J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough (20 page)

McGowan asked, “Why all the questions?”

Katherine raised her eyebrows at Paul, clearly asking if she could reveal his presence. He wasn’t ready for that, and he didn’t want her to end the conversation, so he just shook his head. She lied admirably. “Paul called me, at my office, and we had a long chat on the phone.”

McGowan demanded, “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. But he thinks you’re trying to kill him.”

“Damn! More damn, and double damn! What gave him that idea?”

“Weeellll,” Katherine said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “Could it be every time you show up it’s with the Russia mafia in tow, and they do very unfriendly things like shoot guns at the poor fellow?”

“Damn!”

“And then there’s the conversation you and Colleen had in your kitchen just as Paul was sneaking out of your house, the one in which you told her you couldn’t promise you wouldn’t kill him.”

“Damn! Damn, damn, damn! He overheard that, huh?”

“Katherine, dear.” That was the hippie. “Paul must not have heard the end of the conversation. Your father acknowledged the little people wouldn’t abdicate their traditional neutrality for a rogue. And he finished by promising he’d try to help young Mr. Conklin.”

McGowan said, “Something doesn’t add up here.”

Katherine demanded, “Like what?”

“Well, to start with two emergents crossed over that night, but we only found one in his apartment. And I thought he was summoning a succubus, but Colleen says there was no summoning, and it wasn’t a succubus. And the little people relinquishing their neutrality, that’s unheard of. And that Tertius couldn’t have pulled you and him into the Netherworld, so who, or better, what did? And that Secundus caste was no Secundus caste. I think the two of you ran into a Primus caste.”

“Why do you say that?”

They could hear Colleen and McGowan quietly arguing in the background for several seconds, then McGowan said, “We’re not in complete agreement on everything, but Colleen and I do agree something happened during our summons, something that reverberated throughout the Three Realms, which is the reason the Sidhe got involved. Colleen thinks it was your cross-over and the banishment of the demon. But you told me you thought the demon had enthralled Conklin. I know you changed your mind later because Conklin certainly couldn’t break a Primus caste enthrallment. But I think he somehow did. I think that’s what reverberated so loudly throughout the Realms.”

Katherine frowned and tilted her head slightly to one side in thought, her eyes narrowing sharply. “I’d forgotten all about this, but that demon kept calling Paul
Dragon-stink
.”

Colleen and McGowan uttered the same question simultaneously, “What? Dragon-stink?” They said it in a way Paul didn’t like, and this conversation was raising more questions than it was answering, so Paul raised his hand and gave Katherine a thumbs-down.

She frowned at him and shook her head. He raised his lips in a silent snarl that said,
You promised. We had a deal.

She rolled her eyes unhappily, then silently mouthed,
Ok.

She said, “It called him Dragon-stink, repeatedly, and I have no idea what that means. Listen, I have a date, and I’m already late. Why don’t we continue this tomorrow?”

There was a little more back and forth before the conversation ended, but the moment Katherine hit the button that killed the line, she turned to Paul and asked, “Aren’t you satisfied? I think it’s pretty clear my father’s not trying to kill you.”

“I’ll give you that,” he said.

“Then why make me end the conversation the way you did?”

Paul didn’t know how to explain it to her. These were all people she’d grown up with, people she could trust implicitly. “I want less attention, not more. I want this all to blow over so I can go back to my ordinary old life.”

She shook her head sadly. “That’s not going to happen, Paul.”

“Ya, I know,” he said. “I’d better get going.”

He walked out of her office. She followed behind him, saying, “You need to face reality. Just like in the Netherworld you can’t pretend you’re in some psyche ward somewhere wearing a straitjacket.”

In the living room he retrieved his windbreaker and shoulder holster, held the holster up in front of her and said, “I’d say this is facing some pretty serious reality.”

She rolled her eyes and said, “I do think the gun’s going a little overboard. Colleen and my father and I can protect you without that.”

As he turned toward the front door she stepped in front of him and held up her hands to stop him. “Don’t go. You can crash on my couch. At least my place is warded. They’re not the most powerful wards, but they’ll give you some protection, so my place is the best chance you’ll have to get a decent night’s sleep.”

He hesitated and she said, “I’ve even got a couple of unused tooth brushes, still in the wrapping from the store. Wait here.”

She disappeared into her bedroom, reappeared a moment later and tossed him a new toothbrush and some toothpaste. She pointed across the room. “The bathroom’s down the hall on the left.”

