity unto God. Allow bygones to be bygones and I’m sure we can begin a partnership that will prove beneficial to us both.” Arnold smiled at me to show how sincere he was. I didn’t believe it.
“There is too much rape and murder in your history for you to hide behind religion now,” I said coldly. “It was in the name of Jesus Christ that your cult thought that it had the right to slaughter innocent people.”
“We are aware that our predecessors’ madness destroyed their faith. But our faith is stronger than the ravages of bloodlust and vengeance,” Arnold said firmly. “I do not question God’s plan.”
“Maybe you should start,” I snapped back, “because the ones who came before you didn’t question it either. They assumed that they knew what He wanted and acted blindly on it. That is how they could go so wrong so fast.”
“Your bloody history is far longer than our own.” Arnold didn’t like that my pagan mind had passed so much judgment over him. To him, I am less than he is because I have not bought into the notion of a one true god, as if polytheism is the single trait of a sub-human.
“True. But I never tried to defend it by calling my actions divine providence.” Oooh, that one stung him. If I keep this up, Arnold was going to cry. I might get out of the Conservatoris’ protective custody yet.
Arnold drew up to his full height and puffed up his barrel chest in outrage. He closed his eyes, held his breath and counted to ten, eight times. As he was turning blue, he released the breath in a rush and then nearly passed out from his fight for control. “We can settle our differences later. I will take you to see Detective Shaw, and you may wait in his room until we are ready to begin the debriefing. If you will please come with me, I will take you to him.”
Arnold stormed off without making sure I followed. I considered running for the front door instead, but I found that I couldn’t. Shaw kept sticking his neck out for me, and it seemed poor gratitude to leave him in the hands of half-cocked maniacs. So I followed Arnold up the stairs. I did take my sweet damn time doing it though. What would the Conservatoris do if they decided that I had feelings for the mortal?


Chapter 23

Arnold roughly shoved me into Shaw’s room with a hand between my shoulder blades. I had heckled him mercilessly as we walked to the living quarters from the foyer, assailing him with the gruesome details of ancient misdeeds of the Conservatoris and letting him know I thought he had a nice, tight butt. That last comment had offended Arnold’s vow of chastity and sent him into a seething silence that ended as soon as he slammed the door shut behind me. I heard him venting his spleen with insults about me as he retreated back to the lower floor of the house. I couldn’t help but smile.
“You’re okay.” Shaw was relieved as he slid off of the bed and touched my face lightly with his fingertips. It had cost him something to get out of the bed. I saw pain tighten the skin around his eyes and drain away some of his color. I gently took his hand in my own and held it. “I thought for sure that thing had managed to hurt some part of you.”
“No. I’m as good as always.” I gave him a reassuring smile and then stopped. What is this? I don’t reassure anyone. That sort of thing leads to genuine affection and ends in heartache and grief. I let my smile wilt a bit. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m a little worse for wear, but I’ll heal.” Shaw’s movements were careful, as if he was afraid that any sudden gestures would cause him more pain. I lifted his t-shirt to examine his abdomen where the demon had slashed at him. The gouges were held closed by the tiny butterfly strips doctors favored when they didn’t want to put stitches into their patient. Whoever had done this had been overzealous with their application; Shaw was plastered with them like a modern Frankenstein monster whose creator suffered from a nasty case of ADHD. The skin around the wound was red and feverish, and he jerked with pain when I touched him lightly.
“Why did you risk yourself like that?” My voice was thick with unshed tears of guilt and fear of what might have happened. The emotions constricted my chest and made me tremble. The guilt and fear bothered me, not because they were unjustified given the circumstances, but because I had become unaccustomed to feeling them over the course of the centuries.
Long ago, I learned to avoid close relationships with mortals in order to protect myself from grief when they inevitably died. That habit makes it difficult to care about how other people feel. Now I was under the threat of caring more for a mortal than I ever intended, and I had no idea what to do about it. I cursed my folly and the frivolousness of my emotions. “You could have been killed.”
“What did you expect me to do? I couldn’t very well let it take you.” Shaw’s expression was one of gentle pleasure. He’d seen what I was feeling and he liked it. His response was frightening. If he was falling for me, then it would make it that much harder for me to distance myself before it was too late. He was more dangerous to my well-being than that monster had ever been.
“You should have let it take me. It can’t kill me and I won’t suffer a wound or illness that time won’t eventually heal. It was stupid to put yourself in harm’s way for me.”
“How do you know that you would have survived?” Shaw was annoyed by my scolding. “Have you ever encountered demons before?”
“No.” I relented sullenly. Damn it, I was losing this argument already.
“Then how do you know it couldn’t kill you?” Shaw gently pulled my collar away from my neck and peeked at the burn underneath. “It certainly hurt you.”
“I’ve been dropped into an erupting volcano and I’ve been decapitated twice. If those didn’t kill me, nothing will.” I rolled my eyes to show him how ridiculous he was being.
“Are you sure about that?” he challenged. “Demons are said to have powers that defy the laws of nature-”
“So do I.”
“-and they can summon destruction that goes beyond the reach of anyone but God. From what I saw last night, I’m inclined to believe that.” Shaw finished impatiently. “Can you do the same?”
“Aside from the whole immortality thing? No, I’m just like everyone else.”
“Then how do you know that the demon that attacked us couldn’t have killed you?”
“How do you know it was a demon?” I shot back.
Shaw looked at me like I’d gone retarded. “You mean aside from the bleeding walls, the oozing floor and the moment when your reflection jumped out of the mirror and tried to throttle you? Gee, let me think about that.”
Anytime someone lays the sarcasm on that thick, it’s usually time to change the subject.
“Let me see your arm,” I said reaching for his bandaged limb before he could pull away. The bleeding walls and my independently mobile reflection hadn’t been the only bizarre occurrences in the hotel room.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Shaw said as I unwound the bandages. “It only tingles. I tried to tell the nurse who patched me up that it was fine, but she insisted on smearing me with goop and wrapping me up.”
“She probably wanted to touch you as much as possible,” I muttered neatly rolling the linen strips as I pulled them off. The nurse who had done this had been as enthusiastic with her bandages as she had been with her butterfly strips. There was twice as much wrapping than was necessary. I had two thick rolls set aside by the time I reached gauze that were soaked in grease that reeked of thyme and ginger.
“Yeah right, she and every other hot babe I’ve ever met.” He scoffed. “How does it look?”
Shaw’s fairy star was as vibrant and beautiful as it ever was. It glistened with its coating of pungent grease like finely polished glass. The rest of his skin was cruelly blistered as if someone had tried to roast his arm in an oven. It looked like hell.
“This doesn’t hurt?” I asked in alarm. The injury was significant enough that anyone would weep with pain. The fact that he didn’t mind meant that he might have nerve damage or that he was more of a macho shit head than I thought.
“Nope, it feels fine. Why, is that bad?”
Hell yes it’s bad. It’s never a good sign when a person gets hurt and can’t feel the pain. But I wasn’t going to give him that kind of news. That’s what doctors are for. “I’d give it a couple of days. You can go see a specialist if you think it still feels weird,” I answered as I poked a blister with my finger.
“That hurt, stop it.” Shaw pulled out of my grasp. “I’ve been hurt worse than this before, so stop worrying.”
“How did you kill the demon?” I remembered how brightly his arm glowed when he clobbered the crap out of the monster owl. “You slapped that thing around like you were Hercules. Is it the magic that Bridget gave you when she marked you?” It made a kind of oddball sense that the tattoo would be imbued with some kind of faerie mojo. Why else would Bridget go to all the trouble to seduce the man and get him inked precisely the way she wanted?
“I suppose it could be Bridget’s doing,” Shaw replied, frowning thoughtfully. “I didn’t intend for it to happen, it just did. I saw the opportunity and ran with it.”
“It’s never happened before?”
“I’ve never needed it before. Why?”
Not knowing what to tell him, I shook my head and kept my mouth shut. Over the centuries, I’d heard plenty of stories about mortals recruited by the Fey (usually without their knowledge) to act as great heroes on behalf of the Seelie High Court. I once met a fellow known as Finn Mac Cool who claimed to have hacked his way through piles of demons using a magic sword granted to him by a faerie queen. But the guy had been a bit of a blow hard and tended to pull practical jokes on people with homicidal quirks and no sense of humor, and so he met an untimely and gory death under mysterious circumstances.
Perhaps Bridget had decided to make another hero, though it seemed unnecessary to me. The mortal craving for knowledge had grown into powerful technological advances that made them as powerful as any fabled creature of the past. It made them dangerous and fully capable of taking care of themselves while they rid the world of the evil that faeries had always feared.
Maybe Bridget got bored and wanted to see what would happen is she created another hero and let him run amok. If half of the stories about her were true, then it was well within her character to screw with Shaw out of sheer curiosity. Regardless of her motive’s Bridget’s mark had saved my ass, so I stopped looking the gift horse in the mouth.
“Did the Conservatoris talk to you?” Shaw asked as I wrapped his arm properly and pinned the bandages securely.
“Briefly, I don’t like them and they don’t like me,” I said. “Don’t trust them.”
“Why do they all look the same?” Shaw was simply musing. He didn’t expect an answer. I gave him one anyway.
“I have no idea. They used to look like those people who live in caves in Afghanistan.” Now that I thought about it, the Conservatoris used to be the people who lived in the caves in Afghanistan.
“They offered me a position in their order and told me that there was a place for me in the Children of Orpheus.” Shaw rubbed at the bandages and moved to the edge of the bed.
“You can’t possibly be considering it,” I scoffed. I tried to imagine Shaw in a black and white uniform or skulking around in my shadow, but the very idea was preposterous.
“I wouldn’t join the Conservatoris, but the Children of Orpheus hold an insane kind of appeal,” he conceded. “I might join up if my suspension turned into a termination. The Great Bard offered me a good salary and benefits, plus I’d have more time for my kids.”
I had forgotten that he had children. Why did fatherhood make him more appealing to me? It had never been a selling point for any other man before. “The Children have always been the worst kind of useless.”
“They’ve save our asses a few times. How useless can they possibly be?”
“You’d be surprised.” There have been hundreds of instances when the Children could have rescued the people I sheltered from certain doom. But they did nothing and those people had died horrible deaths. Those times had been brutally dangerous for everyone, so I did not hold their inaction against them. But it doesn’t stop me from thinking that the Children are incompetent cowards.
“It’s still a tempting offer.”
“Promise me that you’ll think long and hard before you say yes,” I warned him.
Shaw gave me a smile that held far too much affection for my comfort. Blushing, I looked away from it before I could say or do something stupid. The urge to yell at the perfectly nice man so that he wouldn’t like me quite so much was nearly overwhelming. My reasoning went over his head as he traced his fingertips along the curve of my cheek down to the line of my jaw. With a finger under my chin he gently tilted my face up to him so that our mouths were almost touching.
Our breaths mingled while the practical part of my brain insisted that I was behaving like a lunatic. At best, Shaw would manage to live for another sixty years before he dropped dead of old age and broke my heart. The lonely romantic in me delighted in the thrill of the moment and begged to go along so that she wouldn’t be alone anymore and the consequences be damned. It has been so long since the last time I felt this way, and my need for it haunted me the way an addict craved heroine. Maybe this time I would find the strength to endure while my love wasted away into old age and moved to the afterlife. I threw caution to the wind and closed the distance between us to feel the velvety caress of his mouth.
The sharp knock at the door brought a frustrated growl from Shaw. I sighed in disappointment and glared at Mabel Fortuno as she stepped into the room. She giggled at catching us in an embrace and closed the door behind her with a soft click.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I found something of yours and I thought you would like to have it back.” Mabel held out the bronze medallion in her fingers.
“Thanks.” I snatched it from her and stuffed it into my pocket. “Is there anything else?”
Mabel glanced around nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot. “There’s a woman called Mab here to see you.”
Shaw let out a curse while I groaned in dismay and fell back onto the bed. Mab is one of the most famous and enduring figures of the Seelie Court and a particularly nasty one at that. As a member of the Morrigan Mob, Mab had once been the preferred deity of beefy Celtic warriors as the goddess who held domain over sex, death, and booze. A wild party girl, Mab liked to hold festivals that encouraged large, muscled men to drink themselves retarded and then battle each other to the death in hopes of claiming a place in her bed. As the years rolled by, Christianity demoted her from goddess to faerie and now she was nothing more than a vindictive slut with a whole lot of mojo.
“What does she want?” Shaw asked resentfully.
“She didn’t say. Mab is very adamant about talking to you.”
I opened my mouth to tell her to piss off, but the air was suddenly charged as if lightning had struck and I sat up in time to see a delicate redhead flounce into the room. Like all faerie she was a lovely thing, with large blue eyes and long curly hair that had streaks of black mixed with the red. Her clothing held to the emo-goth style Morrigan and Far Dorocha favored, but with a slutty twist all her own. Her black, low-rider jeans were so low that I could almost make out her pelvis bone, and her black string bikini top did very little to contain her enormous breasts.
She glared viciously at Mabel as she posed on high, six inch stripper heels. “You’re done, now get out,” she snarled at the girl in a rolling Irish accent. “I’ll know it if you tell anyone that I’m here. Then I’ll see to it that your pretty face gets some very ugly scars.”
Mabel paled and squeaked in terror as she fled from the room. Mab turned her cold eyes on me then let out an exaggerated sigh that made her impressive boobs heave.
“Oh good, you’re already dressed. Get up and let’s go.” Mab pointed at the door impatiently. We gave her blank stares and stayed put. Her harsh black and red make-up was made fiercer by the scowl contorting her pretty face. “Are you deaf? Get your asses moving!”
Shaw and I exchanged a look. “Where are we going?” he asked innocently.
“I’ve got work for you to do and time is wasting,” was all she would say.
“Does Bridget know that you’re trying to make off with her property?” I asked. I figured that if Morrigan had backed off of Shaw on Bridget’s say so, then maybe Mab would do the same at the mere threat. I was wrong.
“I don’t give two shits what Bridget knows,” Mab bellowed. “Now get out of the door before I burn you to a blackened crisp!”
To prove that she meant what she said, Mab’s hands burst into flames as she reached for me. I watched her come, thinking that I had three choices. I could scream for help and end up in the Conservatoris’ “protective custody” for the rest of their lives. I could fight Mab off and get incinerated for my trouble, or I could do what I was told and maybe get my life back when it was over. Guess which choice I made.
“Calm down, I’m coming.” I exclaimed as I danced out of her reach.
Mab’s mood flipped from pissy to pleased in the blink of an eye. She gave me a brilliant smile that made her face glorious and would have melted me down to my toes if I was inclined toward women. She turned that glory on Shaw and expected him to fold under the weight of it. He sat in stunned disbelief for a heartbeat and shook his head in resignation. Then he stood up and followed us out of the door.
The safe house was buzzing with excited Children of Orpheus and lurking Conservatoris, making it difficult for us to get out without being noticed. At first Mab ignored the conversations coming from the floor below us while she searched for a way out. Then a slice of a frantically spoken sentence caught her attention and froze her in place.
“Stay here, I’ll be back in a minute,” she said. Before our eyes, Mab’s beauty melted away and she became a sullen faced girl with a dumpy figure and small breasts. She used the cloying shadows of the hall to weave herself a shirt that she pulled over her head. Mab sauntered off, leaving me and Shaw staring after her in wide-eyed astonishment.
“Did you know that faeries could do that?” I asked softly.
“I knew about the shape shifting, but I had no idea that they could make clothes from shadows,” he replied. His expression turned from surprise to curiosity as he turned to me. “What made you decide to go with what Mab wanted to do?”
“It seemed like the best option available.” I shrugged. “What about you?”
“I didn’t want to get my ass kicked by a faerie woman half my size. My ego can’t handle it today.” He frowned and rubbed the bandage on his arm like it itched.
I listened to the commotion downstairs, straining my ears to catch some hint of what was going on. The excited buzz had died down into a frightened murmur, and then came an anguished cry. I heard Howard Steven’s voice speak urgently, but the house’s odd acoustics made a jumble of his words.
“We have to leave.” Mab materialized out of the shadows like she was born from them. “Trouble has come here, and it’ll get worse before it is better.”
“What happened?”
“It’s nothing that the Children can’t handle on their own. They always manage something. Come along.”
Mab opened the first door she came to, revealing a linen closet. As closets go, it was huge and it seemed to hold all the bedding and table clothes the Children of Orpheus would ever need. There was a bare wall at the back where Mab drew a seven pointed star and with a double circle around it. She tapped the center with a cherry red fingernail, and the whole thing glowed a shimmering blue.
“Go on now.” Mab told us with a look that she wouldn’t tolerate any hesitation from either of us. I was tempted to defy her to see what she would do, but quickly changed my mind. Mab has a very nasty reputation and I didn’t really didn’t want to know how much of it was true. I gave a nonchalant shrug, took a deep breath, and walked through the wall. I heard a mighty roar as wind rushed past my ears, and then all went dark.


