Flight from Hell (6 page)

“I think he's on the up and up, to be honest. But we can't be sure. I'll call Roman again, see if he has any information on him.” But I stared at the phone, not wanting to rat out Alex just yet.

“Why not ask Carter about him? They know each other.” Delilah shrugged. “It might be enough to go on for now.”

“Good idea.” I put in a call to Carter and, when he came on the line, asked him about Alex. He confirmed what I'd sensed.

“Alex is reckless, but overall, he's one of the good ones. He's unconventional, even by Supe standards, and doesn't knuckle under to authority. But he's honest, and has an oddly heroic streak to him.” Then, with a chuckle, Carter added, “Alex has been known to rescue kittens and small children from dangerous situations. But don't you tell him I told you so.”

“I won't.” I laughed as I hung up. Somehow, I could see that happening, even though Alex would probably deny it. “So, Carter thinks we can trust him, as much as we can trust any vamp. Hey, you think
Wilbur
might know who Julian is? That freakshow really gets around.”

Camille snorted.

Wilbur was our neighbor. He was also a powerful FBH necromancer and a nutcase who usually managed to be on our side. He had raised his brother—as in, raised him from the dead. After Martin died from cancer, Wilbur animated him and Martin became Martin the Ghoul, and now lived with Wilbur like a sad, decrepit, stupid dog.

We figured that Wilbur had just been trying to cope with the loss of his brother, but seeing the pair of them—Wilbur in his ZZ Top getup, with his amputated leg, hanging around Martin, who wore a three-piece suit and who was conveniently controlled by the leash around his neck—was enough to shake the sanity of any normal person.

“We'll drop in and ask before we head over to Shimmer's place. Grab your gear and let's head out. We'll take my car.” I pushed my chair back and stood. It was time to get moving. With a little luck and a whole lot of prayers, we'd find Shimmer at home, nursing a mood swing, and we could go back to focusing on the bigger battles we were fighting.

***

Wilbur answered the door and his eyes lit up as he saw us. The mountain-man had been a member of the Special Ops years ago. He lived with Martin in a house down the street from ours, and thanks to a nasty battle we'd landed in, he now was missing a leg. But he'd gotten fitted for an artificial limb, and it was hard to tell that he was an amputee, other than a mild limp.

Crude, lewd, and usually rude, Wilbur had nonetheless helped us on numerous occasions, and we had a bit of a love-hate relationship with him. Well, a tolerate-hate relationship.

“What can I do for you, girls?” He nodded for us to come in. He was watching the Game Show Channel, and
Jeopardy
was on. He and Martin watched the show together on a daily basis. I somehow doubted Martin's proficiency at answering questions—ghouls didn't talk and were barely sentient—but Wilbur seemed to enjoy it.

Martin was sitting on the sofa, staring straight ahead at the television. His eyes flickered when he saw me. I'd broken his neck before I realized that he wasn't a random ghoul invading our land, and Wilbur had been forced to affix a neck brace to him. Now, every time Martin saw me, he either cringed or kept well away from my reach, like an abused dog afraid of the person who hurt him.

“Wilbur, we're in a hurry but we have a question. We know you're friends with Alex, the owner of the Fly By Night Magical Investigations Agency. He told us. But we also need to know if you've heard anything in the grapevine about a vampire-sorcerer named Julian who may have landed here in Seattle between a year ago and now?”

I pulled out a chair from his desk, swung it around, and straddled it. Camille and Delilah hung back. They really weren't fond of Wilbur and usually let me do the talking when we had to approach him. He was more touchy-feely than any of us liked, but I was best at forcing his dick back in his pants. Metaphorically speaking. I hadn't actually had to
touch
it.
Yet.
At least, so far.

Wilbur sounded grumpy, and as usual, he took the low road. “That chair ain't all that comfortable, baby. You can straddle my cock instead.”

“Dredging the bottom of the barrel, Wilbur.” By now I was used to the come-ons, and I bundled them up and turned them right back on him. At first, I'd threatened to pulverize him, but now I realized they were just part of his nature and I let them pass.

“Can't blame a man for being off his game some days.”

“Wilbur, you're off your game
every
day. Anyway, so . . . Julian?”

