To Kill a Sorcerer (27 page)

Marcus took one, and so did Aliena.

I thought back to how Kanga had handled me at Madame Leoni’s. It was not just the magic that had impressed me—it was the easy manner with which he controlled it and the confident way he had pressed his assault. These amulets would not offer any protection against such an attack, but they might deflect other charms and would protect against evil spirits.

Aliena slipped the necklace over her head. I wished she were not here. Just in case it went bad.

Live music and laughter drifted from a neighboring home. Friends clustering together for a night of holiday cheer. And here were we, two vampires and an immortal, preparing to kill one of the local residents—a confirmed conjurer better known as the Voodoo Killer.

Marcus had been right about the small side door. It was old, and constant exposure to the Southern California climate had warped it away from the frame. I gave a slight push above the handle, and it popped open.

The three of us entered the dim living room. Light filtered through the windows at the front of the house. I pulled my gun and thumbed the safety off as Aliena walked through the living room and into the kitchen. She emerged, shook her head.

Marcus had gone through the door leading off the living room, and now he came out. The three of us moved quietly past the front door and into the hallway that led to the bedrooms. There was a door on either side at the far end.

Light issued from the door on the left.

Marcus was in the lead, I was second, and Aliena was in the rear.

Our plan was simple: if we found Kanga, I would start shooting, and they would attack from opposite sides. If they could distract him for even a moment, one bullet to the head would put him down, sorcerer or not. If Aliena or Marcus got to him first, the problem was no longer mine, and Kanga would die in a lingering, horrific manner.

Marcus turned the knob. In the blink of an eye, he and Aliena were inside, standing on opposite ends of the room. I followed, holding my gun at shoulder level. I stumbled and looked down. At my feet was a springy, queen-size mattress.

Placed along the walls, side by side, were more of them, lashed together with canvas straps. They covered the floor. Where the mattresses fell short of the walls, pillows were stuffed in the crevices. Kanga had only left enough space to allow the door to open.

This was his quiet room, where he came when he traveled on the astral plane.

The three of us returned to the hallway. One door left. Aliena grasped the handle, and we burst in.

A bedroom, with a bed, a closet, a nightstand, and a dresser.

No Kanga.

A television stood on the dresser, a DVD player atop it. Both units had green lights glowing in their power buttons, and the word “PAUSE” burned in the upper left corner of the TV. The remote lay in front of me. I picked it up and pressed the Play button. Kanga came onscreen.

“Ah, Mr. Montero, you have found my little house.” He smiled, leaning back on the couch in the living room with his legs crossed, sipping from a bottle of water. “I trust you have come without your detective friend Mr. Hamilton. Or does he know your little secret? I would guess not. In fact, I am certain there are few who know the truth about you.”

He grinned like a man who had discovered buried treasure. “You can imagine my surprise when I saw you on television this evening. You must be a remarkable being, to survive my attack, and that of the messengers I sent to your home later. How did you escape them? Remarkable what young girls can do when properly motivated, isn’t it?”

“
Monster
,” Aliena said under her breath.

We had been sure, and this confirmed that the spirits he had sent to attack me were Sherri Barlow and Jessica Patterson. I stared at Kanga’s image with growing abhorrence.

He screwed the cap onto his bottle, set it aside, and leaned forward.

“I may have been too hasty in deciding to eliminate you. It is possible you could serve another purpose. For one thing, I simply must hear how you have managed to keep your longevity confidential all this time. And how long has it been, by the way?”

Marcus and Aliena watched me. My face remained impassive, but inside, my guts churned. I guard my secrets jealously—it’s one reason they are still mine alone. Now my greatest secret was in the hands of an enemy.

Perhaps thirteen really was unlucky. So far during this case, LAPD had recovered my blood at a crime scene, our killer had displayed powers that were undoubtedly magical, and this same murderer had discovered my immortal nature.

I thought about the fight between Mejia and Shepard at 49, the night Aliena came back from Iraq. The bout had been the Angel of Dread’s thirteenth death match. He had not survived it, ending up flat on his back with a skinny vampire attached to his throat. It was a good thing I was not superstitious.