Chapter 24

The first thing I did when the world felt solid again was to count my fingers and toes and make sure I could feel them all. I always wonder at my natural tendency to be sure of all of my digits first, as if my fingers and toes were the most important thing in the world, and everything else in between was just gravy. I let out a sigh of relief when everything was as it should be and waited a few more seconds for the ringing in my ears to stop before opening my eyes. Wishing I hadn’t done that I snapped them closed again, but it was too late. I’d already caught enough of a glimpse of the spinning sky to send my stomach rolling and cramping.
Shaw was retching painfully into the grass somewhere nearby. I lay as still as I could manage, waiting for him to finish and for my nausea to pass.
“Get up, we’ve got to go now,” Mab insisted, nudging my ribs with the toe of her stripper heels.
“Give me a minute to get my act together,” Shaw moaned pitifully. “I feel like someone pulled my guts out of my mouth.”
“Walk it off, you’ll feel better,” she snapped and jabbed me harder with her foot. “Quit pretending to be dead. We all know better.”
I opened one eye and glared bitterly at her with it. “I hate you so much.”
“Bully for you. Now get up, King Finvarra wants a word.”
I rolled onto my hands and knees where I endured wave after wave of dry heaves. Shaw was right; it did feel like someone was yanking my insides out. After a few minutes, I was able to straighten up and look around. I found that I was in an open field full of tall grass and big chunks of junk. The sun was taking its first steps westward and gave off enough light to hint at the wet heat that would come when summer set in.
Several yards away was a shabby trailer park of the type commonly associated with white trash and illegal aliens. Most of the mobile homes were old and dirty with patches of rust dotting each one. Most of the hard packed red clay was covered in a thin layer of rust colored gravel. A few lots boasted a tiny patch of weeds large enough to be called a yard, and two residents managed to coax small, colorful flowers out of the packed earth.
“I wouldn’t have thought that the Fey would have been caught dead in a place like this,” I commented as Mab led us through the helter-skelter circle of single-wides and dilapidated campers.
“Most people don’t, that’s why we do it,” Mab replied peevishly.
“Is the whole park full of faeries?” Shaw asked looking around.
“Most of the residents are human enough. They don’t talk about us and they serve as a mask against the authorities for us.”
“Where are we?” I demanded. The trailer park wasn’t located in one of the nicest places that Georgia boasted. Trash was strewn everywhere and it plugged the drainage ditches. There were plenty of cars up on cinder blocks with their hoods propped open and their engine blocks rusted. Many of the trailers had broken toys poking out of bent aluminum skirts and there was the toxic scent of chicken manure and bleach lingering in the warm air. Ah, there is nothing like the smell of a meth lab in the early afternoon.
“We’re in Gwinnett,” Mab said. I saw a few curtains twitch as we passed close to the trailer. The natives were watching from the safety of their rickety fire traps and tornado magnets. I wondered how many of them were fingering their guns as they sipped iced tea sweet enough to chew.
Mab’s destination was a double wide trailer that was younger and in better condition than the rest of the park. The thing was big enough to be a real house except for the press board walls and cheap vinyl siding. Mab rapped on the simple white door and then pushed it open before permission to enter could be granted.
The interior was markedly different from the outside. It wasn’t that there was anything out of the ordinary there, but the quality of the items was much better than what most people of a meager income could afford. The furniture could have come out of any upper middle class home instead of the broken garage sale fodder that was usually found in these kinds of domiciles. Even the carpets were too nice and everything was too clean.
Baja and Kootch stood up as we entered the living room and they glared at us. Baja had set aside his sun glasses so that I was confronted by a vicious green stare that bored down into the black depths of my soul. It was a rather nasty sensation that made me want to beg him to put the glasses back on.
“Good to see that you’re still alive,” Baja said and gave us an oily smile. The display of very white, even teeth in his dark face made his eyes look predatory and made my primitive brain gibber like a spider monkey. There was nothing good about the way he looked; indeed he appeared to be anything but happy to see us.
“I’m always alive, bright eyes,” I replied, using the small joke to cover up how nervous he made me. People like Baja should never know when they give another person the willies. It makes them needlessly manipulative as they expertly exploited that fear.
“I fetched the humans and now my work is done. I shall return to my sister’s side,” Mab announced and produced a slip of paper from the thin air. “Make certain that Finvarra receives this, I’m sure he’ll want to read it.”
Baja took the paper with a respectful nod and promised to do as he was told. As soon as Mab was gone, Baja opened the paper and squinted at it.
“What’s it say?” Kootch demanded, pressing close to the other man to peer at the note.
Annoyed, Baja pushed the redneck off with his elbow. “I don’t know, it ain’t English.” He held the paper out to me. “Can you read this?”
I glanced at a series of straight lines and tiny circles and searched my memory for a match. I recognized the runes as Norse, but rather than representing phonetic sounds, these marks were a representation of whole words. It had been a language reserved for shaman, druids, and witches, and I had not seen it’s like in over five hundred years. I could still pick out words here and there, enough that I got the gist of the message’s contents.
“Some children were set on fire,” I said, confused and horrified. Why would Finvarra give a crap about human children? Then it hit me. The Children of Orpheus had been in a state of panic when we left the safe house. “No, some members of the Children were burned by the Divine Inferno.” The Children were of no threat to anyone, why would someone go to the effort it took to corner them and then set them on fire? Even I didn’t possess enough ill will toward them to do that.
“Bummer.” Kootch whistled and then joked, “Someone went Satanic on their asses.”
That was the most I’d ever heard Kootch say at one time, and it was easily the most intelligent thing he had ever uttered. Baja seemed to think so too. He stared in surprise at the ornery cracker.
“What’d I do?” Kootch asked.
I shook off the moment and handed the note back to Baja. “Now what?”
“Now we take you to see the King,” he replied. “You aren’t going to try to resist this time, are you?”
“I think those days are done for now,” I relented with a shrug. At this point defiance would only make my life more difficult. “Let’s get it over with.”
“The King is in the second door on the left with Morrigan and the Dark Man.” Baja pointed to the short hallway on the other side of the kitchen.
Like all things Fey, the room was not what it seemed. Shaw opened the door and we were assailed by vibrant flowering bushes that made chiming noises whenever the breeze rustled their leaves and small, talking trees that spat colorful curses at a carpet of thick moss. Unlike the Mound, there was no cloaking darkness to hide dangerous creatures and magics. Instead, everything was bright and glistening like a jungle after a cleansing rain.
Finvarra was sitting on a smaller version of the throne he owned in Mound Knockma. He was dressed for the spring warmth in a sleeveless tunic and linen trousers, minus the long cloak of royal blue. His long gold tresses were woven into braids and twisted into a bun at the back of his head with a simple golden band of kingship resting lightly on his brow. Impatient, he waved us forward with a graceful sweep of his long fingered hand.
At our approach, three women and two men emerged from the plants crowding the space and stood in a semi-circle with Finvarra at their center. I recognized Bridget who stood closest to the king on his right side while Morrigan took a place at the end. Far Dorocha stood slightly behind her with his big hands resting on the pommel of a sword hanging from a belt of silver chains. Bres stood on Finvarra’s left hand side, with a woman wearing short, chestnut colored hair styled in jaunty spikes. She wore a simple dress of pale green that made her seem like nothing more than a wealthy housewife. She was lovelier than Bridget and Morrigan with wide eyes the color of an early night sky and a full, rosy mouth that needed no cosmetics to make them more beautiful.
Her eyes combed over Shaw and I saw a light of lust ignite in their bottomless depths. Shaw shivered under her scrutiny as if he had caught a stray chill, and pointedly ignored the woman’s stare. I caught the woman’s gaze and firmly shook my head no. Then I gave her a look that made it perfectly clear that this man was off limits and I had every intention of retaliating if she crossed the line. The woman got my hint with a sniff of disdain and she stopped admiring Shaw. That meant I win. Ha-ha!
“You will complete a task,” Finvarra began in a tone that had the sound of ritual in it. I felt a tingle rush across my skin to end in little pinpricks in my fingertips. “The Mounds, Knockma, Connaught, and Munster have suffered a despicable invasion of thieves who have taken from us objects of great power. It has fallen to you, Philip Shaw a mortal man, and you Rebecca Calden an immortal woman, to recover these treasures as servants of the Seelie High Court.”
Finvarra paused and turned to the spikey haired beauty at Bres’ side. “Cliodne, Queen of Sidhe Munster, please give our servants the list of items they are to recover.”
Cliodne stepped forward and offered a rolled length of parchment to Shaw. She let her fingers linger too long on his hand and smiled seductively. Shaw pretended that it wasn’t happening, which only encouraged the woman. She shot me a triumphant smirk as she returned to her place next to Bres.
Shaw unrolled the parchment and frowned. “I can’t read this.”
Bres’ face split in a wide grin and he exclaimed victoriously pointing at Bridget and laughing at her. Finvarra rolled his eyes and told him to shut up.
“You can read the language,” Finvarra said to me. “Translate it for Philip Shaw.”
I studied the parchment and saw the same kinds of lines and circles that had been used in Mab’s note to the King. It was a list of three items, each written in dark indigo ink beside a sketch depicting the items in question. The first was the Claiomh Solais, or the Sword of Light. It was a simple short sword of twenty one inches and marked with the seal of the legendary Irish king Nuada on the handle. Next was Dagda’s Cauldron, made from brass and perpetually filled to brimming with dark ale and haunches of boar meat. The stories about it said that if a corpse was immersed in it, it would be restored to life. The last was the living spear Areadhar, drawn as a long weapon possessed of demon’s eyes upon the blade. Written in red next to each item was “Faith of the Divine Inferno” followed by the address for the Immortal Church of God.
“Why would they steal these items?” I dreaded knowing, but asked anyway. According to myth and legend, the first two items were closely associated with knowledge and healing, while the spear was considered evil used in the cause of good. I know, it sounds like an oxymoron to me too, but that’s faeries for you.
“I do not know,” Finvarra admitted reluctantly. “It is our theory that these items, when used together for a single purpose, can be forced to take something very old and remake it new, and thus change the nature of the thing.”
“Where do I fit in to this?” I had to have a place in this hideous mess. The Immortal Church of God—excuse me, Faith of the Divine Inferno—has been trying their best to get their hands on me ever since all of this started. They have lured me into their church, tried to kidnap me, and now that I knew they were some kind of devil worshippers I knew that they had set the demon on me in my crappy hotel room. Most people would have freaked out when they made this realization, but I am not most people. I was pissed off.
“We believe that they seek to kill you and use the secrets locked within your flesh to create another immortal more to their liking.”
I should have known. It always comes down to eternal life whenever I was dragged into something big. And people wonder why I’m so damned anti-social. “Do these items have the power to kill me?”
“Perhaps. But when it comes to you, nothing is ever certain.” It was Bridget who answered the question. Her eyes were full of pity when she addressed me. “If such a thing can happen to you, then death by this means will be the worst torment you will ever endure. You will be grateful for the end, when it comes.”
Shaw regarded me with real fear as he digested the information we had been given. But it wasn’t fear for himself. Shaw was afraid for me.


