“I’ve heard that.” It was true, too. The guy had been something of a legend—kind of like Va-va-voom Vera, now that he thought of it.
“What did yours teach you?”
That was an odd question. She knew so much about him, she had to know that. “Never had one.”
“That’s not the way I heard it.”
Oh, right. She meant Laz. “Nobody’s ever told me anything different,” he said. “So why don’t we leave it at that.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize it was a sore spot.”
“It’s not.”
“Sure it is.” She sucked on the Coke he’d bought her and made a face. Yeah, sitting in the car for forty minutes hadn’t made it taste any better. “You’re kind of a walking sore spot, Speare. I wonder why.”
“You’re not as good at this little analysis game as you think you are,” he said. “It’s kind of sad. But please, keep going, if it amuses you so much.”
“I’m just—”
“I know what you’re just doing.” They hit a red light, which meant he could give her a nice long narrow-eyed look. If this was her idea of a truce, he’d hate to know how she went to war. “And I don’t like it.”
“And nobody ever does things you don’t like,” she said.
“No. They don’t.”
“Must be nice. How do you manage that?”
Well, he generally threatened them with either physical violence or the exposure of secrets, at least if they were people he wanted or needed to keep around for any length of time. But he wasn’t really in the mood to disclose any of that to her. Or hear her opinions on it. “So, Mercer. He’s not connected with Doretti, as far as I know—do you know if he was connected to Theodore, or why he might be a target?”
Another knowing pause. “Well, really, isn’t everybody in our business connected to somebody, in some way? Even if it’s just knowing each other’s names? Especially here. You know that. You’re part of it, too.”
“So who was he connected to,” Speare said, trying to just be grateful she hadn’t pressed it, “and why?”
“Nobody specifically, not that I know of. But again, he was highly in demand. They say he never met a lock he couldn’t break, that his hand was like a key itself, it was so sensitive.”
The word “hand” hit him the second it left her mouth. Apparently it hit her, too, because her last words came out slowly, like the wheels in her head were spinning in another direction, and she looked at him with wide eyes. “He was left-handed,” she said, answering the question he’d been about to ask.
He nodded. “And Theo’s right hook was legendary. What about his legs, Mercer’s legs?”
“I don’t know about that. I never heard anything. But collecting body parts, really?”
“With a demon-sword,” he said. “And you said those skills can be preserved in those parts, right?”
“But why?” They were near his neighborhood now, and the streetlights showed him every detail of her confused, unhappy expression. Her distressed expression. Damn, he was really showing her a good time, wasn’t he, with the mutilated corpse of her friend and the talk about her dead father and all. She was probably very glad that she’d agreed to meet with him.
He started to reach for her, intending to rest his hand on her shoulder again, maybe to chase that look off her face, but he stopped himself before his hand left the wheel. Why get rejected, especially when—to remind himself for the fiftieth damn time—she wasn’t someone he’d be spending time with after this. She wasn’t someone he could ever really touch.
And that was fine. He was just having a hard time getting used to being around a woman who looked like her and not touching her, that was all. Usually that was one of the first things he did when he saw a woman he wanted. If they gave him a look or moved his hand or moved themselves away, he knew he had to try a different approach or give up and find someone else. If they let him touch them, odds were they’d let him touch them in other places, too, after a little while; odds were they wanted him, too.
Not that he wanted her. Because he didn’t. He did not want that body pressed up against his, or to bury his fingers in that vivid hair, or to press his lips against the pale, delicate skin of her throat. Nope, he didn’t want that at all.
Right?
She was looking at him, her eyes wide; for a horrible second he thought he might have said that out loud or that she could somehow read his mind, but then he remembered she’d asked a question.
“I don’t know why,” he said, making the turn into his neighborhood. “I think it’s safe to assume it’s not for some kind of altruistic reason, though. They might be collecting the parts just to display, or to do some kind of ritual to absorb their power.”
“Black magic,” she said. “Not everyone can do rituals like that, so whoever it is, they’re really skilled. Powerful. Really evil, too.”
“Yeah, I kind of figured that.” He smiled at her, so she knew he was joking. “None of those parts have turned up anywhere, though. If they were just taking the skills from them, wouldn’t they discard the parts?”
“They might.” She thought about it for a second. “Unless they’re waiting for something. Maybe their ritual needs to happen at a certain time, or they need some other part….”
That couldn’t be it. Could it? “Like they need a complete body.”
Her shudder was visible even with his gaze directed elsewhere. “They want to make a whole body with used parts? That’s a little—well, no, I guess it’s realistic, but again…why?”
“Can you use a body like that to kill people, to—I mean, can you command a body like that?”
“If you have the right spells, I guess,” she said. Fear and disgust tinged her voice. “If you’re powerful enough to properly use a demon-sword, you’re probably powerful enough to use it to make a zombie-thing.”
