Pellini flicked his hand toward the Amaryllis article. “Tim Daniels is the hero on that one. He got the vic back alive and almost caught the perp.”
“That’s damn good,” I said with undisguised relief. Tim was the all-around good guy and decent cop who I’d once sent on a wild goose chase to search for a nonexistent cat—which was how Eilahn ended up with Fuzzykins. “She’s okay then?”
Pellini’s expression darkened. “Got the dogsnot beat out of her and was raped several times.” He paused. “She’ll recover, though. Physically, at least.”
And a lifetime of recovery for the rest. I dropped my hands to my lap and clenched them together. This attack on Amaryllis was no coincidence. “Is there a description of the perp?”
“Hold on.” Pellini pulled out his phone and flipped through items. “I was following the reports because it reminded me of the Amber Gavin murder.” He stopped scrolling and clicked a link. “Got it. Inch or two taller than six feet. Brown hair. Possibly a black van. That’s from Tim. Not much from the victim yet.” He turned the phone around to show me a computer sketch. It was a pretty crummy representation—not surprising if Tim didn’t get a solid look at him—but it was good enough for me.
Jerry Fucking Steiner. “Who has the case?” I asked.
“Boudreaux and Wetzer,” he said. “Why? What’s up?”
I leaned back and studied him. “I’d like to tell you one bit of info that will fill in a few gaps without putting you in an untenable position.”
Pellini gave me a slow, considered nod.
“We had intel that Idris was being held at the Farouche Plantation,” I said. “We also learned that Farouche was having people kidnapped to be sent with Rhyzkahl to the demon realm. We found out the identity of the next target, and I took her place as a means to infiltrate the security at the plantation. The name of that target was Amaryllis Castlebrook.”
His eyes widened in surprise before narrowing. “Fuuuuuuuck.”
“It’s not too late to remain uninformed,” I said.
A shimmer of uncertainty lingered on his face. “I don’t know the details of what went down at the plantation that night,” he said. “But I can guess the grand finale, whether you fill in the gaps or not.”
“True,” I said then shrugged. “However, you know as well as I do that guessing and knowing are two different things.”
His hand tightened into a fist on the table, and he seemed poised to get up and leave the room. But then he blew out a heavy breath. “It’s too late to dick around with semantics,” he said with no trace of doubt. “There are no laws that cover this shit, and I have a feeling you know what happened to this Castlebrook woman.”
“Pretty sure I do,” I said then, with a wry smile, added, “Welcome to the madhouse.” With that, I launched into the story, doing my best to hit the high points and the pertinent details. Idris’s captivity with the Mraztur and his transfer to Earth with Katashi. My first encounter with Bryce and Paul at the warehouse that held a valve node. Bryce taking a bullet for Paul, and Mzatal saving his life. Farouche’s ability to make people do his bidding through implanted fear or adoration. His involvement with Katashi, the Mraztur, and Rhyzkahl. Human trafficking.
And, finally, the big fight at the plantation, where I stood by and watched while Bryce Thatcher executed James Macklin Farouche.
Pellini listened with quiet reserve. When I finished, he tipped his head back to examine a spot high on the wall behind me. “If you’d turned Farouche over to the legal system,” he said after a moment, “he would’ve used that fear-love ability of his to get all the charges dropped and walk free.” He dropped his eyes to mine again. “The only other option would’ve been to take him captive. That wasn’t feasible from a logistics standpoint or with the risk of Farouche influencing you in the process.”
“You nailed it,” I said. “Bryce made a choice—the right one, in my opinion—and executed Farouche. Soon after that, Bryce Thatcher disappeared forever.” Pellini opened his mouth to speak, but I forged ahead. “He had a brief stay in the demon realm that included facial reconstruction and new fingerprints,” I paused for dramatic effect, “and returned yesterday as Bryce Taggart.”
To my surprise Pellini let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “That’s fucking hysterical.”
Not exactly the reaction I’d expected. “Um. Why?”