This case had quickly become much more than a homicide investigation. There were too many loose ends that could eventually be tied to me, and now I was in danger of being blackmailed by a serial killer.

“We have much to discuss,” Kanga said. “When I decide what it is I want from you, Mr. Montero, you will hear from me again.”

The screen went black. I pushed the Eject button, and when the tray opened, I pocketed the DVD. I turned the TV off and set the remote down.

“So he is after you,” Aliena said.

“It would appear so.”

“But not to kill anymore,” Marcus said.

“No.” If Kanga had access to police files and learned about the peculiar nature of my blood, he might have a reason for wanting me alive. In fact, he probably did not even need the chem analysis since he knew I could withstand injuries that would kill another man. His
grimoires
likely already contained ancient concoctions that could use my plasma to potent effect.

Aliena led us back into the hallway after we had determined there was nothing else of interest in the room. “The man for whom you and all of LAPD search,” she said over her shoulder, “has told you he will contact you when he is ready.”

“I obviously made a strong impression on him,” I said, half jokingly, but Aliena’s sharp glance cut that short. “It is of no consequence. It’s merely his conceit. If he wants to come to me, let him come. I will kill him if he does.”

“If he attacks you during the day, we cannot help,” Marcus said.

“I know. And I have no idea where to find him tonight.” We stopped in the living room. I pulled my phone out and dialed Preston. It was nearly two, but he did not keep normal hours. He answered immediately.

“Yeah?”

“Mr. Preston, we were right about the address we have for Kanga. It’s empty now.”

“We still haven’t found another one,” he replied, and I could hear him munching on something. “I will contact you when we do.”

I did not have to repeat the conversation to Aliena and Marcus. They had heard everything easily.

“What do we do now?” Aliena asked.

“Unless you can think of a productive way to spend our time, we wait.”

“I don’t understand,” Marcus said, gesturing at the empty house. “Why keep this place? To have a quiet room so he could travel in the ether?”

“It was a front of some kind,” I said.

“Why? He was obviously planning on leaving and clearly knew exactly how long he could stay.”

“I don’t know.”

“Unless it was to prevent any chance of his being identified once the murders had begun,” Aliena said. “He probably did not use it for meditation and astral travel only. It could also have been for his job. He is very careful.” She watched me, her hair catching the meager light from the backyard and framing her shadowy face in a soft halo. “It sounds like you are high on his priority list.”

“I wonder what he wants from you,” Marcus said.

“I doubt it will be anything I’d be willing to give him.”

Aliena said, “It did not sound as if he planned to ask.”

Friday, December 24, 2:17 a.m.

We left Kanga’s house and split up.

“Call me if you learn anything else,” Marcus said.

“Of course,” Aliena told him.

He disappeared.

Aliena came with me. Since we could do nothing more about finding Kanga, I could only think of one imperative task.

“I have some new furnishings.” I reached behind my seat, grabbed the bag Bey had given me, dropped it in her lap. “We need to distribute them throughout my house.”

After executing an illegal U-turn, I headed for the freeway.

“What did you get?” She began rummaging through the contents. She pulled out the Christo Glass. “Beautiful. What does—now, that
is
strange.” She looked at the dashboard through the lens. “What is that?”

“It’s the car’s aura.”

“Its aura? You’re serious?”

“Yes. According to Bey, all things have some kind of aura, even rocks.”

“All of these came from Geoff?”

“Yes.”

“What is this?”

“A Christo Glass.”

“Why do you need it?”

“To kill spirits. The next time they come calling uninvited.”

“It was that bad?”

“Yes. That reminds me. Please wear that charm at all times. It will protect you from such an attack.”

She reached up and touched the black stone, rolling it between her thumb and forefinger as if trying to feel the power infused in the onyx. “I like it,” she said. “Thank you for giving one to Marcus.”

“My pleasure. Now if I could just get Hamilton to wear one.” I turned onto the freeway and headed toward Pacific Coast Highway.