The very idea of it made him queasy, especially since the beast thought it seemed like the most fun thing it had ever heard of. “That might be…”
“Might be what?” Pause. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.” He shut off the headlights and set the emergency brake without hitting the regular brakes at all—no need for red lights glowing in the rear—before cutting the engine. Something wasn’t right. The closer they got to his place, the weirder the air felt. Whether it was himself sensing it or the beast picking it up or both, it was one of those rare occasions when he and the thing that shared his head were in perfect agreement: Going home wasn’t the best idea.
Ardeth’s hand landed on his arm, its light, cool weight somehow soothing and reassuring and oddly exciting. He got the message she meant by it, too, which was that she was ready for anything—if they needed to get out and run, if he needed to start the car back up and speed off, whatever.
His window was already down. He rolled it down a little more and leaned toward it. It was stupid to think he would actually hear or see something, but it was possible. And it was almost definite that the beast would feel something, smell it.
Ardeth didn’t say a word. She didn’t move. He couldn’t even see her breathing. Her father had trained her well.
But still he heard nothing. Maybe that was the problem? The people up the street weren’t arguing and the obnoxious kid three doors down from him wasn’t playing his shitty music, and that seemed odd, although those things didn’t happen every single night and he doubted anyone coming for him would have killed all of his neighbors.
It wasn’t anything he could put his finger on. Just something was not right.
Ardeth rolled down her window, too. He started to turn to her but she was already moving; in a flash she’d slipped out the window feetfirst, turning over halfway so she landed softly, silently, outside her door.
He wasn’t going to let her go alone. Of course, he wasn’t going to try to maneuver his much-larger frame out the window, either. The well-oiled door opened silently, and he pushed in the button while closing it so it held
the door barely shut when he let go.
To his surprise, she was smiling when he looked at her. “Shit, I could have done that.”
“Probably wouldn’t have been as fun to watch,” he said without thinking. Good thing he was already walking past her, leading the way toward his house. She probably hadn’t even heard him.
Whether she had or not, he wasn’t sticking around to find out. He motioned her to follow him and slid into the shadowy backyard of the house on the corner, five down from and behind his. The feeling of something wrong got stronger with every step. The breeze flowing past him carried darkness, a sinister tinge of black magic that made the beast pace and twitch. Death rode on that breeze, death waiting for him down the street. They were at his house. Someone was at his house, and they weren’t potential clients and they weren’t potential informants and they definitely weren’t there to give him a copy of The Watchtower.
So he’d have to be extra careful. The next yard up had a chain-link fence; he bypassed it, keeping low as he and Ardeth made their way past the Peetes’ house. That was when he spotted the guy standing in his own backyard, only a few feet from the wall of his house. Not a familiar guy, but a familiar type: around six feet tall, weight around 190, maybe, short hair, the butt of a gun just peeking over his waistband in the small of his back. That was a guy there for a reason, and that guy made the beast growl exactly the same way the unseen sniper had done earlier.
The next house up belonged to the Diazes. Mrs. Diaz, bless her, was an avid gardener, and several flowering shrubs and trees marked the border of their land. Very handy to slip into, which he did, pulling Ardeth along by the hand and ducking down so the thick leaves hid them from view.
Her fingers wrapped around his upper arm; her breath tickled his ear. Jesus. “You know him?”
He shook his head—which was harder than it seemed, because turning in her direction too much would bring his cheek in contact with her lips. “You?”
She shook her head, too, pulling away from him enough that he could see her do it.
“Okay.” Luckily it was a breezy enough night, and they were far enough away, that Mr. Backyard there didn’t hear them as long as they whispered. Even more lucky that they both had a lot of professional experience with being very quiet. “I can sneak up behind, I think, and grab him. He’ll see me once I get into my yard, but—”
“No. Here.” She dug around in her bag and produced a small silk pouch, from which she pulled a long, thin silver chain. It glimmered in the patchy moonlight through the leaves. “Put this around your neck, and when you get close to him, get it around his, too. It’ll keep him quiet.”
He took it from her and held it up in front of him, letting it dangle from his fingers to pool on the ground. The beast gave a little shiver. “A Malphasian Baffler? Where’d you get this?”
Even in the darkness he could see her raised-brow smile. “Stole it, where do you think? It won’t make you invisible, though, or totally silent. It’ll just muffle any sounds you make and make it hard for him to see you until you’re really close—you still have to be careful, okay?” Her hand, still on his arm, squeezed it. “Don’t get shot.”
Yeah, that was definitely one of his goals anyway, not getting shot. It was still nice of her to say. He nodded and slipped the chain around his neck, making the beast shiver again. He couldn’t tell if it liked it or not, but then, he didn’t give a damn. If it had been up to him he’d have made the thing miserable every minute of every day.
Time to test the baffler. He crept away from Ardeth—if he was spotted, he didn’t want to lead them right to her—and through the bushes to the end of the Diazes’ yard. Next to their house was the Grahams’, and the desert willow that sprawled in the middle of their Astroturfed property. He darted behind it, and from there to the kiddie playhouse their daughter had recently outgrown. It still made a handy cover, though, as he slipped around it.
Which put him behind his own house, only fifteen feet or so away from the man who, thankfully, still seemed unaware of his presence. He lifted the rest of the baffler, gathered it in his left hand, and charged.