Paul stepped into the bathroom, closed the door and looked at his image in the mirror. “What a fucking mess,” he said. He’d harbored a small hope this could all blow over. After he and Katherine had literally been rescued from hell, and, as Katherine had explained to him, the Tertius that had come after them was now stuck in hell and powerless to return, he’d hoped things could cool down. But the Netherworld thing had drawn the interest of these elves—Sidhe, they called them—and after his escape from Faerie he didn’t think for a second they’d walk away from this. And then there were the Russians, who struck him as a bunch of pretty tenacious bastards. And from the conversation they’d just had it was clear McGowan’s interest was on the upswing, and he was now taking an even greater interest in Paul. He was going to help Paul. But Paul didn’t want help. He just wanted them to leave him alone so he could go back to Suzanna and Cloe.

Paul brushed his teeth and splashed some water on his face. In the living room he found a blanket and a pillow lying on the couch. Katherine shouted at him from somewhere in her bedroom. “I’ve set up the coffee, so if you get up before me just turn the pot on. And help yourself to cereal or toast or whatever.”

He pulled off his shoes, spread the blanket on the couch, crawled beneath it and laid there for a while, thinking if circumstances had been different, he might not have ended up sleeping on the couch tonight.

As McGowan hit the switch on the phone, killing the connection, Colleen said, “She’s lying, you know?”

“What do you mean?” McGowan asked. “You mean Conklin didn’t call her, and she made all that up?”

Colleen shook her head. “You’re such a man, old man.”

“You mean she does know where he is?”

“Don’t be daft. Of course she knows where he is. But that’s not exactly what I meant.”

McGowan threw his hands up and rolled his eyes. “Well then what did you mean?”

Colleen continued to shake her head sadly. “She knows where he is because he was standing there right next to her listening to our conversation.”

“He was? That’s impossible.”

“Didn’t you notice the little pauses here and there? They were short, and few, but they were whispering or making silent signs at each other.”

“Why would she lie to me like that, my own daughter?”

Colleen couldn’t suppress a laugh. “She and the young man have been through a lot together, in a very short period of time, saved each other’s lives a couple of times. At this point I should think they trust each other considerably. And I don’t doubt he did need to hear from your own lips you’re not trying to kill him. And I think they’re attracted to each other.”

McGowan stood. “That shit better stay away from my daughter. He’s too dangerous, at least until we get this cleared up. I’m going over there right now.”

“And I’ll go with you, just to keep you from acting too much like a father.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She stood and headed for the door, shaking her head sadly.

Katherine tiptoed into her small workshop—she liked to think of it as her little witch’s den. While Paul had been in the bathroom she’d pocketed his hippie wig, and she sat down now at a small workbench to examine it carefully. As she suspected she had no trouble finding a few of his hairs stuck to the inside of the wig. She retrieved them carefully, then plucked a few of her own.

She took one of her hairs and one of his, and carefully entwined them into a single strand. She repeated the process to create a second woven strand and laid the two of them out in front of her. She’d also retrieved his wine glass when he wasn’t looking, and very carefully she took each strand and ran it along the lip of the wine glass. Even the most fastidious person would leave a little saliva on the rim of a glass.

She positioned both strands horizontally in front of her, one above the other, then began carefully tracing a rune over the two of them. The symbol she’d chosen was the horizontal figure-eight sign for infinity, and she traced two such symbols with the tip of her finger, one over the other, one over each of the two strands of woven hair. But she was careful to intertwine the loops of the two sigils as she traced them, careful to intertwine them like the limbs of two lovers embracing. She traced the rune seven times, feeding power carefully into the strands until they glowed with a faint ethereal light.

She lifted one of the glowing strands, wove it loosely into her own hair, then with her tongue placed a little saliva on the tip of her finger. When she touched the saliva to the strand woven in her hair it flared brilliantly for a second, then faded away. She didn’t have to look to know the strand itself had disappeared.

She took the second strand of woven hair, tiptoed out of her workshop into her bedroom, out of her bedroom into the living room. Paul had crashed into a deep sleep and lay on the couch breathing heavily. Poor fellow must be utterly exhausted.

She knelt down beside him and carefully laid the remaining strand on his head among his own hairs. Then again she touched a finger to her tongue to retrieve a bit of saliva, then touched the saliva to the woven strand in his hair. Like hers it flared brilliantly, then died and was gone.