“Alex Radcliffe, yeah . . . I know him. Good sort. Rebel spirit like me.”

I wanted to say that Wilbur's spirit was well beyond the rebel stage. That he'd crossed the line into psycho, but I kept my mouth shut.

He frowned, thinking. “Julian? A vampire-sorcerer? I know there have been several, but most, I met them down in the jungles when I was in the service. They were a fucking scary bunch—you don't want to go up against their type. Ruthless. You think
I'm
a pain in the ass, they're far, far worse. Up here, though? Nope. If I've met him, it wasn't under that name.”

“Okay. That takes care of that.” I stood. “We need to get a move on.”

“You sure you don't want to stay?
Jeopardy
marathon on.” And then, a glint shimmered in Wilbur's eye and it hit me. He professed to being a misanthrope, but the man was actually lonely. And he was too abrasive to make friends easily.

“Thanks,” I said softly. “But we have to get going. Maybe another time.” As we left the house, he turned the volume up and the last we heard was Alex Trebek saying,
“The question is, What is premeditated murder?”

On that note, we headed back into the howling storm, hoping to find ourselves a dragon.

***

Shimmer had bought herself a house, stuck Earthside as she was for five years. She lived on the edge of the Greenbelt Park District, where you could buy houses for a song and a dance. Too many places stood empty there, due to the nose-dive the district had taken over the years. A lot of short sales, a lot of foreclosures. Economically depressed compared to the rest of the city, the Greenbelt Park District was a hard sell. A real buyer's market as long as you didn't mind ending up with a ghost or two in the mix.

The house Shimmer had purchased was a two-story bungalow. One wall was covered with ivy, and sheltered by a large fir tree. Two cedars towered from the backyard, and the front was an overgrown tangle of fern and moss roses. The house looked old, probably built in the thirties or forties, and while it had the same air of disrepair that the rest of the neighborhood had, there was a sense of emerging renewal to it. In some areas the garden had been driven back, entangled brambles hacked away to reveal mossy grass.

The vines over the trellised arch that ushered visitors onto the sidewalk to the house had been trimmed, and while there were still spiders aplenty in the jungle of leaves, only a few of the argiope orb weavers sprawled across the entrance. The striped garden spiders built intricate and beautiful webs, and weren't poisonous, even though they struck terror into many an arachnophobe's heart.

Alex and a man who looked to be in his late twenties were waiting by a dusty brown Ranger Rover held together by large patches of primer and rust. As we hauled ass out of my car, they walked over to us.

“This is Ralph. He's my IT guy for the agency. As I told you, he's a werewolf.” Alex clapped Ralph on the shoulder, which almost knocked the Were off balance.

Ralph ducked his head in what seemed to be a hello. He was lanky and wore dark glasses that were a John Lennon throwback. At five-seven or -eight, he wasn't particularly tall, and he dressed in cargo pants, a Doctor Who T-shirt, and Doc Martens.

After a flurry of hellos, we turned to the house. There were no lights on inside, not that we could see. A dim streetlamp next to the curb gave us enough light to see our way through the gate. Alex went first, bringing down the spiders with a big-assed knife that he produced out of a sheath hanging on his belt.

We reached the door and Ralph rang the bell. No answer. He rang again. No answer, again. Finally, after a third time, he produced the key and unlocked the door. A hush whispered as he pushed it open and slipped inside.

Alex followed, then my sisters, but I was stuck on the doorstep. Obviously, Alex had been invited inside before, but since I never had, and it was a private residence and not an apartment building or public shop or frat house, I couldn't cross the threshold.

With a sheepish grin, Ralph turned to me. “Come in, please.”

Where the force fields emanated from, no vampire seemed to know, but they were there all right, until the invitation was given. Once the invite had been issued, however, the boundary vanished like smoke in the wind and I was able to move through the doorway.

Shimmer's house was tidy. For someone thrown to the wolves, her world in complete upheaval, her home reflected a calmer nature than I would have given her credit for. Plants filled the room, nothing exotic, but full, vibrant twining ivies and philodendrons and potted violets.