Ardeth was right. The baffler didn’t make him invisible. But it did conceal his presence enough that he managed to get only a foot or so away before he was noticed; the baffler fell around his uninvited guest before the guy could suck in enough breath to shout, and Speare made sure that wouldn’t happen by catching him in a choke hold—the beast started leaping around the second his skin made contact—and dragging the man backward, back toward the abandoned playhouse. Kind of an odd place to question someone, but any port in a storm, he figured.
Ardeth materialized from the little plastic building when he arrived there with his captive in tow. How the hell—she must have moved while he was subduing his new friend, who had, obligingly, passed out. Nice. She motioned him inside and closed the door behind them.
A tiny picnic-style table sat to the right, with attached benches on either side. To the left was an equally small bed of thick plastic designed to look like wood, and the walls were covered with decals depicting furniture and framed pictures, along with a few “appliances” jutting out. He felt like a giant.
Ardeth was apparently thinking along similar lines. “Goldilocks would think you’re here for revenge.”
“How apt.” Oh, that was weird. His voice came out strangled, barely audible; his throat felt clogged. Well, at least he knew nobody could start shouting and calling the other intruders to the playhouse. What a shame that those plastic floorboards didn’t fall under the baffler’s spell, and would boom like a bass drum if he just dropped his captive on them, which was what he’d like to do. Instead he set the guy down as quietly as he could, waiting for him to come back around so they could question him.
It didn’t take long. Only thirty seconds or so passed before the guy took a huge, gasping breath that would have been loud if not for the magical muffle. His eyelids fluttered and opened, his gaze casting wildly around what was probably a pretty bizarre place to wake up.
Speare didn’t give him time to make sense of it. He fisted the guy’s collar in his hand to keep him pinned to the floor and raised his other fist so it was directly in the guy’s line of vision. The beast roared, as it had been doing since the moment Speare touched the guy; it loved violence, and Speare had to admit he was liking the idea of it himself, at that moment. That was his home. The man he held down had invaded his home, and intended to ambush him and do him harm. The only thing keeping him from giving the guy’s dentist a chance to buy a new summerhouse was his need for information. “Who sent you?”
Ardeth, crouched at the guy’s side, took her hands out of his pockets and shook her head. “No ID.”
Damn it. No name, no way to connect the guy to a crew without his help.
Worse, people who made a point of leaving their ID at home were generally people up to no good. Leaving the ID at home was a pretty big indicator that the crime planned was a lot more than a little punching and questioning.
The guy’s response to Ardeth’s declaration was to yell. Or, at least, to try to yell. Speare’s fist stopped the shout before the baffler did, turning it into a pitiful little gawp sound instead.
“Nobody can hear you,” Speare informed him, struggling to hear his own voice over the effect of the magic and the beast’s glee. “So you might as well just say it. Did Fallerstein send you? You work for him?”
The guy looked at him then. Holy shit. His eyes—those weren’t normal. They weren’t human eyes. They were snake’s eyes, a vertical pupil set in a thick rim of gold, and when Speare jerked in surprise, an equally reptilian smile formed on the man’s face. “Gethleshi.”
The beast’s roar turned into a scream. A scream like Speare had never heard, a scream that made him think his skull was about to split open. Pain and power in equal measure reverberated through his head, through his entire body, knocking the breath from his lungs and the sight from his eyes for one hideous moment before they snappe
d back. It was all he could do to keep his grip on the guy, who clearly knew the effect his utterance had had—or at least knew it would have some effect. His widening smile was proof of that.
“Speare?” Ardeth’s voice seemed to come from very far away. Good. Made it easier to ignore.
He punched the guy again, not holding back so much this time. His rage needed a vent, and maybe the beast would calm the hell down a bit if he fed it. “Who sent you here? Why are you here?”
Was it his imagination, or was the man’s entire face going reptilian? No, not reptilian, specifically. Just…wrong. His features were shifting, changing. Not fast enough to see clearly, but it was happening just the same: the nose going wider, flatter, while the ears grew longer and the teeth lengthened. What the hell was he?
Something with a voice like thousands of insects. “They come across, and they go back. They wait in the dark, wait for the opening, and now a new one may come. One to win all wars and bend all wills, and those in his favor rule from thrones of gold.”
Every word made the beast turn and stomp harder. Every word made Speare feel sicker. He didn’t dare glance at Ardeth, who must have been terrified. And he’d gotten her into this. He should have told her to get out of town the second they were shot at, damn it. He had enough connections. He could have had her sent anywhere, somewhere nice and all expenses paid, until this blew over.
Please God, let it be something that would blow over.
The man—the creature, whatever it was—on the ground in front of him started to laugh. Almost like it had heard him thinking. He raised his fist, ready to give it another punch in whatever that was it was using for a face, but before he could do that the thing spoke again. “Ha’ta renuthor al caraliphia.”
Another scream from the beast—a different one, not as agonizing but still not pleasant—that blurred his vision but didn’t take it away. He was able to see those inhuman eyes roll back up into the thing’s head, to see it go still as it died.