Chapter 25

“You cannot return to your homes. The police are watching Shaw’s house, and the Disciples of the Divine Inferno are squatting outside Rebecca’s apartment.” Morrigan said. She walked ahead of us at Shaw’s insistence. She wouldn’t stop grabbing his ass.
“I’m not going into that church unprepared,” I retorted. Far Dorocha walked behind me, and played with my hair. Figuring that he would get bored and find something else to do if he didn’t get a rise out of me, I ignored him. I was right. He stopped touching my hair and tried to tickle my ribs. I guess I should be grateful that he didn’t jam his hands down my pants.
“Two Children of Orpheus went to your home to retrieve items for your task and they were incinerated for their trouble,” Morrigan replied. “The Divine Inferno is getting too aggressive, and we don’t want to take the chance that you’ll be captured, nor do we want to give the Conservatoris a reason to confine you.”
On the one hand, I hated that the Fey were telling me what to do, but on the other hand I loved that they wanted to keep the Conservatoris off of my back. That made it hard for me to decide whether or not I was going to do things on my own or let the faerie come along for the ride. I guess I could be amiable for the time being. At least I was out of the safe house.
“Baja and Kootch will give you what tools you require when you meet them.” Morrigan continued to talk as she pushed through big leafy bushes and flowering branches.
“Great,” I said sarcastically. “Will they be coming along on this adventure too?”
“You’ll need people to watch your back and those two are disposable enough that they can be easily replaced if they are killed,” Morrigan explained. “I was surprised when Bres gave them up so easily. He has grown soft from his time with mortals and has developed an unnatural affection for the men.”
We emerged from the foliage to the kitchen where Kootch was eating a bowl of grits soaked in butter and bacon grease while Baja chewed on a sandwich. Both of them looked our way with blank stares of boredom as we entered the room.
“Stop screwing around and get back to work,” Morrigan barked. “Bres says that if you two bugger this one up he’ll hand you over to Mab for retraining, and you do not want to find out what Mab considers discipline.” And then Morrigan and Far Dorocha were gone in a warm breeze that smelled of mint and thyme.
Without a word, the two men stuffed the remainder of their meals into their mouths, hitched up their baggy pants, and headed for the door.
“Hey!” I called after them. “You’re supposed to have weapons for me!”
“We gotta go pick’em up!” Baja called back. “Hurry your ass up or you’ll go in the trunk again.”
Baja drove a nineteen ninety-something POS that had a fancy new paint job and ghetto rims. Baja did the driving while Kootch rode in the front passenger seat with his arm hanging out of the window. I did not end up in the trunk, but was treated to the back seat next to Shaw. Baja drove north on the interstate and then he got off at the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.
I don’t know what it is about streets with Dr. King’s name on it, but they always seem to be at the heart of the worst neighborhoods of any American city that has them. Poverty and violence run rampant there, beating down the hapless citizens until nothing is left of them. Street gangs and other violent criminals prey upon their friends and neighbors, taking whatever pleases them without any regard for the needs of others. From fear of retaliation or for resentment of law officials, the victims rarely report the crimes or step forward as witnesses, and then they bitch because the cops won’t find justice for them. And so a culture of apathy, nurtured by hate and ignorance, is allowed to grow and fester. It’s shameful. Dr. King must be spinning in his grave.
Baja parked in a trash strewn lot at a rundown apartment complex that was identical to any other government housing project found all over the country. I could never understand why these places were so universally crappy. Was it because the people who lived in them were naturally destructive and so they couldn’t possibly keep anything in good repair, or was it the corruption at the local level that prevented the Feds from pouring the needed funds into the properties? My money and experience suggested that it was a little bit of both.
“What are we doing here?” Shaw asked. He eyed the environment warily, as if he expected a Latin King or Crip to leap out of nowhere and shoot him to death. There was no threat here, not at this time of day anyway. It wasn’t long past noon, and most of the human monsters that lurked in the neighborhood are nocturnal creatures and would only be stirring a little in their beds so early in the day.
“My Mom has a lot of stuff we can use against the Divine Inferno and I promised that I’d see her today,” Baja growled with an angry, defensive look. I wasn’t going to tease him. I thought it was sweet that the cold-hearted killer still catered to his mother.
The desire to meet the woman who could give birth to and raise a man like Baja overrode any thought of caution I might have had. I got out of the car and gleefully followed Baja up a flight of steel and concrete stairs to an apartment at the back. Shaw was somewhat less enthusiastic about the turn of events, and so he followed at a safe distance and seemed to watch everything at once. Kootch wasn’t far behind him. His head was down and his shoulders were hunched as if he was afraid to be there.
The breezeway had been wired for electric lights, but the fixtures had been destroyed long ago. The wood siding was cracked and covered with graffiti like a crude record of the local history. Rap music pounded from behind closed doors, blending the furious beats and vengeful lyrics with the mournful wailing of a mariachi band drifting up from lower floors. The atmosphere of despair of the dreadful place drove home the point that Hope is a gimpy bitch that functions on vindictive whims.
Baja stopped at the last door and tapped on it with a thick fingertip. It was no different from any of the others lining the hall, save for the fresh coat of bright red paint. Red doors are often associated with prostitution, and in some cultures they were used by thieves and their fences. But in a few small, primitive pockets of the world, the red door was a clear message to anyone with eyes to see: a dark witch dwells here.
I have eyes to see and I did not want to open that door. The smells coming from the other side were strange and pungent, like someone had been messy while slaughtering a pig and burned incense to cover the odor. There was enough of the primitive pagan left in me that I was afraid of the wicked witch. The thought of being hexed within an inch of my life was a frightening thought.
“Come in Baja!” a woman’s voice as soothing as velvet called. “Bring your visitors.”
Baja pushed the door open, and gestured for the rest of us to follow. Kootch and Shaw followed readily enough, but I hesitated. Shaw noticed and turned to me with a worried frown.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. He glanced nervously past the threshold, then moved closer to me as if I was about to whisper some secret to him. Not knowing how to tell why I was frightened by the witch without sounding like a paranoid crackpot, I went into the apartment without saying a thing.
Charlotte Walker kept a clean home. Every surface was gleaming without a speck of dust and the carpets and old linoleum floor were clean enough to eat off of. The air smelled faintly of bleach and a floral air freshener. The odors I had smelled outside were strangely absent inside this place. Most people would have been relieved by it, but it made my anxiety levels go higher.
On the walls were pictures of smiling children and formal family portraits. Alongside the pictures were religious symbols and artifacts that carried all the earmarks of underworld gods and death cults. They were grotesque things, made from dismembered parts of animals tied carefully in bundles with bits of bone and dried plants. These sorts of things were usually used as storage for magical energy or as focuses for particular spells. That Charlotte left these things out in plain view was disturbing to me and made me wonder at her power.
Charlotte didn’t look like a crazy-assed death priestess who talks to angry dead people. She was small and pretty in an ordinary kind of way, with an open face and a smooth caramel complexion. Her tightly curled hair was cut close and had more gray in it than black, she wore no make-up, and her jeans and t-shirt hung loose on her slender body. If she had been a strange woman walking down the street, I wouldn’t have noticed her. What she was doing in a dump like this was beyond me. Maybe she liked it here.
Baja kissed his mother on her cheek and introduced her to me and Shaw. Charlotte looked us over, her small, black eyes moving slowly as if she was peering carefully into our bodies. Her lips quirked at Shaw, but when she turned to me I felt my blood run cold.
“Welcome in Miss Calden,” she said, stepping forward and offering her hand to me. “I have heard much about your troubles. Please, make yourself at home.”
‘Make yourself at home’ is what every wicked witch says to the fat little children right before she eats them. I watched her warily for some sign of what she was going to hex me with and why and I could have sworn that I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see what it was, and all I saw was one of Charlotte’s creepy fetishes. Then the temperature dropped in the room and my breath billowed in front of my face.
I wish I could say that I didn’t know what was happening, but I did. Charlotte was a medium or voodoo priestess at best or a necromancer at worst. Either way, she was the one who had gathered spirits into this place and she was the one holding them there. I wanted to run from there and never come back, but with the witch watching me, I didn’t dare move. It’s the height of stupidity to be rude to a witch.
“Mom, don’t do this right now. They aren’t paying customers.” Baja’s voice held more fear than warning. Charlotte turned her cold eyes on her son and the man visibly cringed. In his corner, Kootch caught some of the look and he tried very hard to become one with the corner he was standing in. He was terrified of her.
“Go and get the things you came for,” she told Baja firmly. “Take the idiot and the cop with you. I wish to speak to Rebecca alone. I will call you when we are finished.” I expected to see cold arrogance in her eyes when she turned back to me, but instead there was a terrible fear haunting her eyes. Grabbing Kootch by the scruff of his shirt and forcing him into the room in question, Baja did as he was told. Shaw followed reluctantly with a worried look at me over his shoulder.
Charlotte wrapped an arm around my waist in what was supposed to be a comforting, friendly gesture, but only succeeded in making my skin crawl. I tried to pull away from her, but the woman was much stronger than she looked, and she held onto me easily.
“Your father has a message for you Sarika,” she whispered in my ear. My heart leaped into my throat and threatened to choke me while my lungs convulsed painfully because I could not breath. I felt tears of fear spring to my eyes as I struggled to keep my composure. No one had uttered my true name in almost two thousand years, and now it curled from the lips of a woman I had just met. I wanted to believe that she was lying to me about my father’s spirit, but I could think of no other way that she had learned my name.
“What message would that be?” I asked, forcing my voice through a throat that was convulsing.
I had not given my father a single thought since we got word that he had been slaughtered by bandits somewhere along the Silk Road. He’d been a merchant’s soldier, guarding traveling caravans as they bought and sold all over the known world. He would be gone for months and years at a time, only to return without warning to drink away his earnings and beat my mother and brothers. I had quickly grown to despise the man, and none of us had shed a tear when we had received word of his death. I think my brothers threw a party over it. I’m not sure though; I had been a child when he died.
“Let’s go into the kitchen to talk.” Charlotte steered me to her tiny kitchen and left me next to a chair and told me to sit in it. I refused.
“What is the message?” I snarled as soon as Charlotte let me go to pull two glasses from the cupboard. She smiled serenely as she went to the refrigerator and pulled out a pitcher of tea. “You know what, never mind. I don’t want to hear anything from you or that son-of-a-bitch. Tell him that I hope the flames are really hot in Hell.” I turned to leave.
“You have to hear the message!” she called after me. “I can’t face that man again!”
“Then stop jerking me around and give it to me.”
“He was specific.” Charlotte’s eyes were too wide and glassy to be normal and her hands shook as she poured the tea and pushed a glass toward me. “He wants you to drink the tea while I give you the message.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“If you’ve been talking to my father, then you know why I won’t do it.”
“I understand your caution. Your father would test the potions he found in his travels on your mother and then beat her when she became ill from it. He was evil.”
I had no reply for that, mostly because I hadn’t known that my father had been poisoning my mother. I had thought that she was chronically ill and he was merely a big douche bag about it. I wish I hadn’t ever known he’d spent years torturing her, or that she took it without snapping and beating him to death in his sleep. Dear gods, I hated both of them.
“If the lazy bastard wants me to drink tea, then he can fly his ghosty ass up to the material plane and make me do it.” I gave Charlotte one last hard look and moved to leave again. This time the woman tackled me to the floor and sat on me. She pressed her sharp elbows between my shoulder blades and pinned me to the floor. Her cheek pressed against mine and a heavy, black opal fell out of her shirt and bumped the tip of my nose.
“You’re Divine Inferno,” I gasped in horror, remembering the stones gripped in the sweaty hands of stoned worshippers a week ago.
“Listen to me,” Charlotte hissed into my ear. “Your father says that you stole what is rightfully his, and he will have it back.”
I waited for her to elaborate, but the woman only trembled on my back and breathed hot and stinky breath into my ear. I got my palms flat against the floor and pushed. Charlotte pushed me back and shifted her weight so that she pressed me harder into the floor. Her hand snaked into my back pocket, pushing something soft and squishy into it. “Keep this with you always. It has herbs and charms to keep you from being trapped by their magic. Whatever they plan for you is more terrible than even your father realizes and cannot come to pass. Promise that you will prevent it.”
This was an unexpected twist. I had not thought that the crazy cult lady who talks to dead people would want to be on my side. With Charlotte still pressed hard against me, I could only watch the opal swirl with a riot of color and light, and note the strange scratches on the surface. I admit that my fear and the awkwardness of the situation made my thoughts take a strange turn.
“What’s with the necklace?” I asked.
“It is how he claims his worshippers. The stone gives them a small power rush and holds them in his thrall,” Charlotte answered as if she had not expected me to ask a coherent question. I can’t blame her. Even I thought that I should be babbling an angry tirade over my crappy parents or fighting her in an effort to get her off of me.
“Who?”
She started to answer and then she stopped. “He will kill me if I tell you.”
“Does your son know you’re working with his enemy?” I made the question a threat.
“I will kill you if you tell my boy!” she hissed.
“No you won’t,” I scoffed back. I admit that it is difficult to be snarky when a woman teetering on the edge of her golden years has you pinned like a cockroach to her kitchen floor. “Tell me which demon is after me and why.”
Charlotte made me wait for it while she considered her next words. “If I tell you, will you keep my secret from my Lloyd?”
I nearly laughed at Baja’s unfortunate name. “Sure.”
“Your father made the deal with Stolas for your immortality. They have taken magical items they believe will steal your immortality and transfer it to someone else.”
There it was; the reason behind the thefts and the cult’s desire to get me. I can’t say I was surprised. Whenever my secret gets out, life becomes an endless parade of people who beg for my secret or those who try to blackmail or steal it from me. No matter what I do now, it was going to end in a bloodbath with plenty of dead bystanders to litter the landscape.
Charlotte finally got off of me and let me sit up. I stretched as I used my fingertips to massage the cramps the woman had pressed into my muscles. “Why are you telling me all of this? Won’t Ryerson kill you for it?”
“The spirits are afraid of what will happen if you are taken. They’re at me night and day to stop it. I have to have peace.”
“Fine then, I won’t let Stolas get a hold of me,” I told her. I stood up off of the floor and stretched the rest of the kinks out. “Do yourself a favor and throw that opal away then get out of the city before they can get a hold of you.”
“I can’t. The jewels are like crack. Once you put it on you can’t take it off, ever.” Charlotte practically wept at the idea. Her hands clutched the necklace protectively as if she was afraid that I was going to snatch it from around her neck. I was sorely tempted to do it.
“Even if it means you’ll die if you don’t?”
Charlotte shook her head. I did not say any more to her about it. I think one of the saddest things about addicts is that they can only be rescued by themselves; no one else can do it for them. They must reach the point when they have suffered more than they can bear and they are forced to do something about it. If they are weak, they will fail and ultimately die. The strong ones can take a lot of misery before they begin the long climb out of the abyss. Sometimes they can take so much pain that they don’t know that they’re dying until it’s too late. It’s such a shame.