A large aquarium covered two-thirds of one wall and it contained a rainbow wall of fish, some neon, others striped, still others shimmering and nearly translucent. The living room wasn't spotless—books were scattered around on various tables. Shimmer liked mysteries, that much I could tell by the titles. She also seemed to like cookbooks. A bowl of half-eaten potato chips rested on the sofa, but the room felt comfortable and homey and welcoming.

I stopped to admire a large framed picture of ocean waves. They were cresting against a background of clouds and lightning, and while it was a stormy scene, it was also eerie and beautiful. The water was alive, and I could easily picture a dragon rising out of the roiling sea.

Ralph motioned toward the stairs. “Somebody check her bedroom? I'll go check the kitchen.”

We spread out, Camille and I heading upstairs. Again, the bedroom was tidy but not spotless, but the bed looked like it hadn't been slept in. A filmy nightgown was tossed across one chair, and fuzzy slippers sat beside the bed. As we poked around the room, a shout from downstairs alerted us. I turned and headed for the stairs, Camille on my heels.

We hit the first floor to see Alex reeling, an arrow in his shoulder. Another arrow lay on the floor, surrounded by glass. Delilah was nowhere in sight, and Ralph was trying to drag the vampire away from the window, which was broken. With one glance to make sure Alex was okay and not turning into a pile of dust, I headed out the front door.

Delilah was already outside, searching in the general direction from which the arrows had come. I joined her, sweeping through the grass. If there were any sign of footprints, they were buried in the heavy vegetation.

I wandered into the street, looking in both directions, but there was no sign of any departing vehicle, nor could I hear anything. But the wind had picked up and we couldn't hear much of anything except the howling through the trees.

Delilah made her way over to me. “I have no clue where our bowman went.”

“Or who he . . . she . . . is?” I glanced at the tangle of Shimmer's yard. “And we still don't know where Shimmer is. I doubt if she'd stand outside her own house to take a potshot at Alex.”

“He's okay?” Delilah pulled her jacket tighter around her as we headed back to the house.

“Whoever it was missed his heart. The first arrow broke the window, the second must have been fired immediately afterward and hit Alex.” As we pushed through the front door, Camille was kneeling over him, holding an arrow, which was a bloody mess. Her hands were stained with his blood, too, and Alex was eyeing her like a candy bar.

“Excuse me, what's going on? Alex, my sister is not a snack.” I pushed between the two. “Where's Ralph?”

Camille nodded to the sofa and I turned to see geek boy passed out on the cushions. “I asked him to help me pull the arrow out of Alex's shoulder and he tried, I'll give him that, but the second we started, he keeled over in a dead faint.”

“Ralph's a sensitive type guy.” Alex grinned at me. “He can't handle the sight of blood, at least while he's in human form. Werewolf form? No problem. And I'll have you know, your sister may have my blood on her, but I wasn't going to bite her neck. I don't drink from friends or coworkers. I'd have pulled the arrow out myself, but I can't get the right angle to keep the barbs from catching in the flesh.”

Camille held up the weapon. “He's right, it's barbed. And I'll tell you something else, it's got one hell of a spell cast on it. It has a message embedded in it. Give me a moment and I should be able to trigger the magic so we can find out what the hell is going on.”

As she fiddled with it, Delilah knelt by Ralph, who groaned as she slapped him lightly on the face. A moment later, he shook his head and slowly began to sit up. Alex was back on his feet, the wound on his shoulder closing as quickly as it had formed. But his jacket had taken a nasty tear and I had the feeling he was more upset about that than he was about being attacked.

“Fuck!” Camille jumped back as a flash sparked against her arm. “That hurt! Damn sparks.” A moment later, a layer of paper, previously unseen, unfurled from the shaft of the arrow. She gingerly removed it and opened the scroll. “It's our message, all right.”

“Read it.” I shook my head at Alex, who reached for it. “You just lean back and finish healing, dude.”

He snorted, but obeyed.

“Hmm, it's written in a rather ornate script. Let's see what it says.” Camille frowned as she skimmed through the message. “Lovely. Just lovely.”

“What? Read it.” Alex leaned forward, frowning now.

With a long sigh, Camille sat down at the desk. “Okay, here we go. But you aren't going to like it.”