He shoved out of the chair with a grunt and retreated to the counter. “Bryce isn’t really a common name, and after I met him the night of the barbeque, I got suspicious. Witnesses had him at the plantation that night, and Boudreaux had that police sketch of you. I put two and two together, y’know? So I did a quick check on my phone of police photos of Bryce Thatcher.” He snorted. “Didn’t look a fucking thing like the man who gave me a hamburger, and I let it go.”
“You have good instincts,” I said, honestly impressed that he’d made the connection and followed up on it.
“I have my moments,” he said then shook his head. “Hitman hamburgers. Damn.”
“You needed to know about Bryce and his past if you’re going to be part of this team.” I sighed. “I know what it means to come to terms with being a cop and rubbing elbows with a hitman.” It was one thing for him to accept that Bryce killed a man who needed killing. But coming to terms with Bryce’s background was a different story, and I didn’t know what to do if Pellini couldn’t handle it. “Is this going to be a problem for you?”
“Nah, it’s fine,” he said without conviction. His jaw and mouth worked as he tried to choose his words, but then he shook his head and slashed the air in a stop-everything gesture. “No. Shit. I need more time to get my head around it.”
While not an ideal response, it wasn’t rejection either. I also understood why he couldn’t come right out and say, Yeah, I’m cool. “Take a day or two to think things over,” I said. “All I ask is that you not act on the information in that time.”
“I can do that,” he said. He gestured to the newspaper. “How does everything you’ve told me tie in with the victim?”
“Jerry Steiner was the driver when I was kidnapped in place of the real Amaryllis Castlebrook. He was also a key assailant in Amber Gavin’s murder and rape, and I’m fucking positive he’s the perp in this.”
A teeth-baring smile curved Pellini’s mouth. “I would fucking love to see him nailed to the goddamn wall.”
“You and me both,” I said in vehement agreement. “Maybe you can tell Boudreaux the sketch reminds you of Steiner. He could do a photo lineup with that asshole’s picture in it for Tim and the victim. See what pops.”
He snorted. “You almost sound like a detective.”
“Really?” I tilted my head and offered him a mock-puzzled look. “You know how detectives operate?”
“Nah, I just watch cop shows.” But then he sobered. “What about your part in all this? The Sheriff’s Office considers you a person of interest in the Farouche murder, and you ducked out pretty damn quick when O’Connor called earlier. You getting pressured?”
I grimaced. “I wasn’t too worried when all he had was a crappy police sketch to tie me to the scene,” I said. Fortunately the one photo of me was too blurry to be used as evidence. “But it seems O’Connor now has a witness who saw me leaving the scene with Bryce after the shooting. He’s threatening to arrest me for Principal to Murder unless I spill my guts.”
His mouth twisted. “Interesting that a witness decided to come forward at this point,” he said. “Especially with information that directly incriminates you.”
“Isn’t it though?” I scowled. “I know Katashi and his people are behind it. Getting me arrested is a damn good way to fuck with us.”
“And there’s not much you can do,” he said.
“This is usually when I resort to chocolate.”
“Makes as much sense as anything else.”
Chapter 19
The only chocolate in the house was chocolate milk mix, but that was better than nothing. I stirred up
a double-strong glassful, then proceeded to the dining room with my chocolate milk, my guns, and my cleaning kit. Pellini entered a few minutes later with his own guns. I spread an old blanket over the table, and we settled in for a nice homey gun-cleaning party.
By the time Idris and Bryce arrived, Pellini and I had our handguns stripped down to component parts and were going to town with solvent and bore brushes. Bryce joined us with his backup piece—a compact Glock 26 9mm—along with a Sig Sauer P227 Zack had left at the house. Bryce’s former primary weapon was a Glock 27 that currently rested at the bottom of Bayou Deschamps—stripped, filed, and dumped after he killed Farouche with it. I’d offered him use of the Sig since he needed a second gun, and I knew damn well Zack wasn’t the type to mind.
