Fierce Lessons (Ghosts & Demons Series Book 3) (8 page)

The short sword was the equal of Excelsior in artistry. “Thank you, Merlin.”

“My gift to you, thoroughly blessed with all my power soaked through every inch of the steel. It will serve you well when the demons come. You prefer the katana to the broadsword, I know. However, the history in these blades will give you the power you need.”

The steel was ornate. Dragons and tigers chased each other down the blade to the tip. I cut the air with a couple of test strokes. The weighted pommel balanced the blade perfectly, making it easy to swing. It was an exquisite weapon and not what I expected from a broadsword at all.

“Ready to get going and save the day now?”

“That’s what I do. Or try to do. Still don’t like you.”

“Victor will give you all the resources you need, including the box to hold my old friend. I have already arranged it with him. He understands my predicament and would rather have me dead and happy than throwing in with demons.”

I began to head back toward the door. “Is there a way to get out of here without a long cold swim?”

“Not that way,” Merlin called. “You can take the ladder from the kitchen straight up to the armory. There’s a freight elevator, too. That leads to the second level of the underground parking garage.”

“Why didn’t Anguloora send me down here using that? I
drowned
, for God’s sake!”

“No,” the old wizard said. “You drowned for my sake. I had to be sure you were the right one to send. You demonstrated sufficient commitment to the cause, so thank you.”

“Next time you want a commitment from me, let’s just spit in our palms and shake on it.”

“You had Chumele’s prediction. You knew I’d come. You didn’t have to test me further.”

The old magician sighed. “You know all those email scams? The ones from thieves claiming to be Nigerian princes offering to split ill-gotten gains with anyone who will answer their email? Pay a small fee, give up some information and they bilk the innocent and the greedy?”

“Yeah. What’s your point?”

“They are all written using atrocious, awkward grammar. It is apparent at a glance that the email is a scam, correct?”

“Sure.”

“The easily spotted ploy is part of the design of the deception. The letters are written so it is obvious to any reasonably intelligent person that it is a scam. But the grifters don’t want to snag smart people with their tomfoolery. They are searching out the idiots who will actually send them money. The dumber the letter, the better it acts as a screening device and the greater their chance of success. They only want to deal with stupid people.”

“Can I get a nap between here and the end of this conversation?”
 

He laughed. “Iowa. You see yourself as a force for good. I see you as strong enough for the task and dumb enough to want to make the attempt. Finding your way to me is how I know you are the right person for the job ahead.”

“Dumb as King Arthur. Great.”

“What the Arthurian legend leaves out is that anyone unworthy to hold the sword was tortured when they tried to hold it. Knowing they’d die if they weren’t the chosen one stopped many unworthy cowards from trying their hand at it.
You
are my champion.”

“Don’t go anywhere until I get back.” I began the long climb up to a trap door in the armory.

As I pulled myself up the ladder with my new sword on my back, Merlin called up from his pit of despair. “If you fail me, I’ll open a rift right into the middle of the Ra, right down here. The battle demons will boil into the Keep like wasps from a broken hive! Do not take long. I have waited long enough!”

Lesson 166:
When doing the right thing feels this wrong, you’re already screwed.

11

W
hen I got to the room I shared with Manhattan at the Keep, I found a small scabbard hanging from the doorknob. Bad timing. I knocked anyway.

I heard rustling and a giggle.

“Manny?”

“I’m in the Delta quadrant, Iowa. Come back later!”

I spoke through the door. “I need to talk to you.”

“Is it an emergency?”

“I died today,” I said.

“Are you dying right now?”

I knocked harder. “Manhattan! I’m getting you out of greasing tanks and taking you to a place where there are palm trees. At least, I think they have palm trees.”

I heard a thump as her feet hit the floor.

She yanked the door open. Manny wore a neon yellow tank top, but backwards, so the cotton scooped under her bare boobs. “Dude! Palm trees? For real?”

I looked at the ceiling. “Um…yup. We’ve got a mission and I’m leading it. Are you in?”

“If you aren’t joking about the palm trees…and I guess you do sort of owe me considering I got demoted today for defending your honor and all that.”

I glanced down for a moment, marveling at how far her brown nipples stuck out. I checked the hallway to make sure no one else was around. “I was thinking you’d owe me for getting you out of the kind of trouble you hate and into the kind of trouble you like.”

