Run the Day (15 page)

When we got back to my place, there was company waiting for us.

A car that looked like it was probably worth more than my whole house was parked out front, and Devlin stood next to it. For the first time in all the years that I'd known him, he looked frazzled. He always maintained an appearance of control, the old monarch, but now he looked like a man falling apart. He shuffled back and forth in the dirt, clutching at his cane, when he saw the Caddy approaching he froze up like a deer in headlights.

Swift parked and we all piled out. I helped Rosa get Jesus out, who was at least able to stand on his own power now. Devlin perked up visibly when he saw us, and rushed over.

"Sarah's gone."

"Sarah, your nurse, Sarah?" I could still remember the smell of sunshine. Devlin nodded, now he was closer, I could see his cane looked beaten up, cracked and burned in spots.

"Get inside and tell me everything."

I went through the business of unlocking the steel security door and held it open as my rag-tag collection of guests went in. They made their way to the living room as I shut the door behind me and locked the locks again. I checked over my shoulder to make sure everyone was down the hall, then turned back to the door and laid my palms on it.

I shifted my sight to the Other spectrum and the door and stones around it lit up with ephemeral sigils and formulae drawn over them.

Not only had Henry built the house to withstand nuclear attack, he had also worked protective magics into the stones themselves, and over the years I had layered some of my own into the mix. I'd never had a real reason to test the security system, but I'd always been glad to have it, and now it looked like it might come in handy. I pushed a fraction of my will into it and felt a gentle vibration thrum through the house as the defenses activated.

In theory, that should keep any unwanted guests out, unless of course we really were dealing with Henry Grey, in which case he'd shut them down and just walk right in. Fingers crossed. I slipped back to normal sight and meandered down the hall to the living room.

"You live in a dump, brujo," Rosa said when I entered.

She was making her way around the room pulling the white cloths off everything, revealing furniture and things that hadn't seen the light of day in years.

"Not all of us can afford a cleaning lady."

Jesus was shuffling around looking at my father's collection of curiosities in the china cabinets, African ritual knives and ancient fertility idols from the Amazon, the pickled fetus of a therianthrope and other things. Swift was busying himself with getting a fire started in the fireplace, and Hack sat in one of the big recliners with his arms folded over his chest giving Devlin the stink-eye.

The laser stink-eye.

"What happened, Devlin? CliffsNotes version if you don't mind, kind of got a full plate already." I collapsed into one of the newly uncovered chairs. It was brilliant, damn comfortable. Why hadn't I done it sooner?

Devlin had been standing at one of the boarded up windows, looking out one of the little gaps between the wood. He turned to me with a furrowed brow and worked his hands over his cane, gripping it and worrying at it.

"It happened not long after you left. A pack of Others, faceless men in service of the Sleeper, came bursting in. They assaulted me and disappeared with Sarah."

"Why didn't they kill you?" Rosa asked from across the room.

"Excuse me?" Devlin looked at Rosa like she'd started speaking gibberish.

"It's a good question, actually," I scratched at the burn on my face. It was super comfy there in the chair, but sitting down was giving the adrenaline a chance to wear off and make me pay attention to my various aches and pains. "Every time we've ran into the Sleeper's goons, they were looking to kill us."

"They tried, but I am not quite so easy to kill," Devlin said, straightening his back. "They were there for Sarah, they went straight for her."

"When Grannok was preparing to use the Libro Nihil, women folk started going missing. He used their deaths to power the ritual," Hack said, still staring pointedly at Devlin.

"You do not have to remind me," Devlin fired back.

Hack and Devlin sat looking at each other in silence, a palpable tension crackling between them.

"Okay, so, anyways. Devlin, what do you know about the God-Spear?" I asked. Eventually Devlin broke away from his staring contest with Hack and looked at me curiously.

"Your great-grandfather?"

That confirmed my suspicions, then.

The God-Spear that Flesh-Thing kept raving about was my great-grandfather, Henry.

"Yeah, but why was he called that?"

"The family name dear boy, Geirtyr. God-Spear. Feared slayer of dark and evil gods," Devlin said, "I thought you were supposed to be a scholar."

"Well. Shit."

That was another fun fact that old Henry had conveniently left out of his journals.

That reminded me; I needed to have a look at those. The business Flesh-Thing had mentioned about the Neverborn was itching at my brain.

"That's good to know," I said as I stood.

Swift had left the room, but I could hear him rummaging around down the hall in the kitchen. Hack had averted his gaze to now look anywhere but in Devlin's direction, and Rosa was keeping herself busy with fussing about the room cleaning things, must have been a nervous habit. Jesus was nowhere to be seen.

"Devlin, I'll see what I can do about Sarah. More than likely, whoever it is that has the book has her, too. You might as well hunker down here; it's the safest place I can think of. The rest of you can tuck in, I've got to get my thinking cap on." I said and there was some wordless grumbling and shifting about as I made my way out of the room, "And try not to kill each other or anything silly."

I passed the kitchen on my way to the stairs and noticed Swift, who was standing at the counter staring disconsolately at the heels of a loaf of bread and an empty jar of peanut butter.

"What kind of sad creature has no peanut butter, no jelly?" Swift said gravely.