It was a variation on an old attraction spell, but with a few important differences. Saliva and hair from both of them, mixed and applied to both of them with the proper runes and a leavening of power. It was the strongest locator spell she could devise, much stronger than merely having a piece of him like a strand of hair. By mixing pieces of her with pieces of him, only the strongest of wards could prevent her from locating him.

Katherine was too keyed up to go right to bed, so she stood and walked to the French doors at the back of her house, opened one slightly and slipped out onto her deck. It was an elevated deck about ten feet above her back yard, and quite large. She crossed it and leaned on the rail. Her house was high enough that she had a nice view of the Pacific in the distance, but in the dark all she could see were lights from the half-mile of houses between her and Ocean Beach.

She liked Paul and sympathized with his frustration, though his stubbornness exasperated her no end. She tried to imagine how off-kilter he must be after having all this stuff dumped on him without warning. Until now he’d led a life without the need to look over his shoulder for the next Russian thug trying to kill him.

She heard a noise behind her, turned and saw Paul standing on the deck in front of the French doors. The light she’d left on in the living room behind him turned him into a dark silhouette. She must’ve awakened him with her spell. He walked slowly toward her, stopped in front of her just close enough to be a little intimate, stood there silently and she thought he might kiss her, and remembering the kiss they shared in Faerie she decided she wanted him to. So she looked up at him and met his blood-red goat-slitted eyes—

Chapter 13: No Place Safe

Parking in the Sunset district was almost impossible. Many houses there didn’t have a garage, so most residents parked on the street. Mikhail found a parking place two blocks from the young woman’s house and killed the engine. He slipped the Glock out of its holster and checked the rounds in his magazine. Like any practitioner, he used special ammunition.

He returned the Glock to its holster and checked the street carefully. It was a quiet residential neighborhood, the kind where the residents were quick to call the police if they saw a suspicious looking fellow loitering about.

He stepped out of the car, locked it and strolled casually up the sidewalk.

Paul awoke with a start, had a vague recollection of some dream, but that didn’t account for the uneasiness he felt. He sat up and scanned the empty living room, spotted some French doors at the back of the house, one of which was ajar, and realized they must lead out onto a deck or patio of some sort. He could just see enough through the glass of the French doors to know someone was standing on the deck there, realized it must be Katherine. He swung his legs off the couch and put on his shoes.

Against his own better judgment he knew he had to trust McGowan, let Katherine call her father and tell him Paul was with her. He really had no choice.

He stood and walked over to the French doors. From this angle he could see through the door’s glass panes, could see a faint image of Katherine out on the deck. But with no lights on the deck, the single light in the living room cast a harsh glare on the window and it was nearly impossible to make out any details.

She wasn’t leaning on the rail but had turned sideways. She stood there silently, her wine glass held in both hands looking up slightly, and he realized someone was out there with her. A man stood facing her, both looking into each other’s eyes like lovers, and Paul’s first thought was she had a boyfriend who’d come by while Paul was sleeping. They stared at each other so intimately Paul thought he should grab his coat and gun and just slip quietly away. But he should at least say good-bye, make some excuse and exit politely. He took a couple steps toward the French doors.

Katherine was medium height, and the man standing facing her was three or four inches taller than her, about Paul’s height. In fact the man looked a bit like Paul, and for a moment he thought it must be his own reflection in the windows of the French door. But if it was his reflection it should’ve been face-on, not standing sideways facing Katherine, which seemed odd. Paul leaned forward, so close to the glass pane his breath fogged it slightly, and he realized the man looked exactly like him, a perfect doppelganger. It took him one heartbeat to put it all together, another to realize Katherine’s life was in danger, another to realize he had to act now.

Paul spun, scrambled around the couch to the coffee table where he’d left the Sig in the shoulder holster. He fumbled at the gun in the dim light and had trouble getting it out of the holster. It was one thing to calmly pull off rounds at a firing range, quite another to get the fucking gun out of the holster when Katherine’s life was on the line.

He pulled the gun free, dropped the holster onto the couch, pulled the slide and jacked a round into the chamber, then hurdled the couch and ran across the living room to the French doors. He considered kicking the one that was ajar wide open like some hotshot cop in the movies, but realized he needed to get closer or risk shooting Katherine as well. So he calmly shouldered the door open and took two long strides across the deck. Both Katherine and the demon were so locked in the enthrallment neither realized he was there. He dropped into a crouch, held the gun in a text-book two-handed grip, and from only a few feet away, aiming directly at the vampire’s head, he pulled off five rounds in rapid succession.