“Who else is on the team?”

“I’ve got some ideas, but I need a consult. Meet me in C&C.”

“How soon?”

“How soon can you ditch your playmate and get your armor on? I need Wil on this, for sure, but we need to pick out some Magicals. I’m sure Victor will have some ideas.”

Manny opened the door another few inches and turned on the light. Wilmington waved from under the covers of Manny’s bed. Then she pulled the blanket over her head and waved me away.

“Something wrong, Iowa?” Manny asked.

“No. It’s just that I’ve never seen you without,” — I glanced down again despite myself, — “your glasses on. And that’s like the smuggest smirk on your face.”

“In my family, we’re famous for our smuggiest smirkfests.”

I leaned close to whisper, “You know she’s got a fiancé back in Vermont.”

“Yeah,” Manny said. “But I’m here now and we could all die tomorrow. Gotta grab the happy now while we can.”

I turned to go.

“Hey!” she called after me. “Where’d you get the cool sword? That’s not standard issue!”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Get going. It’s been a long day and I only want to tell this story once.”

I found Victor Fuentes sitting on his Swiss ball by his desk in Command and Control. He wore pajamas and a silk and velvet smoking jacket.

“Good evening, Iowa,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“I hear you have a magic box that can hold a demon named Chronos.”

“You’ve been speaking with Merlin.”

“How long has this been in the works?”

Victor tilted his head back and forth in a noncommittal gesture. “Told you I was working on a plan. We had to wait until the time finally came. I guess that’s now.”

Manhattan and Wilmington arrived. Manny’s hair still looked mussed.

“Brief us on what you know,” Victor said. “Then we’ll fill in the gaps.”

Leaning on his elbows, Victor listened with steepled fingers and a frown as I filled Manny and Wilmington in on my harrowing encounter with Merlin. I somehow forgot to mention that I tried stabbing him through the heart, assaulted him and threatened to behead him. I was sure Manny would laugh, so I made a mental note to tell her later.

“I had hoped this expedition would not be necessary,” Victor said. “Merlin proposed it long ago. What is your plan?”

“Merlin gave me a sword and a target to kidnap, sir. It’s not like he’s handed over the blueprints and an intricate plan to a heist caper.”

“Six guys in the Circle of Knives,” Manny said. “No problem.”

“Six guys plus a demon mage,” Victor said. “And Manhattan? Have you already forgotten our talk from this morning?”

“You said some hurtful things about impulsiveness, sir,” Manny said. “But the traits you don’t appreciate in me as an instructor are exactly what you need when shit gets real.”

Victor turned to me. “You think you’re ready to command your own mission. Can you get Manhattan to take orders from you? She was a member of the Choir long before you.”

“I didn’t join the Choir to give orders,” Manhattan said. “And I don’t have trouble taking orders from Iowa. She’s my sister singer.”

Victor shot her a nasty look. “Your words would have carried more weight if you had waited for me to ask your opinion. I was talking to Iowa and you didn’t give her a chance to answer.”

“Sorry, sir,” Manny said.

“Doubtful. And Wilmington? You’re volunteering for this mission? I’ll miss you at my side here.”

“There are hundreds of sword singers and spear slingers and gun toters in the Keep,” Wil said. “You have a wide choice of bodyguards, sir.”

Victor looked perturbed. “True. But none like you. You have already taken a bullet for me.”

“This is about more than helping out the suicidal immortal who has locked himself in the basement,” I said. “This demon, Chronos, is powerful. If we let him remain a free-range chicken, he’s trouble. We’ve got to get some Magicals together to put some kind of binding spell on Merlin, too. This box Merlin mentioned. Have you got two of them? One for Merlin and one for the one who looks like a Stanford professor?”

Victor shook his head. “There is only one.”

“Merlin’s toying with the idea of opening a rift to the demon dimension. He sounds too impatient and unstable. There’s nothing more dangerous than a rift to the Ra right under us.”

“Very well,” Victor said. “I’ll work on that angle from here and try to gather enough magic folk to contain Merlin. Let’s talk about your team. Who do you want to take to Stanford, or did you picture this as a
Charlie’s Angels
sort of situation?”

“Any word on Rory?”