Chapter 26

It was all lies, I was sure of it. If the old bastard was coming back to haunt me, why would he wait twenty-five centuries to do it? He had not been a man of patience when he lived, and I saw no good reason why death would change him. The old man was dead and gone, and it is far more likely that his soul suffers the eternal torments of whatever Hell is willing to have him. Charlotte was parroting garbage from Ryerson and she had accidentally stumbled upon my true name and that is all there is to that.
It was time to stop going along and resolve the situation once and for all. If it meant that I had to leave the corpses piled up in my wake then so be it. In the decades since law enforcement and communication became more efficient, I’ve had to learn to be a lot less blood-thirsty in order to avoid detection. The cops were too good at their jobs and it would only be a matter of time before they arrested me and took me away.
There was a time when I would have taken out Ryerson and his entire congregation the second they annoyed me without losing a moment’s sleep over it. And with the body count I was planning on, I would get the death penalty for sure. Wouldn’t it be a hoot that I didn’t die when they stuck the needle in me? I wonder if a second attempt to carry out my death sentence was double jeopardy.
Philosophical legal questions aside, I knew that if I remained passive things would not go my way. I would either end up dead (I admit that possibility felt odd to me) or a gooey mess for some unsuspecting coroner to poke at. It was time to take matters into my own hands and the consequences be damned. After two thousand and five hundred years I know all the best ways to do it. Since murder is easy, and mass murder only slightly more complicated, I decided that there was no time like the present to get started.
I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on after Charlotte let me up off of the floor. My mind was too wrapped up in the horrifying thought of my father coming back from the dead to get me to care what was happening around me. I was vaguely aware of walking through cold patches of air and the odd sensation of something oily caressing my skin. I smelled something indescribably foul, but I was standing in a slum, and such smells are common in places like these. I convinced myself that Charlotte was a fraud and that these little oddities were some of her tricks and kept going. Some days, I’m just that damn thick.
Time became weird and the sunlight turned on the high beams and stabbed at my eyeballs as we reached the bottom of the stairs. I flinched and squinted while the world twisted and spun right. Unbalanced, I grabbed a nearby wall to steady myself while Charlotte called frantically to Baja from her apartment door. I turned to see what had her so worked up and I felt something punch my chest. Gasping for breath, I lifted my hand to the spot where I had been hit, and my fingers came away coated in blood.
Shocked, I was dumbly aware that Kootch and Baja were bellowing, Shaw was yelling my name, and Charlotte was screaming frantically in terror. Popping explosions rang in my ears as bullets flew through the air like a swarm of yellow jackets after the nest had been kicked. There were men dressed in yellow swarmed around me with guns held out in front of them. The barrels flashed with bursts of bright light and pieces of wood burst into the air.
Around the chaos and pain, I finally reached my breaking point and my mind snapped. This was the third time that I had been shot in a week, I had lost count of how many times I had been kidnapped, and I was tired of having to wrap my mind around things that should have stayed in the realms of myth and legend. My mind broke in a haze of red and black that drove all thoughts but murder from my head, leaving me little more than a rabid animal.
I slammed my stiffened fingers into the apple of one man’s throat, felt the small bulge pop, and the man went down. I turned to the next with my teeth bared in a snarl, grabbed his jaw in both hands and broke it with a twist of my palms. Something slammed into me and I hit the wall hard enough to rattle my teeth and drive out what little air I still had in my lungs. I became aware of the pain rushing through my body and the blood filling my mouth as I struggled back onto my feet.
Heedless of my injuries, I screamed my fury and leaped back into the fray, or at least I would have if my legs hadn’t folded underneath me. I slid down the wall and landed hard on my butt. The gunfire ended abruptly, and other than the terrible shrieks of Kootch dying somewhere nearby, everything was silent. A gun pressed painfully under my chin tilting my head up at an awkward angle. Spitting with fury and blood I looked into the face of the one holding it. Of all the crazy fucking bitches in the world, Mabel Fortuno had gotten the drop on me. Gods, my day could not have sucked more.
Gone was the fresh faced innocence, replaced by cold cruelty that twisted her beauty into something ugly. Around her slender throat was a thin gold chain with a damned opal hanging from it. I bellowed my rage at her, promising that no matter what she did, this moment would end with her dismembered.
“You are the loudest fucking bitch I have ever met,” Mabel snarled. She shifted the angle of the gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet severed my windpipe and smashed my spinal cord and rendered me less than useless.
Nothing snaps a woman out of a rabid, homicidal frenzy like being simultaneously paralyzed and suffocated. I flopped uselessly as my neurological signals went haywire from trauma and my lungs wondered why I wasn’t drawing in oxygen. I could only stay slumped against the wall with blood spilling down my front to pool on the cement beneath me. I saw Kootch lying silently on the pavement, his chest rising and falling in frantic beats as the last of his life bled away. I could see an enormous writhing leg that belonged to Baja sticking out near his partner. Shaw had been near the other two but there was no sign of him. I wanted to look around to see if he was okay, but the paralysis lingered and I could only stare straight ahead as Mabel crouched down next to me so she could gloat.
“I cannot believe you didn’t see this coming,” she laughed. “Did you really think that I would ever betray a man as great as Reverend Ryerson? For shit’s sake Rebecca, you’re almost three thousand years old! I would have thought you would have learned how to read people by now. But the Reverend told me that you are stupid and arrogant, and that you would be easy to catch. I thought that maybe this time he had made a serious misjudgment, but he was perfectly right as always.” Mabel cast a careless glance at the dead men around her and shrugged. “Well, maybe you weren’t that easy to corner, but still you really should have seen this coming. Who did you think you were dealing with?”
I had thought that I was dealing with lunatics, and contrary to the claims made in myth and legend, crazy people are notoriously short sighted and that makes them stupid. I wished I could tell her so to stall her long enough for the cops to get here, but my vocal chords had been destroyed by the bullet.
I never heard a whisper of a siren as the surviving men picked me up off of the concrete by my arms and legs and chucked me into a white van and I didn’t have time to wonder about it. My head bounced like a basketball off of a metal floor covered in thin carpet, sending agony through my head and neck. The last thing I saw before I sank into blissful unconsciousness was Mabel laughing triumphantly. This wasn’t my week.
I came back as I was grasped by one of my ankles and pulled toward the open van door. I swallowed and found that my throat was whole and functional once more, and that I could feel the course texture of the carpet along the length of my body. For the first time I was truly thankful that Bres had geased me. If all of this had happened a month ago, I would still be paralyzed and helpless for weeks or even months after what Mabel had done to me. My captors were unaware of my recovery, and I would use it to my advantage.
As the hands grasped my hips, I flipped onto my back and kicked out as hard as I could and connected with a body. The man grunted and pulled back in shock while the rest of the people around him called out in alarm. Desperate to escape while the getting was good, I launched myself into the light and hoped for the best.
I immediately encountered a man with his arms spread wide to grab me, and I punched him in the face. I felt a crunch when I broke his nose and I turned for the clear opening I saw out of the corner of my eye. My escape was quickly thwarted by a woman blocking my path, but I got rid of her with a kick to her gut. I jumped over her curled body and I made my escape.
I was on a short, broad driveway that branched off into two narrow roads that went in opposite directions. Not knowing where I was or where I could find safety, I picked a direction and ran for it. What I had hoped was a road to homes and businesses turned out to be a paved path through a large cemetery. I cussed and swore at my bad luck as I searched a thick line of trees to my left, unaware that there was condos, a grocery store, and a government office on the other side. To my right was nothing but a retention pond and centuries old gravestones that were stained and faded from age and stretched for acres to my right.
Mabel screeched like a harpy for my recapture over the pounding of feet bearing down on me. I dared not to look back to see who was chasing me, and forced more speed into my legs and put all my effort into my burning muscles. Alas, it was not enough. I was tackled from behind by an enormous man and I made a bruising face plant onto the cruel pavement. Driven witless, I lay there while he straddled me and twisted my arms behind my back and held me in a powerful grip. The others caught up seconds later with Mabel berating them violently, calling the people all manner of foul names. A rope bound my wrists and then ankles so tightly that it dug painfully into my skin and cut off the circulation to my hands and feet. Then to add insult to injury, they bent me backwards so that my ankles and wrists could be tied together in a posture that arched my back painfully.
My joints threatened to dislocate as I was lifted carelessly and carried back the way I had come. Praying that there was someone nearby to hear, I screamed fire at the top of my lungs until Mabel produced a rag and jammed it into my mouth. Then because she could, she punched me in the face and laughed.
I was taken down a flight of stairs and into the basement were I was tossed unceremoniously into a small, empty room and left there. For a time I continued to struggle against the ropes, but no matter how I twisted and pulled, I only succeeded in giving myself a nasty burn. Joints aching and my mind exhausted, I sighed wearily, and I closed my eyes and went to sleep.
I awoke to find Mabel was crouched over me with her hands shoved deep into the pockets at the front of my pants. She saw me wake up and she pulled the gag out of my mouth.
“What are you doing?” I asked. My voice was harsh and dry from thirst and enraged screaming.
“Did you wonder how we managed to find you so easily?” Mabel showed me the bronze medallion she had taken off of me. “The Master told us how to make the medallions and how to use them. You see, the ones we left in your apartment were supposed to suck away your energy and make you weak so that you would be easier to catch. But you picked up the ones we had left in the cop’s house, and instead of making you easy to catch, it made the cop want to leave you to your own troubles and go away. But that didn’t work either, probably because that magic was meant for him. But the Master assured us that it didn’t matter in the end, so long as we picked our moment to strike.”
“What do you want?”
“What do you think we want, you moron?” Mabel laughed. “What would anyone want from you?”
“I don’t know. I have money, men, and secrets to the location of many historic objects…”
“Immortality and power,” Mabel finished impatiently for me. “Ryerson says that he can feel how powerful you are just by standing in the same room with you, but I’m not so sure. You can’t get out of those ropes and you were just as helpless as any mortal when I shot your throat out. If you ask me, you’re just as weak and pathetic as anyone else, even if you can’t die.”
“No one is asking you,” I replied, thinking that the girl was an idiot. She was completely unaware of what it meant for a woman my size to have the skills and constitution it took to kill three people with my bare hands. The fact that I can do that makes me very scary to anyone who has half a brain. But I have never gone wrong by letting an enemy underestimate me, so I didn’t bother to correct Mabel. I’d let the twit think what she wanted.
“You know, Shaw did pick up a medallion,” Mabel mused as she idly turned the medallion around in her fingers. “He took one of the ones from your bedroom. It was designed to make you weak and sickly so it would be easier to steal your life when the time came. Since he was the one who carried it, the medallion did its work on him and it had weakened him so much that it was almost embarrassing to see how fast he died.”
“What did you say?” My heart pounded painfully with shock and horror and my breath caught in my throat. I could feel the first cries of grief gather at the back of my throat while I searched Mabel’s face for some sign of a lie. But her features were tranquil and triumphant as she waited for my reaction to the news.
“You didn’t see it happen?” Mabel smiled at my agony and her dark eyes gleamed with joy. “All we had to do was shoot him once and he went down and bled like a stuck pig.” She tittered at her own joke, and continued on. “Personally, I would have thought that a man his size would need a bigger hole to take him out than what he got. If he hadn’t been crying when he did it, there would have been no satisfaction in killing him.” She gave me a searching stare that made her cruel smile so terrible. “We’re you in love with him?”
“I’m going to peel that pretty skin from your bones with my bare hands,” I snarled at her.
Mabel laughed and clapped her hands as if I’d promised her a favor she wanted. “I’ll take that as a yes. I can’t say that I can blame you though. He was a fine piece of ass, even if he wasn’t all that bright.”
She leaned down and ruffled my hair the way a man plays with his dog’s ears. I spat and strained against my bonds to get away from her touch. “I swear that I am going to kill you,” I seethed with so much rage that I spat the words out like poison. “When this is over, I am going to hunt you down and kill you so slowly that it will take years. I will make every second of it a living hell of agony and despair.”
“Well, it won’t be much longer. Reverend Ryerson will have everything arranged by tomorrow night, and he’ll have your immortality and you’ll be dead. Then you won’t have to feel sad anymore.” Mabel was unconcerned by my wrath. She believed that I would never get my hands on her. It didn’t matter in the end. I would show her what it meant to be eternal, and then she would know pain.
I didn’t want to contain the pain after that, and I sank into despair darker than any I had felt in a thousand years. My heart was breaking into a million pieces in my chest and a terrible sob escaped my lips. Where there is one, there is usually more, and soon I was hysterical and mindless in my grief. I cursed myself for letting the man make me love him and for being too stupid to recognize it in time to send him to safety. I eventually sank into fitful dreaming; realizing only then that the wretched music I was hearing was the sound of my own wailing.


