Hotter Than Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Mystery (Preternatural Affairs Book 3) (12 page)

I couldn’t help but laugh. Yeah, it made me laugh in a creepy church in the middle of Helltown, where we were likely to get killed and mutilated by a nun. That’s how ridiculous it was. “You are reading way too much into drinks after work, Izzy.”

“Look, I’m a woman, and I know the games women play. Women don’t want to get drunk until sunrise with guys they don’t want to sleep with.”

She had no idea how literally I wanted to sleep with Suzy. Actual sleeping. Restful, snoring sleep.

“You don’t know Suzy, Isobel.” And it was going to stay that way. Suzy was having a bad week. Or a bad month. Maybe even a bad year. I wasn’t going to tell Isobel why Suzy really wanted constant company.

“I know women like her,” Isobel said darkly.

“Can we shelve this conversation for later? For a sane time when we’re not going to possibly die?”

“We’re not going to die.” She squeezed my bicep. “You’ll protect us if any scary old nuns attack.”

Glad to know she was so confident.

But it was easy to imagine my body sprawled on the red velvet runner between pews, my shattered teeth in the back of my un-breathing throat, foreskin peeled away by demon claws…

Don’t think about the nurse.

“Who does services here?” I asked.

“A few priests rotate out. When I came, it was Father Mikhail Night. He moved on, and Father Bronson Webb replaced him. I’m not sure who it is now.”

“What kind of ugly are the priests? Nightmares?” I didn’t want to imagine what kind of services demons might hold. The brief mental picture I couldn’t help but suppress involved lots of blood.

Isobel giggled. “They’re humans. Normal human priests.”

“Humans helping demons?”

“Sometimes,” she said. “There are also a lot of other humans in Helltown.”

“Mostly slaves.”

“Yes, but smart demons fear God, Cèsar. They’re afraid of a good smiting. Many of them will allow their slaves to attend services instead of risking His wrath.”

Color me skeptical, but that twisted logic didn’t jive. “Wouldn’t God smite them for keeping slaves in the first place?”

“As long as He’s getting worshiped?” She shrugged. “I think He doesn’t care. Not that I’ve ever heard of a demon getting smote for holding a slave back from Sunday mass, mind you. Ann told me that allowing slaves to attend services is a pretty old superstition. Apparently they even have a few churches in the more civilized parts of Hell.”

If a church in Helltown was too ridiculous for me to accept, then I wasn’t going to attempt to wrap my head around a church in Hell. A church that actually worshiped God.

Isobel shook my shoulders gently, like she was trying to loosen me up for a massage.

“Deep breaths, Cèsar. We’re safe in here. It just looks scary because it’s an old building, but it’s consecrated ground enchanted by generations of witches. It’s safe. I can’t even talk to bodies here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Ann and I tried to work some death magic here at Father Night’s request. It didn’t work. If you ever want to be buried somewhere that you’ll be safe from my kind of interference, try Helltown.”

“I’ll think about adding it to my will,” I said. Think about it, and then completely forget about it, because I did not plan on spending eternity in this place.

We reached the front of the church to find an empty pulpit backed by a mural. The image was pretty innocuous: green fields with a radiant sun and lots of sheep. A lot like the murals I’d seen at the soup kitchen.

“Is this all there is to the church?” I asked.

“There’s a basement,” Isobel said. “And there’s a choir loft.” She turned to point behind me, and surprise registered in her eyes.

I followed her finger to see that someone was standing above us, swathed in shadow behind the crimson curtains of the loft.

Sister Catherine.

Her eyes fell on me. It was like the time I’d walked in on Domingo shoving his tongue down the throat of my girlfriend freshman year, sitting on the edge of my bed—that exact same look of guilt and shock and resignation.

It took me a second to remember that I’d brought a gun, much less that it might be something I’d want to draw. I fumbled at the strap and drew the gun.

“Catherine Reilly, you are under arrest!”

She ran, of course. They always fucking run.

And Sister Catherine was pretty fast for an old lady.

She reached the bottom of the stairs before I could sprint back down the pews. She flung the front doors open and hurtled into the street.