“He’s still recovering from your last misadventure,” Victor said.

I took a couple of deep breaths, determined to speak slowly. Mama said that Victor’s mood could slip into heat and sharpness easily. She blamed the fact that Trick had gotten so close to him and Lynda had nearly killed him.

I thought Victor’s crankiness was really about mourning the loss of Samantha Biggs to the demon dimension. I missed my old boss, too, but Sam and Victor had had a fling once, a long time ago. I suspected it meant more to Victor than a lost weekend in bed. There had been no funeral for Sam. The night Castille Funeral Homes burned to the ground around me, I hadn’t seen Key, the battle demon, kill her. There was no body to bury. We were sure Peter Smythe had spirited her away, through a rift to Ba’al’s dimension. For what reason, I could not guess.

I had pleaded with Victor to find a way for us to mount a rescue. Tears fell from his eyes as he refused. She was beyond our help now. “She may as well be on Mars,” he’d said. “We cannot go after her.”

Seeing Victor this way now — abrupt and impatient and humorless — hurt me. The first day I’d met Victor Fuentes in a cemetery he’d exuded old world charm. In his role as conductor of the Choir Invisible, I gave no one more respect. Victor was my hero. I suspected he blamed me for failing to save Sam. Victor now acted almost as distant as she was. Victor, my greatest role model, seemed missing in action.

“Iowa?” Wil nudged me.

“Hm?”

“Victor suggested some more sword singers for the ride West.”

“The Circle of Knives is six bodyguards. They don’t know we’re coming. With a Magical to point them out, we could isolate them and take them one at a time, maybe. They’re humans. We won’t even have to kill them. We’ve got lots of non-lethal options in the arsenal. Let’s use them.”

Manny nodded. “Waco.”

I didn’t follow. “What?”

“The government took down a religious nut who was stockpiling weapons.”

“David Koresh,” Victor said. “I remember. He had some kind of cult down there. The government got a lot of heat because so many women and children died. They went in through the front door, guns blazing. The FBI used a tank, as I recall.”

Manhattan nodded. “But the cult leader had been in town the day before, away from his compound. A couple of FBI guys could have arrested him and had him handcuffed and whisked him away without any trouble. Their tactical error was to choose the wrong battleground. We can do this quietly, as long as we nab the big bad’s bodyguards when they go out for milk or stop to take a leak, right?”

I smiled at Victor. “This is why I need her with me.”

“And you’ll need me for muscle,” Wil said.

“And good looks,” Manny added.

I rolled my eyes. When Manny had a new conquest, every day was junior high all over again. I’d have to keep Manny and Wil busy on this business trip.

“And you’ll need me,” a man announced from a far doorway.
 

We turned and stared at Patton Oswalt, the famous comedian.

“Wow! I, uh, I-I…um. Wow,” Wilmington gushed, obviously star struck. “You’re one of my
favorite
comedians!”

The man sighed. “I’m not him. See, this is why I was
huge
in Eastern Europe but I still can’t fill a high school auditorium in goddamn Dubuque.”

We said nothing. We stared. The likeness was so uncanny I was sure he was Patton Oswalt. He even
sounded
like Patton Oswalt.

“I’ve been meaning to watch you on that show,” Manny said. “I mean — ”

“Still not him,” the man said, exasperated. “I can prove it. I won’t say anything funny.”

A moment passed and he stared at us. To his disappointment, that deadpan look made Manny, Wil and I break into laughter.

“I’m the Great Psymon, Psymon the Inimitable!”

“Okay, Psymon, Psymon,” Victor said. “They’re going to need a mind reader.”

Psymon tossed me my cell phone.
 

“Oh, right,” I said. “You’re Fawn’s dad.”

He made a sour face. “I love that kid more than life and chocolate fudge cake and gingerbread cookies with coffee, but I’m sure that, forever and always, my greatest achievement is that I will be the footnote who was her father. I will only ever be known in
relation
to Fawn. I’ll always be her Dad, when I’m not Patton Oswalt, of course.”

“There are worse things,” Wil said. “What if you were Bill Cosby’s twin?”

Psymon did not look amused.

“Is Fawn’s last name, ‘the Inimitable,’ too?” Manny asked. “That’s a lot for a kid to carry around.”