Chapter 27

I lay in that little room for I don’t know how long. I don’t recall the details of my prison, though I suspect that there was very little to remember. If it had been me holding an angry immortal in my basement, I would have put her in a small room without windows, furniture, or even carpeting; so I assume that the Divine Inferno did the same. It didn’t matter in the end. I spent the hours dreaming sweetly of Shaw and then waking up to weep in despair for his loss.
I did not see Mabel again, which was just as well. If she had shown her face, I probably would have screamed at her like an animal and accomplished nothing useful. The little girl had gotten the better of me because I was careless and I had forgotten the most important rule of survival. There is always someone smarter, stronger, or more ruthless than I could be, and that I always had to have an escape plan when I encountered them. But I had been too caught up in myself and too distracted by a handsome man with a warm heart to pay attention to the sinister woman hiding behind a face of sweet innocence.
After hours of depressing solitude, my little cell suddenly became rancid with visitors. They came and went in twos and threes; some took clippings of my fingernails and locks of my hair while others washed my face and took small blood samples from my arms. Dorman came in to stare at me as if I was some kind of weird bug and to nudge me with the toe of his shoe. After a few minutes he left me alone, telling the guard at the door to check my ropes every hour to make sure that I couldn’t get away. The man did as he was told, sweating profusely from fear of me as he tugged at my ropes and scurried away.
I endured these small indignities without noticing any of it. It didn’t matter enough to me to do more than recognize that they were happening. I didn’t care what their schemes were. I had lost the battle before I even knew that it was happening and my heart was broken over my lost love. I knew that eventually I would come out of it enough to move on, and I didn’t believe that I could die, not really.
Slowly my thoughts turned to my recent failures, and in the grand tradition of all human beings, I flogged myself with them. How could I have been so blind to the world that I hadn’t noticed that there were faeries and demons wandering around? Why did they wait so long to make me aware of them? How could I have been so stupid? The only answer I could come up with was that I was a victim of my own hubris. I have been arrogant and selfish because I had believed that I was unique in the world and no one and nothing could keep me down. Now time and my newly found supernatural fellows have made a colossal dumb shit out of me. I almost hoped that the Divine Inferno could succeed in their plan to take me out. Maybe then I’d find the peace that old mortals are always going on about.
The door opened and two cult members carrying a semi-conscious man between them staggered in. The man was badly bruised and battered, but even so, I recognized Alejandro right away. His hands were cuffed behind him and his legs and feet dragged listlessly across the floor behind him. The men dropped him as soon as they got all of him into the room and then they turned and left. For a moment I almost felt bad that the poor guy had been sucked into this mess along with me, but then I remembered that he was a Child of Orpheus and that by joining the group he had asked for it. After that, I didn’t give a shit anymore.
“My lady,” Alejandro groaned as he struggled onto his side to look at me. His face was a mess of broken bones and hamburger. Whoever had beaten him had gone to a lot of effort to destroy his looks so that no surgeon, no matter how skilled, could ever repair the damage. He would lose consciousness soon, and then there was a good chance that he would die. “I am so sorry. We were there when you were taken and we didn’t help you because we wanted to be sure of our orders. The Divine Inferno will achieve their goal and Shaw was lost because of it. I’m so sorry.”
I didn’t accept or deny his apologies. In the emotional state I was in, I could barely comprehend his words. Perhaps one day I would bother to make them sensible in my mind and then consider my response. But for now I couldn’t bring myself to care. Alejandro had nothing more to say and he slipped into unconsciousness. A few moments after that, there was another round of cultist visitors who took samples of blood, hair, and nails from him and then were gone.
As I was drifting off into another round of painful dreams of what might have been, Ryerson casually strolled into the cell like he was stopping by for a friendly visit. He smiled warmly and stroked my cheek with the rough tip of his finger as he knelt down beside me. “I want you to know how sorry we are about the loss of your cop friend. I assure you that what happened was an accident. We did not want to see him come to harm.”
“Spare me,” I spat, suddenly enraged that this foul and loathsome creature would dare to mention Shaw to me. “The only reason why you’re sorry is because he was a cop and you didn’t want the entire Atlanta force breathing down your neck before you’ve committed your murders and hidden the evidence.”
Ryerson smiled at me like I was a lovely breed of talking dog that also proved to be semi-intelligent. “Look how smart you are!” he laughed. “I won’t trouble you for very long. I’ve come to make some last minute preparations before your big night.”
He reached into the inner pocket of the suit jacket he wore and withdrew a black opal on a delicate gold chain. It dangled from his fingers, catching the faded light and flashing brilliant colors that twisted and writhed grotesquely within its depths. I cringed in horror, knowing that the foul thing would go around my neck and there was nothing I could do about it. Ryerson slipped the oily stone beneath my shirt and gave my chest a gratuitous pat before he sat back on his heels to give me a greedy smile.
My skin tingled and then burned in small bites where the stone rested in my cleavage and I gagged with pain and revulsion. I wanted to rip my hands free of the rope and claw the thing off of my neck to fling it as far away from me as possible. But the ropes held me fast and shredded my skin raw as I fought to get free, adding physical pain to the agony that already filled my psyche. Defeated, I lay back helplessly and wept, fighting the nausea that burned in my belly.
Ryerson gave one last cruel chuckle. “It will all be over in a couple of hours and then you can rest.”
He whistled a merry tune when he walked away and disappeared, leaving me to weep helplessly and rage at the cruelty of the universe.
“Why don’t you fight?” Alejandro demanded when they came for us. He had managed to claw his way back to reality and came to crying out Shaw’s name and begging for forgiveness. “What is wrong with you?”
I didn’t answer him. I had nothing to say. The cult members were silent and kept their eyes averted from my face as they cut my ropes with box cutters and strapped me into a wheelchair. Despite the severities of his injuries, Alejandro tried to fight but to no avail. He couldn’t do much more that wiggle and kick impotently, but it was enough to frustrate the men. One of them let out an irritated sigh and jammed a thumb into Alejandro’s broken cheekbone and drew a shuddering shriek from him. Woozy and retching from the pain, he was as cooperative as they wanted while they strapped him into the wheelchair.
Night had fallen in the cemetery, though I couldn’t say how many days it had been since my capture. Beyond the funeral home where I was held, the Divine Inferno had placed a massive black altar a few feet from the edges of the cemetery proper. They surrounded it with brass candelabras holding enough red and black candles to fill the nearby retaining pond with melted wax. The altar had been cut from an enormous piece of ebony that had been varnished black and then smoothed and polished so that it reflected the bodies and faces of the crowd gathered around it. The effect screamed of death and hellish mayhem and my instincts kicked back in and I felt cold, bony fingers of terror slowly curl around my heart.
Ryerson wore a long black robe and cowl that he left open to expose his corpse-pale flesh. There were odd marks carved deep into his skin that oozed black in the candlelight. When my escort stopped before the altar, the black opal he was wearing burst to life and glowed in a hideous radiance of putrid light. He smiled brilliantly at the congregation gathered around him, and laughing joyously, he lifted one hand in a signaling gesture.
The people responded by lifting their hands to cup the dark opals in their palms and cast their eyes reverently to the ground. They spoke a bad mix of Latin and Sanskrit that was damn near incoherent and full of mixed metaphors about life and fire. It took me a minute, but I figured out that they were praying to Stolas, begging him to come forth from his Hellish domain and bless them with his presence.
I took it in, thinking that all of it looked like a badly staged scene from a clichéd B-rated horror movie about satanic cults and I giggled hysterically. One would think that and evil death cult would have more taste and imagination than this. No one deserved to die in such tacky surroundings while the chronically stupid filled the audience. I certainly didn’t intend to endure whatever they had planned for me in this venue. I like my torture nice and private, where small shreds of my dignity and my flesh could be spared prying eyes. I wondered how Shaw would react to a sight like this (with bewildered calm) and I burst into tears. Gods I missed him so much.
Alejandro continued to fight for his life. He yelled and struggled violently as three thugs in black robes came forward and hauled him from his wheel chair. For a moment it looked like he might break their hold on him. He bit a chunk from one hand and managed plant an elbow into the groin of another. They grunted as they held him down on the black altar and four more thugs strapped him to it.
The people roared with approval as Ryerson lifted his arms above his head and slowly turned in a circle, proudly displaying his manhood for all to see. The congregation cheered wildly and I wished that he would put that thing away. It was pitiful. No wonder the man was on a power trip. He had to over compensate for his little dinky doo.
“Bring forth the objects!” he called. I suddenly remembered the treasures Finvarra had gone out of his way to send me after and I finally made the connection. The Divine Inferno intended to twist the purpose of these magical objects to something dark and evil.
A dumpy, middle-aged woman brought out a long slender pole of orange alder wood with a thick bag of oiled leather tied around one end. A young woman in her twenties followed closely behind with a short sword that had an elaborately carved ivory handle and a heavily tooled leather sheath. It took three large men with significant muscle mass to wrestle an enormous bronze cauldron embossed with Celtic images of smiling faces large enough to fit a grown man to the front of the altar.
The middle-aged woman presented the spear Areadbhar to Ryerson with a smile and graceful bow, and then retreated with an awkward bow. He whipped the sack off of the end of the weapon and a raging blaze exploded from a long, slender blade that glowed as if it had just been birthed from a raging forge. The thing sparked as he brandished it over his head, and the crowd’s screams of approval turned to shrieks of terror as the sparks became streaks of light and lashed into the crowd.
Ryerson’s eyes danced at the carnage and he twirled the raging weapon in his hands and plunged it down into the center of Alejandro’s chest. The man let out a piercing scream that went on for long agonizing seconds before dwindling into a terrible wail of despair. I gaped in open-mouthed astonishment as Ryerson fought with both hands to pull Areadbhar from Alejandro as the spear drank hungrily of his fluids.
With a cry, Ryerson pulled the spear free and plunged the greedy blade to the shaft in a plastic bucket full of poppy seeds. Areadbhar fell still then, showing no sign of the magical weapon it had been seconds ago. The girl’s wide eyes bulged with fear as she stepped tentatively forward and offered the sword Claiomh Solais balanced reverently on the tips of her fingers. Ryerson snatched it from her and pulled the shining blade from its sheath in a smooth motion and raised it over his head in a two handed grip with the point down.
Alejandro was well into his death throes as he faced the blade. He turned his head to look at me with the light fading in his battered eyes and mouthed three words to me, “I’m so sorry.”
Ryerson began to chant, pulling Alejandro’s wavering attention back to him. The rhythm of the chant increased with every word until Ryerson was reciting it with tongue twisting speed and he bellowed mightily at the top of his lungs. Suddenly, Charlotte appeared at the corner of my eye, dressed in a robe of gold that was opened in the front to expose her naked body underneath.
She chanted in Uralic, the language I knew as a child, reciting the old spells created to summon spirits. Her voice overlapped Ryerson’s in a deadly song, the tones and rhythms twisting into terrible, beautiful music devoted to an ungodly creature and bring it forth.
Ryerson reached the end of his chant and plunged the shining blade of the Sword of Light into the midline of Alejandro’s face and then split the corpse down the middle with a stroke so easy that Ryerson might have been cutting butter. I screamed my horror and rage as a wisp of cloudy white lifted from the twitching corpse and went to Charlotte’s hand like it was on strings. Charlotte closed her eyes and held out the jewel to the newly freed soul, and the little bit of light that had been the man who had shadowed me for two years was drawn into the colors writhing within the stone and trapped there forever.
Charlotte continued to chant as two men released the straps holding Alejandro to the altar and stepped away. Disdainful of the life he had taken, Ryerson shoved the mutilated corpse off of the ebony altar to fall into the bronze cauldron with a splash of dark ale. He seized the spear again, and used the butt to completely submerge Alejandro for long minutes. The air rang with the perfect silence of the gathered crowd and Charlotte’s voice rose to greater heights as everyone waited with baited breath to see what would happen next. Charlotte moved to Ryerson’s side and bent over the cauldron to immerse her left hand into it and touch the body. The opal spun back and forth on its golden chain, the colors within it growing brighter and brighter until it was painful to look at.
A warm breeze moved over my skin like a bloated slug, bringing with it a whiff of new rot and old decay. I gagged and coughed against it, refusing to submit to the weakness of my body. My burning, tearing eyes opened when I heard the pound of flesh against metal, and I saw Ryerson and Charlotte step away from the cauldron. Alejandro rose from the depths of dark liquid of his own accord, his wounds healed and his flesh smooth and unblemished. He lifted his arms up in jubilation and laughed at the heavens before he climbed awkwardly over the lip and addressed me with my father’s icy grey eyes.
“Hello daughter,” he hissed at me with the cruel, familiar accent of my father carried by the body’s mellow voice. My father’s voice had been harsh and gravelly when I had known him, and the sound could not be reproduced by the new vocal cords. “It has been far too long since the last time we spoke. Come to me that I might embrace my most precious child again.”
I flew into a wild panic of spitting and bellowing curses as I fought the bonds holding me to the chair. I bit and kicked anything that got close enough to me, and screamed wordlessly as tears of terror streamed down my cheeks. I would not have that thing touch me and speak the small cruelties that I thought I had left behind when I walked away from Budapest. When the fighting did not work, I wept and begged like a cowardly thing as my father walked toward me with his new arms out stretched.