I’m a big guy, but that doesn’t mean I’m slow. Most of my time at the gym is spent on cardio. When you have magicked muscles, it doesn’t take much time weightlifting to bulk, but you still have to put in the legwork if you want to be fast.

I’m definitely fast.

Within seconds, I was about ten feet behind the nun, gun drawn, aimed at the ground.

“Freeze!” I shouted.

I didn’t expect it to work. I wasn’t even pointing the Desert Eagle at her. But Sister Catherine immediately dropped to her knees on the broken pavement.

Her obedience shocked me so much that I almost ran right into her. I managed to stop before ending up in an undignified situation on the ground, but just barely.

She clasped her hands together in prayer and tipped her head back to the sky. “Forgive me,” Sister Catherine asked the…what, the clouds? Oh, right. Prayer.

“You’re begging in the wrong direction, Sister. I’m the one who’s about to arrest you.”

I didn’t have to read anyone their Miranda rights, nor did I have to even tell her why I was dragging her in. One of the perks of working for a secret government organization is a slightly less-than-strict adherence to the laws everyone else deals with.

Sister Catherine just kept praying. Something about Mary and grace and I didn’t really listen so I can’t tell you what else.

I grabbed one of her wrists and wrenched her hands apart.

I used to have two major rules guiding me, both in life and in the business. The first was that I didn’t deal with homicides. Obviously
that
was shot to hell.

The second rule—the one that I wasn’t about to let slip away from me—is that I don’t hit women and I don’t get rough with them. I’m better than that. Even when I’m arresting a female witch, I do it as respectfully as possible.

But after seeing what Sister Catherine had done to the nurse—seeing what she had done to her own volunteer—I wasn’t feeling extremely gentle.

Taking the cuffs out of my pocket, I yanked her arms behind her and tightened the metal rings around her wrists.

“We’re after
you
?” Isobel had finally caught up. Now she was staring at Sister Catherine with a hearty heaping of skepticism. “There must be a mistake, Cèsar. She can’t have done anything worthy of arrest.”

“Isobel, my dear,” Sister Catherine said, wincing as I cinched the cuffs just a little bit too tight. “It’s been too long.”

“Over a month, I know.”

“Three months.”

Isobel cringed. “I haven’t been in Helltown lately. I’m sorry.”

“You two know each other?” I asked. Why wasn’t I surprised?

If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought her cheeks were looking kind of pink. She didn’t try to deny it, though. Funny how I could have gone through several life and death situations with this woman and I still knew virtually nothing about her.

“She used to bring me cookies,” Sister Catherine said.

Isobel’s face was definitely red. “I guess I owe you a few dozen.”

“She’s a suspect,” I said, hauling the nun to her feet. “Don’t fraternize with the suspect. Okay?”

“Suspected of what? Being too nice?” Isobel asked.

“Murder,” I said.

Isobel’s jaw dropped open. She’d known we were hunting a murderer who worked at that church, but she just hadn’t connected the dots yet.

On the bright side, it was a really quiet drive back to the OPA headquarters.

SUZY MET ME ON my way into the Magical Violations Department. Aside from her hair being twisted into an unusually messy bun, it was impossible to tell that she’d been drinking until sunrise; her suit was clean, her eyes were clear, and she looked focused.

“Where are you going?” she asked, pacing me down the hall to the elevators.

“I’ve arrested Sister Catherine. Now I’m going to interview her.”

Suzy shoved a folder at me. “Then you’re going to want to know what we found in the closet of her altar room.”

I stopped by the elevator doors to look. There were multiple photographs of plastic bags, jars, and storage tubs. I had no idea what I was looking at until one of the pictures zoomed in on the jars.

“Those are hearts, aren’t they?” I asked.

I took a quick count. There were six of them. We’d only found two bodies.

Suzy looked grim. “There are at least eight different victims suggested by the other trophies she’s kept. Oh, plus we found Nurse Sullivan’s Zippo with the flaming skull on the side.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, I thought you’d be interested in that.” She slapped me on the back. “Good work arresting her. I’m going to contact the LAPD and see if I can track down the other murder victims.”

She left me with the photographs in hand. I got in the elevator and flipped through them again as the floors slid past me, dropping me deep into the cement underbelly of the OPA campus.