Idris stepped into the dining room. His gaze traveled over the variety of lethal hardware spread out on the table, then he plopped into a chair and retrieved a whetstone from his messenger bag. As I glanced over with interest, he pulled a folding knife from his belt and opened it one-handed. It was a sleek tactical knife with a black handle and a beveled blade, lovely and deadly in a perfect melding of form and function. It probably served as his ritual knife as well as other necessary uses, I decided as I watched him sharpen the steel’s edge. After several precise strokes of the whetstone, he tested the blade on a piece of paper. It parted with a whisper, like silk against a razor.
Oh yeah, I wanted one of those. That shit was going on my Christmas list.
As I ran a cloth through the barrel of my gun, I gave everyone a quick rundown of the abduction attempt on Jill as well as what happened to Amaryllis Castlebrook. “I’m positive Jerry Steiner is the perp in the Amaryllis case, and now we know that he and Angus McDunn are actively working against us—almost certainly with Katashi.”
“Leo Carter is also with them,” Bryce said. “Farouche’s head of security. You saw him at the plantation.” Then a smile split his face. “Our good news is that Idris and I found the Katashi base this afternoon.”
“You did?!” I straightened abruptly and knocked the bottle of gun oil off the table. I snatched it up before more than a drop spilled then pierced Bryce with a look. “Tell!”
“It’s the twenty-acre property from the list of possibles you gave us,” he said. “Idris detected wards when we did a drive-by. We couldn’t see the house from the road, but we set up not far away with a pair of binoculars and saw Carter and a female passenger drive out the gate.”
Elated, I performed a brief and silly chair dance. “I knew they wouldn’t hole up in a shitty motel. How heavily warded is the place? Any chance we can infiltrate?”
Idris spoke up. “We checked the fence line. Warded out the wazoo. Not quite as heavily as this place, but close.” He dragged the red bundle out of his messenger bag and placed it on the table. “But here’s the upside. Katashi has a way of camouflaging wards from othersight. It’s sneaky because even if you know a ward is there, you can’t sense it, which means you can’t deal with it.”
“Erm,” I said, “am I missing something? That doesn’t sound like much of an upside.”
“Yeah, the hidden ward part sucks. But it turns out we have a detector, so to speak.” He pulled the silk back to expose the Katashi forearm with its Mark.
“Jesus fuck!” Pellini blurted. “Is that an arm?”
Oops. Forgot he didn’t know about Mr. Handy. “Katashi’s,” I told him. “Long story, but he totally deserved to have it chopped off. Promise.”
Pellini muttered under his breath, but he didn’t leave the room. I gave Idris a Go on nod.
“Here’s the cool part,” Idris said, and his eyes lit up. “This baby twitches when it’s near a Katashi Special. Plus, if I manage to pinpoint and touch the sigil with the hand, BAM, the camouflage drops.”
Its fingers jerked.
I recoiled in shock, but Pellini shot out of his chair and stumbled back, reflexively aiming his barrel-free gun grip at the arm. “Are you shitting me?”
Idris stroked the arm as though soothing an animal. “It’s cool. It does that every now and then.”
Heart thumping, I watched the thing warily. “Does that mean there’s a Katashi ward nearby?” Pellini eased back into his chair, eyes never leaving the arm.
“No, the twitching for a ward is different. Regular. Frantic.” Idris flicked his fingers open and closed several times to demonstrate the difference. “I haven’t connected these occasional jerks to anything specific.”
“That has to be the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” I said and couldn’t hold back the shudder, “but it does sound useful.” I surveyed the table, then had to laugh. “Guns-a-plenty, and a magic arm. We’re set.”
“That arm looks fresh,” Pellini said with dark suspicion. “Did it just get cut off?”
“Nah, it’s been zombified for over six months,” I said. “Mzatal put a demonic lord whammy on it to keep it from rotting.”
Idris gave me a pained look. “A putrescence counter-cascade ritual,” he corrected then re-wrapped the thing and tucked it away in his messenger bag. Pellini had a glazed look about him but resumed his gun cleaning once the arm was out of sight.
“We’re pretty thin in the manpower area,” Bryce said, disassembling the Sig as easily as breathing. “I can’t see any way to infiltrate the Katashi household that won’t end in disaster.”