Chapter 28

I was stiff with terror as my father held me hard against his chest in a crushing embrace. My heart pounded with terror as the familiar scents of leather, dirt, and unwashed flesh beneath the rich flavor of fine Irish ale washed over me like a tide of filth. For a moment my crazed mind became coherent enough to marvel that Alejandro’s body smelled like my father now that the loathsome soul inhabited it. Despite all appearances of life, the creature holding me was still a corpse. I fought and pushed against the cold, rubbery feel of his skin and muscle and gagged in revulsion at being gripped by the dead.
“Be still,” he hissed in my ear with old dead words. The voice was warping and changing into the ancient tones that had once given me nightmares whenever I heard it. I wondered how long it would be until I stared into a face that was wholly transformed.
“What do you want from me?” I whimpered pathetically. It didn’t matter that the face filling my vision was Alejandro’s; all I could see was the dreaded visage of the man who made my childhood a living hell.
“I want the immortality you stole from me!” he snarled and then dragged me toward the altar.
“I didn’t steal it from you!” I wailed and dug my heels into the soft earth to keep from going forward. I had stopped the useless pummeling with my fists and put all of my energy into simply getting away. Snarling, he shook me so hard that my brains felt as if they were rattling around in my skull, and I collapsed into a puddle of piteous cries.
Rough hands picked me up and hoisted me onto the altar. I screamed and fought, using every dirty trick I had learned over the long years. I bit and spit and kicked; I tore hair and shredded skin until my fingernails broke. But there were too many hands that were stronger than mine, and they didn’t seem to feel pain. I got no reaction from them as they pressed me to the cold surface and forced me to be still.
The crowd roared all around me until my ears throbbed from the sound. The noise was quickly dulled by Charlotte’s shrill voice as she leaned over me to chant a new spell. The wind whirled and tore at the hoods of the men holding me down, baring their faces and exposing the eager light in their dark cavernous eyes. The vague smell of rot grew profoundly, so that I was sickened by it in the midst of my hysteria.
Ryerson chanted along with Charlotte, adding his strength to the cloying magic. The words blasted through my skull and stripped me of my senses. I fought it as best I could, but to my dismay, I learned that there are somethings that cannot be defended against. Suddenly, the circle of malicious, eager faces withdrew and I found myself staring up at the demon spear Areadbhar clutched in Ryerson’s sweaty hands. It felt as if I was staring into the eyes of some predatory creature and I was its favorite prey.
I screamed as Areadbhar went up and then crashed down, shattering my sternum and piercing my heart and lungs. Terrible pain wracked my chest and then spread in electric streaks along my limbs as Areadbhar drew my blood into its blade like a dying man sucking at water. Ryerson snarled as he wrestled with the greedy spear to remove it from my body, twisting it one way and then another until it felt as if my insides had been put through a shredder.
I struggled to breath, to move, to do anything but lie compliantly on the altar and suffer bitterly. But I was trapped, weak and useless until they decided to let me go. For the first time in my life I realized what it meant to die and that I have done enough wrong in my life that my afterlife might mean that I might suffer this terrible pain forever. I was afraid. I made promises to any god that would have me that I would serve them faithfully if only they took me into paradise.
I was grateful when Ryerson gave up trying to pull the spear from me. It eased my pain somewhat, and for a frantic moment I thought I might live through this. But he took Claiomh Solais in his hands and raised it over my belly to strike. This was it; the end of the road. There would be no more of this pain once this last stroke fell, and I could move on to meet my maker and learn my ultimate fate.
The short sword came down, and I was exposed to agony worse than any I had ever felt before, and that includes the time I was tossed into a volcano. It was as if I was burning and freezing at the same time while I was being stripped, one layer of flesh at a time. Unable to process the sensations coursing through my body, my mind succumbed to the numbing shock that blessedly washed over me.
All at once the fear, rage, and grief that had filled me was gone. They had been replaced by relief and an overwhelming sense of peace. I was lighter that I had been before, as if I was a tiny sparrow who could take wing on a whim and soar through the endless blue sky. I looked down at the mess that had been my body and I felt…nothing. I marveled at my sudden change in status and wondered if all mortals went through this when they died, or if these sensations were unique to me and the circumstances of my death.
I calmly took in the scene below me as Ryerson cast the sword aside and went back to trying to wrench Areadbhar from my body. He pulled with every ounce of strength he possessed to get it free, but it refused to budge. Curious, I peered closer and saw that my body was healing the wounds inflicted upon it even though I was no longer in it. The chest resumed its up and down movement, pushing red fluid out of the mouth as it drew oxygen into the damaged lungs. Even without my soul to steer it, the body would continue to live forever. How very odd.
My father moved to help Ryerson with the spear, shoving the man roughly aside to stand upon the altar and grip the pole in his hands. He pulled hard, his face turning toward the sky in his tremendous effort to dislodge it from the body, and showing me a mean and haggard countenance superimposed over Alejandro’s handsome features. As if the information was whispered in my ears, I knew that this manifestation of my father meant that his soul was not yet permanently attached to his new body. It was still possible to dislodge him. The trouble was that I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to try.
Areadbhar came loose with a pop, sending my father flailing from the altar to land in the dirt below. People rushed to help him, only to have him stab them viciously for their efforts. The survivors scattered in fear of their lives, and that’s when I saw the strange shadows clinging to their backs. I made out twisted limbs stretching out from the vague bodies as spiteful eyes of red, green, and yellow glared up at me and hissed.
At that I was ready to leave all of this behind and go on my way, but Charlotte brandished the Sword of Light and called to my spirit, naming me Rebecca Calden instead of using my true name. That surprised me. I had expected that either my father or the woman would give up my true name and use it against me. But that small triumph was short lived as I watched a dark, shadowy hand reach for me from the opal the woman held in her hand and grasp blindly for me.
The thing was blind and moved weakly, making it easy to elude. The sense of peace I had been enjoying was gone as I watched the flailing thing. There was bad magic with its demonic intent so clear that I could feel its evil pushing against my spirit like a greedy child in a temper. It was pitiful. Why wasn’t Charlotte wasn’t using my true name against me? Why hadn’t my father given it to Ryerson?
“Listen to me Rebecca.” Charlotte’s thin voice whispered to me from deep hidden place inside my spirit. “I have not given them your true name so that we might prevent what will happen. Your blood tie to your father made it impossible to block you from his consciousness entirely, but I managed to wipe your name from his memory. When I give the word, I will release you and you must retake your body. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
In the chaos caused by the magic at the altar in their midst, the common members of the Divine Inferno had fallen into a violent religious fervor, jumping and milling about desperately. They paused in their frenzy every few moments to turn on a fellow and rip him limb from limb. Then they tossed the gory pieces at the altar as an offering to the thing they were trying to summon. Old experience told me that when worshipers did this, they were hoping that the flesh and blood of their own would make the summoned beast more powerful.
As I watched this horror, I was suddenly aware of the perfection of the circle of men, women, and children that surrounded the altar with a few meek individuals clustered in small groups at compass points around them. No matter how they milled and lashed out at one another, the symbol they created with their bodies remained intact as if there was some barrier keeping them in place. The stands of candles I had noticed earlier served as punctuation for the protective circle made of living bodies, directing the power contained in their lives to its ultimate purpose. Aside from the obvious purpose of protection and focus, I could not translate the spells underlying intent. But I had no doubt that there was some great and evil purpose beneath the simple spell.
The shadow hand saw the opportunity my distraction provided and seized me. Bitter cold blasted through me as I pulled frantically against it. With agonizing slowness, it drew me closer to the opal that Charlotte held out before her. The stone’s appearance had altered, with the swirling colors changed to hundreds of souls twisting and struggling against each other in a futile attempt to get free of their torment.
In my horror I forgot Charlotte’s promise to let me go, and I cast about for something, anything I could use to keep from being sucked into the hell of the opal. Ryerson pushed my body into the cauldron and then quickly fished it back out again and placed it back on the altar. At the sight of my unblemished form, the crowd went into a hideous frenzy, lifting their opals in unison and uttering a single word in a roar that could rend the heavens, “Stolas!”
Several feet away, a great fissure appeared in the air and opened on Finvarra’s throne room. The Morrigan Mob led by Morrigan herself poured out of it and sped toward the gathered crowd. The people turned to face the onslaught with mouths contorted into snarls and their bare hands curled into fists. They held true as the Fey women and Far Dorocha slammed into their ranks. The cult front lines yielded only a few centimeters to their assault, stubbornly refusing to be cowed to the death pouring down on them. Cruelly, the Faeries cut into the humans, killing all they faced in an effort to break their lines and get to Ryerson and Charlotte. Their efforts did little as Ryerson’s inner circle took positions at the points of an invisible pentagram and began to recite spells against them.