His ears shut down at the thundering blasts from the weapon, but he saw the impact of the first round even through the blinding muzzle flash. It slammed into the side of the vampire’s head, rocked it violently to one side and opened a cratered exit-wound that spewed fragments of bone and muscle. Amazingly, the vampire only staggered away from him, turned enough to take the second round just underneath its left eye, which rocked its head back and its chin up. The third bullet plowed into the underside of its chin and the top of its head exploded. The fourth bullet hit it in the throat and the fifth in the chest. It stopped with its back against the deck rail facing him, its head a smoking ruin.

“Paul!” Katherine screamed, coming out of the stupor of the enthrallment.

The vampire’s glamour had disappeared, and one of those bat monsters stood before him. It slowly unfurled its wings and took a step toward him. At the firing range he’d practiced firing five rounds in rapid succession, pause, five more rounds, pause, five more and the clip was empty. So he pumped five more rounds into the vampire’s chest, each bullet hammering it backward a step until again it backed into the deck rail. Paul lifted a foot, kicked it in the chest and it tumbled backward over the rail.

Paul stepped up to the rail, looked over it into Katherine’s back yard, a big mistake. Before Paul could react one clawed hand grabbed the rail, and the other clamped viciously around his throat. The vampire started climbing back up on the deck, using Paul’s throat and the deck rail for purchase. But Paul felt something else tugging at him, a blind ravenous hunger, a need to rend and murder and devour, and it pulled at him through the creature’s claw where it touched his throat.

He could feel his life leaking out through that contact and his knees weakened, he almost collapsed over the rail and he realized it was feeding on him. He could sense the flow of energy, or life force or whatever it was, as it bled out through his throat and into the monster’s hand, all in response to the
pull
it exerted on his soul. A sense of lethargy threatened to overcome him, and he couldn’t resist as it pulled him forward so that he leaned heavily over the edge of the deck rail.

Suzanna’s ghost dropped out of nowhere and landed on the demon’s back. Apparently her ghost had much more effect on a demon’s body than that of good old Joe Stalin. She wrapped her arms around its throat and pulled, forcing it to arch its back. And then Katherine hit it with a deck chair—a distant part of Paul wondered in amazement that a woman her size could swing such a chair high over her head with such force. The chair slammed into the creature’s ruined head and the drain on Paul’s soul suddenly stopped. It was like tasting two glasses of wine and comparing them one to the other in rapid succession, one with his life flowing outward and diminishing, one with no flow at all, and he thought he saw how to make it flow the other way. So he pulled with all his strength and miraculously it reversed. He felt a surge of power and strength and energy, and realized he was feeding on the demon’s power.

With his left hand he grabbed the wrist of the claw wrapped about his throat, then he shoved the muzzle of the gun down into the smoking crater at the top of its head. He tore the monster’s claw away from his throat and pulled off five more rounds. The slugs made a sickening, wet, splatting sound and the vampire, with Suzanna riding its back, toppled backward into the bushes below.

With the last round expended the slide on the Sig locked back, and Paul realized that in his amateurish haste he’d left the shoulder holster and the spare clips on the couch. He shouted at Katherine, “Spare ammo, on the couch.”

Her eyes widened, and in an instant they both turned and scrambled through the open French door.

Mikhail was careful to move discretely, though it was important to look casual, not like some thief sneaking about the neighborhood. That was the kind of thoughtlessness that resulted in a call to the police, the kind of stupid mistake Alexei or Vladimir might make. He needed to find a place where he could observe but be unobserved, so he slipped into a shadow to one side of the young woman’s front porch. His orders were clear: wait for Karpov and intervene only if the man tried to leave.

Mikhail wasn’t a strong wizard, otherwise he’d be more than just one of Karpov’s shooters, but he was a trained practitioner. And he had enough capability to know when something unpleasant had arrived, something not of the Mortal Plane, and since he’d heard the other incidents involving this man also involved demons, he could guess what. He pulled the Glock and was creeping cautiously up the steps of the woman’s front porch when the first shots rang out.

“Out the front door,” Katherine shouted. She scrambled around the couch while Paul jumped over it, dug his heals in, turned and grabbed the shoulder holster, turned again and ran after Katherine to the front door. When she yanked it open, standing side-by-side they found themselves facing a man with a gun aimed at them and they froze.

Katherine shouted at the man, “You don’t understand.”