“This is cute,” she said, holding up a red kabbalah bracelet.

“One of them is yours. Wear it on your left wrist.”

She put it on. “This is very sweet of you, Sebastian. Is it all because I kissed you?” She batted her eyelashes at me.

“If only it was that simple.”

“You’re truly worried that this man could harm a vampire?”

“You are supernatural beings, but do you have any special immunity to malevolent demons?” I had read many of the secret, scholarly writings by vampires, but none included an account of them interacting with the spirit world.

“I don’t know. I have never heard of it happening.”

“These were incredibly potent entities,” I told her, remembering the sheer strength of the creatures. “And since they have no physical form, your strength and speed might not matter, unless you can see them and avoid them altogether.”

“I am different from you in other ways,” she said.

“Yes.” During the attack, the demons had crushed my lungs, cutting off my air, and squashed my leg, impeding the flow of blood. Neither would affect a vampire. Normally, they would not permanently harm me, either. And that was why I worried over Aliena and Marcus. Vampires still have the souls of human beings. And these demons attacked the soul, I was sure of it.

I glanced at Aliena as she continued to rummage through the little leather bag, entranced as always by this unique being. A part of humanity, yet separate. Invulnerable predator, yet dependent. A terrible symbol of evil, yet possessing the shining soul of a human being. Vampires represented nature’s greatest paradox.

“I admit, I can’t imagine how they could hurt you, but why take the chance?”

“That is sensible,” she said, sniffing at one of the atomizers. “I will wear the amulet until we kill this man.”

“Thank you.”

Latigo Canyon was pitch under the slim moon’s shimmer, the Thunderbird’s lights bright as we shot up the road. I turned into my private drive and watched the security gates close behind us in the rearview mirror, thinking how different my place was compared to Hamilton’s. I could never hear my neighbors quarrel, unless they did so with automatic weapons. One commodity money could buy included distance from the rest of humanity.

I pulled the Thunder Chicken into the garage and noted that Hector had picked up the Maserati. Like my specialists at BioLaw, I paid my field staff—a small army run as a subsidiary company to BioLaw—exorbitant salaries. In return, I expected them to be available at all hours and to carry out their assignments as fast as possible unless instructed otherwise.

Once out of the car, I took the bag of jujus and dropped a couple of bones on the ground. Aliena placed her hand against the security pad. It glowed green, and the door popped open. She and Hector were the only other people keyed to the locks in my home.

As soon as we were inside, I set down Bey’s bag of talismans on the living room coffee table and began rummaging through it. I pulled out a handful of fetishized bones.

“Let’s take it from the top.”

Aliena followed me upstairs to the master bedroom. The first bone went in the bathroom, on the sill of a large arbor window above the bathtub, overlooking my garden and small orchard of apple, orange, and lemon trees.

“Smells nice in here,” Aliena said. She stuck her head in and looked around, picked up the soap and sniffed. “Mmmm.”

I leaned over and kissed her neck. “You need to wash your clothes.” Vampires do not sweat, and their skin is dry, but they still got dirty, and so did their clothes. Dust was appealing on Aliena, but so was the scent of shampoo in her hair.

She set the soap down. “May I shower in here?”

“You have your own room, remember?”

“Perhaps I would rather shower in yours.”

Always a tease. “You may bathe in the kitchen sink, if that is your wish.”

“Good.”

We returned to the bedroom, where I placed bones on the windowsills and inside the sliding glass doors leading to the balcony.

After I placed bones on the rest of the upstairs windows, we descended the stairs, returned to the foyer and turned down the short hallway that led to her bedroom. Although I knew Aliena followed right behind me the whole time, she made as much noise as a cat wearing cotton socks. It was like being shadowed by your shadow.

“He blessed all of these?” Her voice came from somewhere over my right shoulder.

“Uh-huh.”

We turned in at her door. I flipped on the light switch and crossed the room, pulled back the heavy drapes, and placed two bones on the sill.

“You don’t have a window in your bathroom, so that’s all for here. Your room is safe.”