Mab and another faerie woman fell to the ancient magic being used against them, clutching their bellies and spitting curses. Grabbing rocks and using them with deadly force, the humans bludgeoned the fallen until their heads opened and they became still. Then they lifted the corpses and threw them against the altar, adding their bodies to the pile of their brethren.
A great shadow appeared over my body sprawled upon the altar, and in a swirling of a foul wind, it coalesced into a grotesque owl nearly identical to the one that had attacked me in the hotel room. It was bigger and thicker than the other had been, with scaled flesh stretched over the hooked beak and twisted, bony fingers protruding from battered feathers on bent wings to reach covetously for my body.
The idea of a demon possessing my immortal body sent a thrill of terror through my entire being. There was no telling what horror would befall the world if such a creature was allowed to become indestructible. I fought the hand drawing me ever closer to Charlotte, begging the other souls within the stone to help me. The spirits heard me and stopped fighting each other and turned their violence upon the hand that held me.
Suddenly, Morrigan lost all patience with the humans and she pointed at the people in front of her. She unleashed a bolt of electricity into their midst, while Far Dorocha left her side to plunge into the throngs with hands full of long, curved blades. Morrigan’s sisters Badb and Nemain followed him into the screaming masses and helped him cut a bloody swath through the circle. Bellowing angrily, Ryerson urged Stolas to take my flesh while Charlotte silently urged me to wait a few more seconds.
Seeing that Morrigan and her sisters were making progress through the congregation, my father lifted Areadbhar in his hands and charged them. Far Dorocha met him and they exchanged blows that ended when my father stabbed the faerie through his side. Areadbhar drank in the blood of the fallen Fey and sang for more. At that moment, two dozen men dressed in black Kevlar vests with the word SWAT written in white upon their backs burst onto the scene with guns in their hands.
A solitary figure split from the rest of the group and charged the circle on the other side from the place where the Mob had attacked the circle. He held a handgun in his left hand while his right arm glowed with an eerie light from shoulder to fingertip. As he streaked closer to the milling circle, a horde of the clinging shadows separated from their cult hosts and converged on the man running toward them. He braced himself for their attack, pulling his right arm back to defend himself.
His fist connected with the first of the fearsome shadows and ignited it in a white blaze that arched like lightening to its fellows behind. The creatures were incinerated in seconds, leaving the man blinking in surprise at the ease in which he had destroyed his enemies. The humans that had fostered the beasts turned and screamed their fury at the man, and they broke the circle to exact their revenge. The man lifted his gun and shot each of them once, aiming low and hitting their hips and legs rather than killing them outright. The humans fell to the ground and howled with pain and rage, but none of them moved to stop him as he ran past to deal with the rest.
Trying to get control, the SWAT leaders surrounded the crowd, and demanded that everyone get on the ground when everything fell to shit. Enraged by the loss of her Dark Man, Morrigan blasted the circle with fire and wind, cutting a channel through the bodies and breaking the circle in a second place. With the protective spell fragmented, and the focus for the magic lost, the crowd screamed in horror and ran in all directions. The earth lurched and buckled, throwing faeries and cops to their knees. Stolas plunged into my poor body and thrust upright with a scream of triumph and turned on Ryerson. With one hand, Stolas broke Ryerson’s neck with an easy twist of my wrist and tossed him aside like trash.
“Now, take back your body and drive Stolas out!” Charlotte released her hold on me and ran for it. She reached the retention pond as it exploded in gouts of water and fire that drove her to her knees and left her screaming in agony. The earth opened and sucked at the dirt and rocks beneath her. She uttered a final bloodcurdling scream and then she was consumed. I rushed back to my flesh and began a furious battle with the demon trying to take up residence inside of it.
There are no words that can accurately describe the disorientation that comes with demonic possession. I was blind and filled with the sensation of being smothered and consumed at the same time. I struggled to breath and move, but I could not do either. I heard the hideous voice of Stolas demanding that I give way to him. I refused, though I would have fouled my pants if I had been capable of doing so. He slashed me with razor sharp talons and left wounds upon my soul rather than my body, until I felt as if I would die of it. Still I made a battle of it, refusing to abandon what had been mine for over two millennia and trusted that my familiar bond of flesh and spirit would be enough to drive the demon out.
I do not know if my efforts prevailed, or if it had been the intervention of one of the Morrigan Mob, or if police officer who had gotten lucky and accidentally drove the demon out. Relishing the feel of my flesh around me, my eyes fluttered open and stared up at the face in front of me. I saw a pair of electric blue eyes and thick, wavy brown hair that was streaked by the sun. A bandage had been taped to his forehead over his right eye. “They told me you were dead.”
“I’m not dead.” Shaw assured me with a warm smile.
Hysterical with the joy that he was alive, I flung my arms around Shaw to weep and babble into his neck. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” I cried while he chuckled at me and patted my back with one hand. It took more of an effort than was pretty, but he managed to pry me off of him and set me on my feet.
“We have to get you to safety,” he said. “All Hell is breaking loose.”
He meant that literally. What could only be described as a Hell Mouth had opened up where the retaining pond had been, and it was vomiting up balls of colored light, winged imps, laughing demons, and screaming spirits. Fire flared up and down from the pit, belching gouts of brimstone and sulfur into the air.
Cult members were fleeing for their lives, getting slaughtered by the cackling members of the Morrigan Mob, or being pounced upon and possessed by demons. The cops were doing what they could to stem the chaos, but they were fighting a losing battle. A few of them fell to the demons as well, and they had to be put down when they started killing their fellows. Anyone not running for their lives or dying was praying frantically to whatever deity that came to their minds.
Standing at the edges of the fear and death was my father, glaring dark eyes full of murder. Mabel Fortuno appeared and stood beside him with her arm through his as she gave me a haughty smirk. Now that Ryerson was dead, she had attached herself to another man she thought would give her power, and she was welcome to him. My father was far more cruel than Ryerson had been, and I could not think of a more fitting fate for her than the misery my father would pile upon her lovely head. My father still had Areadbhar in his hand and he lifted it to me in a deadly promise that I would see him again. I returned the gesture with a silent promise to send him back to Hell where he belonged. Then the pair turned and they disappeared into the madness.
Not to be left out of what was the most significant supernatural event in history, The Children of Orpheus and the Conservatoris made their belated entrance. The Children dove right into the chaos, rescuing cultists and cops alike and taking them to safety. The Conservatoris took on the demons in battle, chanting Biblical scripture and shooting anything that wasn’t human with squirt guns filled with holy water. It looked silly but it worked, except when they came up against a rather large and furious beast that gobbled up two of their men. They used real bullets on that thing, and it sullenly retreated back into the hole it had crawled out of.
Soon the Children and the Conservatoris had things in hand well enough that the cops were back in control. They followed their training as they sorted witnesses from suspects and pretended that the great big, demon spewing hole wasn’t there. They called every available ambulance in the city, though the paramedics wisely refused to get close to the Hell Mouth for any reason. So the police and the Children took the dead and dying to them. Dozens of fire engines arrived soon after so that firefighters could stare at the fiery Hell Mouth in horrified astonishment as they wondered how they were going to deal with it. Every newspaper and TV news channel in north Georgia had caught wind of what was happening, and there were dozens of reporters and camera men standing around and gawking at everything like beached fish.
Shaw and I quietly moved across the cemetery to the trees that made up its borders.
“Where are we?” I wondered aloud as we hurried quietly along.
“We’re in the Old Decatur Cemetery,” Shaw replied sounding weary and numb. “It’s supposed to have graves dating all the way back to the Revolutionary War. It’s beautiful during spring when the trees are in full bloom. I’ll have to bring you here to see it sometime, when there isn’t a gateway to Hell in the middle of it.”
I looked at the headstones as we passed them and found that they had all fallen over in the earthquakes, with the dirt blown out of the pits to reveal empty, rotted coffins. Stunned by the desecration, I saw that every grave had been emptied with no sign of their owners. I briefly flirted with the idea that we should do something about that, but then three fat tentacles rolled out of the Hell Mouth to slap angrily at Morrigan and a small herd of reporters that had gotten too close and I decided that it was a good time to go home.
I had every faith that the Fey would eventually get the Hell Mouth under control, and if they failed then there were all manner of priests, ministers, and bishops within easy reach of the area. This is Atlanta and you can’t swing a dead cat in this town without hitting a religious leader. One of them is bound to know what to do about a giant sinkhole of death. It’s what they’re here for.
In the meantime, I was as tired as I have ever been in my entire life, and I could feel every wound and bruise I had suffered over the last eight days. All I wanted to do was go home and shower, grab a bite to eat, and then spend the night in Shaw’s arms and never let him out of my sight again.