“Fair enough,” I said. I wasn’t going to argue the point. Bryce knew tactics better than anyone else in the room. “We’ve been stabilizing the valves, but we need to come up with a plan of action beyond that. Katashi has a clear goal and a strategy to achieve it.” My mouth twisted. “I don’t like feeling as if we have to wait for disaster to strike before we can act.”
“Sounds like Katashi is the kingpin,” Pellini said. “Take him out of commission and the whole shebang comes to a screeching halt.”
Idris nailed Pellini with a We don’t need your input look. “Really? Wow! Wish I’d thought of that.”
Pellini tensed, and I spoke quickly to forestall violence. “We’ve all thought it, but now it’s time to consider specifics. Idris, you’ve spent a lot of time with Katashi. What are we up against if we decide to take him out?”
His belligerence retreated. “Katashi is one of a kind,” Idris said. “He’s been a full-fledged summoner for over ninety years, and conducted the first summoning of modern times. He not only managed it without a mentor or any formal training, but he summoned the reyza Gestamar—hands down the hardest demon to summon.” Unabashed awe flashed across Idris’s face. Despite his hatred of Katashi, he respected the skill. “I don’t know any other summoner who could pull that off,” he continued, serious again. “He has techniques he doesn’t teach anyone, and even his inner circle isn’t privy to his methods and plans for the valves.” He pinned us each with a dark look as he spoke. “Don’t let his old man act fool you. Mzatal, Jesral, and possibly other lords trained him. The bastard is sharp and strong.”
In other words, Katashi was an enemy to be reckoned with. I masked a grimace. I, too, was guilty of thinking of him as just another summoner—one who happened to be iconic. I’d certainly never thought of him as a mastermind. Once again, I’d underestimated him. Stupid and dangerous.
“His stamp is on everything that has anything to do with summoning,” I said, pulse thudding as the implications sunk in. “All modern summoners—every single one of us—has either been a direct student of Katashi, or a student of one of his students.” Like my Aunt Tessa, I thought as a lump tightened my throat. Katashi had kept her on the sidelines for years before calling her into service. And though I didn’t believe for a minute that she was complicit in any of the nastiness, she dropped everything and went to him the instant he snapped his fingers.
“That’s right,” Idris said, leaning forward. “And it means Katashi has neutral-to-favorable connections with every summoner in the world.” He stabbed a finger toward me. “Except you,” he jerked his thumb at himself, “and me.”
Conversa
tion died as the weight of what we faced settled over us. The sharp tang of gun oil wound through the room as we bent over our weapons and attended to issues that were easily dealt with. A spot of corrosion. A buildup of carbon.
Pellini reassembled and wiped down his gun, then rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin, brows knitted in a frown. “There might be an advantage in this for us,” he said. “Katashi’s been the unopposed head honcho for all these years. If everyone has always been on his side, then he’s not used to being a target. He might not be at the top of the game when it comes to defense.”
Idris gave a reluctant nod. “He’s near untouchable when he knows trouble is imminent but, yeah, constant vigilance isn’t his specialty.”
Bryce slipped the pieces of the Sig back together, loaded it, chambered a round and holstered it. “If McDunn and Carter have a say in his security, he’ll be less vulnerable than before.”
Pellini shifted, uneasy. “Are we talking capturing or killing here?”
“Killing,” Idris said, even as I said, “Capturing.”
Idris leveled a defiant look at me. “Killing is a helluva lot less risky. There’s no advantage to capturing him.”
“Less risky?” I scoffed. “Maybe in the short term, but killing packs a mighty punch when it comes to consequences.” And didn’t I know it. “Look, Katashi is the eyes, ears, and hands of the Mraztur on Earth. I doubt any of them have a clue about his day-to-day operation.” Idris looked poised to interrupt, but I kept going. “You said that his people don’t know his plans and methods. If we kill him, and his flunkies don’t know what to do next with the valves, the Mraztur are screwed.” I narrowed my eyes. “But so are we, since we don’t know what he’s put in motion with the valve project.”
“Capture him, and nothing changes other than the risk,” Idris shot back. “He’s not going to volunteer the info, and the lords can’t read him.”