A couple of the photos were labeled. It was the only way I could tell that I was looking at severed noses and lips.

We’d found the rest of Jay Brandon.

Isobel’s insistence that Sister Catherine was innocent had been gnawing at me. But now that gnawing was gone.

I’d caught the killer. Now I just needed to find the demon—her murder weapon.

Case closed.

Right?

The guys had put Sister Catherine in one of our special interrogation rooms. We’re used to keeping witches on the premises, and we know how to keep the most powerful of them under control.

She was strapped to a chair in the center of a permanent circle of power that had been carved into the cement floor. The cuffs were padded leather—the ultimate in comfortable government bondage—and stamped with easily activated magical marks that could knock her out in a millisecond if she became difficult.

The walls themselves were drywall, but our insulation wasn’t just fireproof. It was enchanted to be magic-proof, too. Anything cast inside the room couldn’t get out.

Even if one of our suspects broke free of the chair, they wouldn’t be able to bewitch anything outside the room. And good luck escaping with all the armed Union guards waiting in the hallway.

As soon as I got in, I explained the various features of the room to Sister Catherine. It’s not procedure, but I always liked to see how people reacted to hearing about it. How worried they got said a lot about what they knew of magic.

Sister Catherine looked real worried. She knew a lot.

“Why am I here?” she asked. She didn’t bother trying to test the strength of the straps like so many suspects did. She was a skinny old woman; she knew she wouldn’t get anywhere with that.

I took the chair across from her, right by the door to the exit. Put my body between her and the way out. “You tell me why you’re here,” I said. “You’re the one who bolted. You’ve gotta have a pretty good idea of what’s going on.”

“I’ve put a lot of hours into concealing my less traditional charitable efforts, Agent Hawke,” Sister Catherine said. “Can you imagine how difficult it would become to obtain grants and donations if people learned that I also try to bring the word of God into Hell?”

“So you were running to protect the soup kitchen,” I said.

“And several other charities.”

“That’s funny. I thought you were running to protect yourself from getting nailed for the murder of Jay Brandon, among others.”

She paled, but didn’t look surprised.

“Oh,” she said.

I showed her some of the photos from Suzy’s folder—not the ones with the body parts, but the snapshots of her altar. “Tell me about the statues. What’s up with these? Kinda blasphemous for a nun to have, don’t you think?”

She was still trembling from my last accusation and slow to respond.

“It’s not blasphemous at all. They’re not meant to be gods; they’re representative of male and female energy, positive and negative, black and white.” Her hands twitched like she wanted to gesture as she spoke, but she couldn’t move enough to pull it off. “Infernal and ethereal.”

“Like Hell and Heaven. Seems you’ve been a little too interested in the more southerly part of that dichotomy, Sister.”

“If you mean the infernal, Hell isn’t south of anything. It’s not even in our dimension.”

“What do I know? You’re the expert, apparently.”

Sister Catherine just stared at me, like she couldn’t believe how much stupid shit was coming out of my mouth and had no idea how to react to it. I got that look a lot when I tried to joke around with my coworkers. Nobody appreciated my genius.

“You don’t associate pagan worship practices with the Devil, do you?” she finally asked. “I’m only in Helltown to offer support to its residents. There are humans in the neighborhood who are incapable of leaving to worship. They deserve to benefit from the warmth of our faith, too.”

Who was playing stupid now? “We saw the demon you’ve been using as a murder weapon, cloven hooves and all.”

Realization struck her, eyes widening.

“Cloven hooves,” she said. “Demon.”

“So what have you been doing? It’s more powerful than evocation to have brought a physical entity to the Earth. Are you breeding them? Keeping them as pets? Feeding them volunteers from your soup kitchen?”

Sister Catherine sank back against the chair, momentarily closing her eyes. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought that she looked relieved.

The sight of it disarmed me. I hadn’t been expecting relief.

Could I have been wrong about her? It felt like I’d just thrown a dart at a target from two inches away and somehow hit the wall anyway.

“Lord above,” she said. “You think I’m dealing with demons.”

I lifted the photo of the jars of hearts. “We’ve got pretty compelling evidence for that, yeah.” Pain twisted her features. She didn’t speak. “Want to give me a story about how you’re just holding these for a friend?”