Epilogue

As it would turn out, Ryerson and Charlotte had managed to raise every corpse in the Old Decatur Cemetery as zombies. However, they didn’t seem inclined to eat brains or throttle virgins as they were prone to do in movies and folklore. Instead they wandered stiffly around town and wondered what was going on. Those that had died before the car had been invented screamed in terror at the vehicles as they drove by, and they gathered around light bulbs like giant moths to marvel at the wonder of electricity. When they finally understood that they were dead, those that had been Revolutionary soldiers took to calling dead Confederates traitors and then the two groups brawled in the streets over it. The incidents got gross when they realized they could rip each other’s arms off and use them as weapons.
The Hell Mouth is still open, though it seems that everything that was inclined to escape had done so when it opened. The fact that it had gone quiet didn’t keep the local religious leaders from trying to exorcise it. The hordes of Christian faiths made the attempts first, and when they failed, the Rabbis stepped in. Sure enough, they couldn’t make the Hell Mouth do anything either, and the Muslims gave it their best to no effect. In a last ditch effort they joined forces, even going as far as to allow the Hindus and Pagans to add their efforts, but nothing worked. Now they take turns praying over it to make sure anything lurking down there stayed put.
As for the demons that did get out, they have taken up residence wherever they could. Many have grabbed human hosts, or are squatting in basements and attics to plot their mischief. Some have turned out to be quite repentant of the crimes that put them in Hell in the first place and are doing volunteer work helping the homeless. It isn’t going very well. The rest have developed an affinity for petty street crime and are rapidly taking over all the gangs that plague Atlanta.
Not surprisingly, church attendance and conversion is higher than America has ever seen. The appearance of creatures spoken of only in religious books tends to bolster the faith a great deal, and everyone is keen to see what Heaven is like. Despite demonic efforts otherwise, all but the worst of gang members have quit the life and are working hard on staying on the straight and narrow and all other crime is dwindling down to nothing. There’s nothing like seeing Hell to make you reconsider your priorities.
The faeries have decided to remain in the open, rather than return to their hidden Mounds. Finvarra even appeared on TV to announce that his people were real, and that they were here to stay. He answered a few questions, yelled at a child until she cried for asking if he knew Tinkerbelle, managed a few rude comments about Peter Pan, and kissed the mayor’s wife full on her mouth. No one knew what to do about that, so they all murmured, “Bless your heart” and waited for him to go away. There are recent reports that gun related pixie fatalities have already reached catastrophic proportions, but no one knows if that is a good thing or not. All I can say is that pixies spew glitter everywhere when you shoot them.
For a while the Atlanta police department was at a loss over what to do when they encountered brawling zombies, a demon dressed like a bad rapper, or a faerie who thought no meant yes. Most of the trouble came from wondering how many of the creatures could kill them with a look, or whether or not there seemed to be a cultural misunderstanding somewhere and they were about to get sued out of their jobs. They quickly got over that and started treating the non-humans the same as any belligerent human. They tazered suspects when necessary and carted them off to jail. They did start shooting big holes into the demons without warning though. They learned that the creatures got high from being zapped into twitchy goo and would gleefully maul a cop to get their fix.
Somehow the Children of Orpheus have managed to put themselves exactly where they wanted. After the dust settled and people could poke their heads out of their houses again, the Governor awarded the Great Bard, several ranking members, and most of the Conservatoris medals for their ‘heroic efforts’. Then Howard managed to convince local leaders that he had a special relationship with the supernatural and would be useful in the future. They promptly installed him as a liaison between humans and everything else and handed over the funding to start a whole government department for his purpose. He calls me about once a week to talk me into joining the Children and to listen to me tell him to fuck off. I really do not like him.
The Conservatoris are still with the Children, though they have assumed the responsibility of shadowing me around after I maced the last Child I caught following me into blindness. I ignore them for the most part, but I do enjoy having them arrested on drug charges when I’m bored. They spend their free time hanging out with the Archbishop and giving seminars on the differences between the Faerie and demons while warning folk that the Fey got violent if you mistook them for the latter.
Turns out that Mabel had shot Shaw in the head during the fight at Charlotte’s apartment. He’d gone down and would have died if Bridgett hadn’t intervened. She magically grabbed him from wherever she had been and she had healed him of his injury. So when Alejandro told me that he had lost him, he had meant exactly that. Shaw had disappeared, and Alejandro didn’t know where he had gone or why.
After refusing the Children’s offer to join their ranks, Shaw left the police force to open his own security agency, and business was good. Since he was the closest thing that Atlanta had to a supernatural expert, he was on permanent retainer with various agencies. He received occasional calls when someone’s pretty daughter disappeared in the night, or a mother found an ugly baby sleeping in her child’s crib. Between strange kidnappings and infrequent curses, he was often in the homes of the wealthy, giving them tips on how to keep leprechauns out. Apparently the buggers have decided that credit cards will get them all the gold they want and will steal them the second a human back is turned. His ex-wife Edith managed to remain calm enough to let Shaw explain why the kids had been left on the porch for hours that fateful night. Whether for her children’s sake, or because Shaw offered her a bigger chunk of child support, she decided to let their custody agreement stand without a fight.
The Faith of the Divine Inferno is wholly extinct now. Ryerson and all five of his inner circle were found dead near the altar with their necks broken. They sat at the morgue for several months before it was decided that no one was coming forward to claim the bodies. Now all six reside in pauper’s graves at an undisclosed cemetery. The few who managed to survive the Hell Mouth and escaped demonic possession were tried for conspiracy, terroristic threats, murder, accessory, and pretty much anything else the cops could come up with. Most of them went to prison for a very long time, but there were a few who got to go home and rebuild their lives.
As for me, things aren’t as bad as they could be, but they certainly aren’t as good as they had been. While I’m not locked in a secret laboratory and suffering through cruel experiments, I’m not enjoying the quiet life I once enjoyed. As it would turn out, an ambitious investigative reporter had been contracted by a popular national news program to infiltrate The Faith of the Divine Inferno and film a shocking expose about them. The reporter had managed to sneak a video camera into several worship services, as well as the sacrament designed to give my body to a powerful demon. The network took one look at his footage and gave him a two hour show to display fantastic images that included a clear shot of my mutilated body and my subsequent survival. The show caused a media frenzy that had me and my neighbors trapped in our homes as reporters camped out in the parking lot and waited for a glimpse of me or a word from them.
A quick call from my lawyer’s office convinced them that it was unconstitutional for anyone to harass or discriminate against me because I couldn’t die. The Supreme Court quickly agreed (although more than one judge wanted to pester me with questions about my personal history) and they forbade any agency, both government and private, from bothering me with the intent of learning my secret to immortality.
After I sued three news outlets for everything they’ve got, the media found someone else to stalk. Shortly afterwards, the Department of Immigration discovered that I’d come to the United States illegally a hundred and eighty-four years ago and they came calling. My lawyers are currently in negotiations with the Justice Department in an attempt to convince them to grant me full citizenship. If they fail, they’ll ship me back to Hungary. If they win, I’ll have to pay an ass-load in back taxes for all the years I’ve lived in the country. I’m not sure which way I want it to go. I’m left alone for the most part, but I do have to beat the crap out of the occasional foreign or domestic agent that sneaks into my house at night to get tissue samples.
I did manage to get Shaw into my bed and get things done right. No, I won’t give any more details. My mother told me that only whores brag about their men, and I haven’t been paid for sex in centuries. I’ll simply say that a good time was had by all, and he sleeps over more often than not. Shaw still hasn’t told me that he loves me or even acknowledged that I had screamed it at him first. He seems happy to let the issue lie and gives me a wary look every time I try to bring it up. I’ve decided that it doesn’t matter in the end; Shaw’s mortality guarantees that I’ll get screwed no matter how things turn out.
I haven’t seen my father or Mabel yet, but sometimes when I come home from a night out or a long trip, I’ll find that the dishes in my cupboard have been moved or a dead possum in my sink. The dishes were all Mabel. As vicious as she was, she was still a child and would pull petty tricks until she figured out something better. However, the gifts of dead animals had my father’s stink all over them.
I got the message the dead possums were meant to convey. He knew where I lived, and he could come and get me any time he wanted. That was fine with me. The man had haunted me for centuries, and I had been running from him and his memory long enough. I began a routine of checking my weapons every day and making sure I had a plan for every possibility. I would be ready when the day arrived and I would finally be rid of that son-of-a-bitch. It didn’t matter that he was already dead; even a zombie knew that the thing my father had become could still be destroyed if I chopped him into enough pieces and set him on fire.
All I have to do was wait, and I can wait a very long time.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 15.01.2011

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