Storm in a Teacup (6 page)

Something's been bothering me about Hazel Lottie.
 

I don't know what would make her lie. Could she have seen Lena before she vanished?
 

I'm not nearly caffeinated enough to figure any of this out.
 

At least my shoulder has now scabbed over. By tomorrow it should be a nice bubblegum pink, followed by scar tissue that will fade in a week. I wouldn't mind the ability to heal within minutes, but when I think of the implications of having your skin knit together with a demon claw lodged in it, it makes me squidgy.

I jump at a knock on my door. When I peep through the hole, I see Gryfflet.
 

Speaking of squidgy. I curl my toes into my shag doormat for a moment. Amazing. He's succeeded where the hordes of hellkin have failed and turned up at my door. Or maybe the hellkin just never try.

"Gryfflet, what are you doing here?" I call through the door.
 

I see one bloodshot grey eye approach the peephole. Doesn't look like he's gotten much sleep — tiny lines of red crisscross the whites of his eye like spider webs.
 

"Can I come in?" He backs up a step and holds his hands in the air, then lifts his t-shirt. He's unarmed. Smart witch.

Smart witch or not, I don't like uninvited visitors. "Not until you tell me what you're doing here and how you found me."

"I don't want to yell it in the hall."

"Too bad. I don't just let people in."

"It's about The Righteous Dark."

That makes me sit back on my heels. "And?"

"I really don't want to talk about it where everyone can hear."

"You're going to have to."
 

I regret that immediately.

"They're all dead."

I snick open the deadbolt and slide bar, turning the doorknob lock with my other hand and hustle Gryfflet inside. "Gods damn it, Gryfflet. You couldn't hold up a sign or call or something?"

"I told you."

"So sue me. I'm paranoid and reclusive."
 

For a moment he looks at me from my doorway like reclusive is just a synonym for lonely, and he knows it. It makes me think I ought to get a pet. Then he drops his gaze to my bare feet. "Should I take off my shoes?"

I eye the thick ivory carpet that blankets my floor. "What do you think?"

His shoes come off. I point him toward the dining room, and he gingerly eases himself onto a chair.
 

I stand in the archway to the kitchen, my weight all on one foot. He might be inside my house, but if he's a threat he's still getting a bread knife in the chest. My knife block is visible just to my right. "Let's start with how you know they're all dead."

"My friend is friends with their drummer. Said he wasn't answering his texts."

"That isn't dead; that's drummer. They're flaky." I dated one once. I should know.

Gryfflet's eyelids flutter. "You don't understand. That dude might as well have his phone glued to his thumbs."

"If you don't have any more compelling evidence than that, get out."

"Well, he went to the drummer's house to see why he wasn't answering and he found the band's...parts."

I'll take the five hundred dollar bet and assume he's not talking about who solos in which song. "And you didn't lead with this why?"

"I thought I should start at the beginning."

"Start with the important bits. Like finding human bits. Did he call the police or the Summit?" Strewn-about human parts almost always falls under Mediator jurisdiction. Except for one notable serial killer down in what's left of Mississippi last year who left a trail of noses.

Gryfflet shakes his head. He's got both hands on my glass tabletop, ten fingers leaving ten greasy marks on the surface. He must think I'm planning to stab him, because the first knuckle of each finger makes a white spot against the pink of the tips.

I straighten myself to standing. "Well, Gryfflet, I think it's time we go see The Righteous Dark again."

"You're kidding."

"I'm not."

It takes me five minutes to throw on my gear, peek outside at the smug blazing sunlight, and coat myself in sunblock. I always opt for soft leather pants for the same reason bikers do. It's not a fashion statement. Whether it's a demon or a Harley hog throwing you onto the concrete doesn't matter — road burn hurts like a bitch.

I make Gryfflet ride with me. I know I'm paranoid; I don't like other people driving when I don't understand their motives. Seventeen minutes later, we pull up to what can only be described as a tenement. And not in the quaint European sense of the word.
 

The apartment building has exposed joists even on the outside that make me wonder why it hasn't yet been condemned. I step over a rusty syringe.
 

"Picturesque, isn't it?" Gryfflet beckons to me, and I follow him inside.
 

It smells like the underside of a month-old catbox in here. At the foot of the walls, the carpet in the corridor is a vague memory of blue that shows what the scraped out, trodden-down, grime covered center might have looked like a couple decades ago. Two of the three doors we pass have busted doorjambs and stand open like toothless gaps after a bar fight.
 

Of course we're going to the end of the hall. It wouldn't be poetic if fate spared my nostrils by making this a short jaunt through this sewer of a building.

The last door on the left isn't just ajar.
 

It's sawdust.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I almost apologize to Gryfflet on the spot.

One step toward the door, and all I can think of is not barfing my croissant onto the remnants of wood and plaster.
 

"Parts" was putting it gently. I stare at a blood-soaked chunk for the better part of twenty seconds before I identify it as an elbow. It's wearing a scarf of intestine.

I swallow and wish I hadn't.

And the smell. I yearn for the urine stew of the corridor. The combined stench of emptied bladders and ripped bowels mingles with the odor of viscera and the tinny undercurrent of blood.
 

This wasn't anyone's idea of an accident. This was annihilation. To Gryfflet's credit, he doesn't faint or puke on the crime scene. Instead, he sways on the balls of his feet, an involuntary "oooh" emitting from his throat.