The fellow was tall but quite thin, and he spoke in thickly accented English. “No, you don’t understand.”

Paul started to say, “But there’s a—” but before he could finish the man’s eyes suddenly widened and focused on something far behind them.

Hoping the man was smart enough to realize he and Katherine were not the real danger, Paul threw an arm around Katherine’s shoulders and dropped to the floor, dragging her down with him. He turned just as the demon hit the French doors. It shredded them with a swipe of its claws, but as it lunged through them bolts of lightning erupted around it with a thunderous clap and the monster staggered.

“My wards,” Katherine shouted.

The man in the doorway crouched and fired his weapon over them, short single bursts, each carefully timed. Beneath the muzzle flash Paul fumbled with the shoulder holster, retrieved one of his spare clips, ejected the empty and slammed the new one into place. He hit the release, the slide slammed forward, and staying on one knee he took aim.

The monster had made it half way across the living room before the newcomer had stopped it by emptying a clip into it. It lay on its side, and with one of its legs dangling by torn bits of cartilage it had trouble getting up. “Shoot away one of its wings,” the fellow with accent said as he changed clips. “Then it can’t fly or run.”

Paul took aim, fired several shots into its shoulder, which stilled that wing enough for him to empty the rest of the clip and pulp the entire shoulder joint. The Russian followed up by emptying another clip into the creature’s other wing. The vampire lay on the floor and thrashed about weakly, its head a smoking ruin, its chest cratered by more than thirty hollow-points, one leg nearly severed, both wings splintered and shredded, and still it tried to rise, each wound hissing and emitting a dark, greasy smoke. Paul remembered the silver in the special ammunition and its effect on demons.

He looked at Katherine, “And this is one of the weaker ones, a Tertius?”

She nodded numbly. “That’s why I was so afraid of the Secundus.”

“Put the fucking gun down.” Someone pressed the muzzle of a heavy gun against the back of Paul’s head, and he easily recalled the thick Russian accent: Joe Stalin. “Do you want me to kill him, boss?”

Paul had emptied his clip and the slide on the Sig had locked back. But even if he’d had a full clip he didn’t stand a chance with a gun pressed to the back of his head.

The older Russian slipped past them and headed for the struggling vampire, saying, “No. Just hold him while I take care of this.”

Paul dropped the gun to the floor and watched in fascination as the older Russian pulled some sort of silver spike from his coat. He approached the struggling vampire carefully, stopped just out of its reach and drew some sort of symbol in the air with his fingertip. He repeated the symbol several times and it started to glow, and as it did the vampire calmed and grew quiescent. The older Russian bent down and plunged the spike into the bullet-ridden ruin of the vampire’s chest. The vampire screamed, a sharp, piercing cry, but the Russian held the spike in place with his left hand while he mumbled something and drew another symbol over the spike with his right index finger. He repeated it several times, and as the symbol started to glow the vampire became still again, grew translucent and glowed with an eerie light for a few seconds, then dissipated into a cloud of fine ash.

The older Russian stood, turned to Paul and Katherine. “I’m Vasily Karpov.” He nodded to Joe Stalin. “Let me introduce Alexei.” He nodded to the Slav with the high cheekbones and greasy, blond hair. “That’s Vladimir,” then to the tall thin fellow, “and that’s Mikhail.”

He smiled at Paul unpleasantly. “And you, Mr. Conklin,” he said it more like meester, rather than mister, “are coming with me.”

He strode past them out the door, calling over his shoulder, “And bring the woman too.”

They tied Paul’s hands and feet, then wadded up some sort of dishrag from Katherine’s kitchen, stuffed it in his mouth and tied it in place quickly. The last thing he saw was a black canvas bag as they pulled it over his head.

Belinda had spent more than an hour crafting the shadow spell, and on a dark night like this it was extremely effective. She’d used Katherine McGowan’s address to find her home, had parked two blocks away and stood now in her special shadows across the street. From the lights in the windows it was clear she’d arrived sometime after the young woman had returned home. If the young man wasn’t with the McGowan woman, then she’d wasted a few hours and she’d have to resort to other means to find him. But if he’d accompanied her, she’d save days of hunting.

She watched the tall, thin Russian arrive, watched him take up a position to one side of the young woman’s front porch. He was good, this Russian, stayed in a shadow and didn’t move, didn’t succumb to the temptation to light a cigarette and give his position away by the flare of the match, or the glow of the burning tobacco.