"I'll buy you a swimming pool full of jelly with the money Devlin's going to owe me once this business is settled; until then, would you mind keeping an eye on the others? Especially Hack and Devlin, there's something going on with those two."

"Kind of like you and Hack?"

"I doubt it. Anyways, I've got something to take care of, shouldn't be long." I left the kitchen before Swift had the chance to say anything else.

Eventually, I was going to have to talk to Hack about the rift between us, now that I had a bit more age and sense on my side and could see it from his perspective a little better. I had acted like a young, foolish asshole. I mean, putting out an ad in the yellow pages and exploiting my talents for money? Lifting the curtain on the Other Side? Who knows what kind of trouble I could have started? I had enough on my hands without drawing ordinary folks into the mix unnecessarily.

I got to my room and fired up my computer. For years, I had been digitizing all the knowledge that was collected under my roof and in my brain, from ancient grimoires and texts on esoteric physics to the personal journals of my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather and any other shred of information pertaining to the stranger side of life. It was a labor of love, a lifetime's work, my true motivation. It was my goal to compile all the information I could, and create a definitive database. For my own personal use of course, there was nothing altruistic about it. Some of the things I had learned could be dangerous in the wrong hands, used towards unsavory ends.

Soon as I was able, I got into my database and entered the word 'Neverborn.' It ran the search, estimating it could take a few minutes to complete as it went through the thousands and thousands of documents stored inside the computer. While it was going through the motions, I opened up my bag and went through what I had left in it. Jesus's pistol lay gleaming on top; I pulled it out and looked at it. It was awful heavy, way heavier than it looked. Years of watching movies had taught me everything I knew about guns, namely that you pointed them at the things you wanted to die.

I laid it on my desktop and checked the status of the search; it was still going, computer humming with the effort. I decided I needed to give myself an edge, something that would make me feel a little less worthless the next time I found myself in the middle of a battle royale, so I picked up the gun and studied it for a moment.

I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, but maybe I didn't have to.

Years ago, when America and Russia were having it out over who could build the better bomb, the Russians came to the conclusion that they couldn't build a nuke with the precision or technical skill that the Americans were able to. So instead, they just made the biggest damned bomb they could; the philosophy there being that if you make the explosion big enough, you're guaranteed to hit your target.

I swept a spot clear on my desk and laid the gun back down, pulling some chalk out. I began drawing a circle around the gun, to entrap the forces I would be willing into it. I needed a way to make sure if I shot at something, it was going to go down, something like the chalk-comet, but on a different scale. I worked magics of inertia, velocity, and destruction into the circle, and infused it with some of the burning power of the cosmos itself. The working swirled about in my head as I drew around the gun, building and growing, adding layer upon layer.

When I felt like I had poured enough of myself and my will into it, and my head was swimming, I reached forward and put my hand flat on the gun and breathed out. I released my will, my hold on the brimming forces, and pushed them down into the circle and into the gun. The air smelled like ozone and a ripple went through reality as if through a pond, when it was all said and done little stars burst in front of my eyes.

My hand was still on the gun, it was warm to the touch, it shone, glowed faintly as if with an inner light, and red streaks of energy ran down the barrel. I couldn't be sure exactly how well the enchantment worked until I used it, but hopefully it wouldn't blow up in my face.

Literally.

I looked over at my computer to see that the search was completed, had been for a while probably. Time had a tendency to act funny when in the middle of futzing about with magic. It flashed that it had found one result, one entry among thousands in reference to my query. And it was, like I thought, from one of my great-grandfather's old journals. I opened the file the search directed me to and scanned through it.

Son of a bitch.

Years ago, Henry had met a curious creature. It had come to town, following the railroads, and - here's the good part - claimed it was from the far, far future. Only one of many, an entire race of beings that had never been born yet, flung back in time.

Never been born.

Neverborn.

I could hear raised voices as I approached, when I came around the corner into the living room Hack and Devlin were standing and shouting at each other with Swift standing between them like some kind of referee.

"You knew the whole damn time! I ought to blast you to smithereens you sorry parasite," Hack growled, a storm cloud of energy growing around him.

"What would you have me do, you cantankerous redneck? Appear weak before the wolves?" Devlin fired back, his cane raised like a war club and burning orange.

In the time I'd been away, Rosa had somehow managed to pry some of the boards away from the windows, and late afternoon light filtered into the room. She now sat on the couch, along with Jesus who had reappeared at some point, watching the argument go back and forth like a tennis match.

"How about not lie to the boy?"

Try as he might to appear serious, I could see Swift trying very hard to contain a smile. Granted, it did look like a round of geriatric fisticuffs was about to go down.

"Not lie to the boy about what?" I asked finally.

The two stood down, still glaring daggers at each other, or lasers in Hack's case.

"Everything. Every damn thing. He knew Flesh-Thing had the book the whole time," Hack said.

"And for the pathetic creature's own safety, I kept it secret. It was safer in its labyrinth than it ever was with me," Devlin said, lowering his cane.

"Your super mysterious informant, it was Flesh-Thing all along wasn't it?" Another piece of the bigger picture crashed into place, "What the hell did you hire me for?"