The more I stare at it, the more I can pick out the "parts." I find two intact pelvises and enough chunks of skull to suggest four victims. But it's what I see poking out from underneath the arm of an overturned threadbare Laz-E-Boy that catches my eye.

It's the talisman from last night.

I make a note to absolve Gryfflet of conspiring for its theft. The demons found who they were looking for.

Four splats.
 

That's what we Mediators call kills like this. I'm sure you can guess why, but if you're having trouble picturing it, think of what might be left of a person after taking a test flight from the top of the Gotham tower without a parachute or a hang-glider.
 

There are four splats, but only three band members. Who the fuck is the fourth?

I drag Gryfflet outside to call Gregor. He's thrilled to hear that I found the talisman — or maybe that Gryfflet led me to it — but he gets his normal monotone back when I tell him about the deceased. After the thirty-second phone call, he hangs up on me with a promise that he'll be here in twenty minutes.

The air outside is comparatively fresh. It takes four cycles of the nearby traffic light for the rotting refuse smell of the Dumpster to shoulder aside the remnants of death in my nose. Gryfflet hasn't spoken in several minutes, and when I look over at him, I see it's because he's sitting on a tree stump, fingernails smushed into soggy bark.

He looks pitiful, like a cheeping chick in the rain.

"There were four bodies in there, Gryfflet. Do you know who the fourth was?"

"I have no idea. Could've been anyone. Another musician. A priest. I don't know." His cabbage-like face is wilty and wan. "Can we do that thing where we don't talk about it?"

I forget sometimes that other people aren't as used to demon kills as I am, witch or no. Part of my training was to desensitize myself to images like we just saw. And in case you're wondering, no, it didn't involve seeing them in educational videos on outdated VHS machines with shitty tracking. No matter how many Mediators there are, there are always things like this to find.
 

A prickle of a tear stings my eye, and I blink it back. It's been a while since I got emotional about my calling; it's not like I had a choice. If you're born with the violet eyes, everyone knows what you are the second you leave the womb.

The one I came from has vanished along with the woman it belongs to. I may have never had a mommy, but I had a mother before the nurses took one look at my eyes and swaddled me up into a lifetime of monster hunting.
 

Maybe that's the real reason for the prickling tear.

They say there's one of us for every one of
them
, but I never feel like that. Just like last night, we're always outnumbered.

It's watching Gryfflet and the ripples of terror, revulsion, and blank numbness that flicker across his face that does it. I do what I do to keep people like him safe.

The ones like The Righteous Dark are the idiots I can't help. When you go slinking into the night, you end up a splat. Yet they're always surprised when the demons aren't fluffy bunnies. When we find whole corpses, their faces are always in that last mask of shock.

Gregor arrives, interrupting my introspection.

"Show me," is all he says.

I mentally thank him for the distraction.

I lead the way this time, leaving Gryfflet outside. There's no need for him to see the panorama of gore again, but maybe Gregor will see something I don't. It's seeing Gryfflet's ripples of terror, revulsion, and blank numbness that reminds me. I do what I do to keep people like him safe.

This time, I look around the apartment instead of at the bodies.
 

Deep claw marks gouge the walls in several places, and my side gives a helpful sympathy twinge when I see them.
 

"Aetna." Gregor kneels in a tiny patch of clean carpet — comparatively clean, anyway — to examine the same intestine-wrapped elbow I saw when I first arrived.

"You're sure?" We don't see many aetnas. There used to be a health insurance company by that name, but when the Mediators told them there was a four-legged rage demon that preempted their choice by a few eons, they went out of business from the humiliation. At least that's what I tell myself. Aetnas shred things, but a lot of hellkin like to do that. I don't know how Gregor can decide this devastation is more aetna-y than say, slummoth-y, but he seems confident.

"The claw patterns on the carpet. See here how it looks like there was a pawing bull?"

The carpet is one big blood pool for the most part, but where the viscous liquid has soaked in, I can see the deep scrapes left by claws. It does look like a pawing bull. With very sharp hooves. "Two legged demons wouldn't do that."

"Right."

Well, what do you know? I learned a thing.

I sidestep Gregor, using a lone sofa cushion as a stepping stone to get past this corner of the blood pool. Humans store a lot of blood in their bodies. Four humans leave about four gallons of blood when they bleed out, and when the bodies are splatted like this, you definitely get all of the pints. The apartment doesn't have a lot of square footage, and ninety percent of it has been painted red.

From my new vantage point, I find a third pelvis — or what looks like part of one. It doesn't look right, and I can't figure out why. Never mind that it's a human bone laying on carpet. Most of the flesh is gone from it. I don't have to tell you where it went, do I?

Good.

It's a whole femur about a yard to the left that makes it click.
 

The other two pelvis bones I saw were intact. This one looks like it's been exploded from the inside out.

Not much about demons makes sense, but this is a true oddity, and I don't like the whiff of suspicion that settles in the back of my mind.

"What are you looking at, Storme?" For someone as blocky as Gregor, he moves like a pirouetting ballerina. He rises from kneeling to follow my route around the blood, and I point at the pelvis.
 

"That. I counted two others there and there," I gesture around the room.

"And there's another intact pelvic section behind the armchair."

I nod. "Okay. Three intact. One shattered. Why?"

Gregor frowns at me, his square mouth angling downward at the corners. "I'm more concerned about who."

He's got a point, I guess. But I can't help wondering.