Grace caught Leonard’s arm, turning him towards the stairs behind us. “Come on, sir. Unless you have a better idea, in which case we’d all love to hear it?” Leonard glowered, his eyes focused far away. He was thinking, planning… but he didn’t seem to have anything to share with the class. She tugged at his arm again, but he refused to move. I glanced over my shoulder at the staircase even as the shadow was telling me about crumbling concrete and wood rot. Grace followed my gaze. “What? Is something wrong up there?”
“No, but you’ll want to stay near the edge of the stairs. The supports are better there.” I pinched the bridge of my nose as the shadow inspected wet, moldy wood supports and stonework weakened by the explosions and combat here on the ground floor, and at the same time, we followed Damian’s footsteps outside. Darkness, faint and thin so as to remain unnoticed, writhed through the dead gardens in front of the building. We found dry cold earth full of brown plants, crispy with frost, and searched further into the park beyond. She whispered between blades of grass, slithering along the shadows of lampposts and around parked cars. Farther out there were trees, and the shadows there gave us room to explore more freely – where we tasted dead men standing in the dark, nine of them and that heavy, empty presence that we remembered as Duane. The Eldest had arrived, all right. The vibrations in the asphalt attracted the tendrils of shadow curbside as half a dozen, no, eight cars pulled up to a screeching halt beside the station. Doors opened, and men in over-priced leather shoes and smelling of expensive colognes and gun oil spilled out, taking up positions with no idea that the shadows they sheltered inside were taking their measure. Twenty-four humans, and three vampires so far… one car remained closed tight, surrounded by barriers of other cars and gunmen. That would be Gianna’s car, no doubt.
Inside, where the shadows were less discreet, we felt the B-List Brigade retreating for the doors as they exhausted themselves or ran out of enemies, and the monstrous golem swiveling to a hissing, steam-clouded stop as it regarded the struggling hollowman with its luminous red eyes… Tyler was behind me, heaving himself up off his elbows into a more comfortable position. From the angle of his head, my shadow and I could easily follow his line of vision. He was watching Grace as she tried to lead Leonard away, and we could taste salty tears mingling with the clotting blood that had leaked from his tear ducts earlier. Cat was still scoring four or five hits for every strike Irish landed on the hollowman, but his attacks were much more impressive. She darted in, slicing a layer of skin and muscle from the palm of one of those misshapen hands, and a plume of mist flowed out of the wound. The mist clung to her dagger even as she spun and rolled away from the creature’s counterstrike, and when the blade began to ripple under her grip and sprout tiny segmented legs along the edge of the blade she paused only long enough to throw the knife away, drawing a new one and rejoining the fight.
The blade sank hilt-deep in the far wall, burying itself into the mortar between the brickwork there. The pommel blinked open, and a confused pale eye looked around, as though wondering how the hell it got itself stuck in a wall.
Jesus. I wasn’t used to handling all this input at once. There was just too much of the shadow to keep track of. It was giving me a headache.
The hollowman lunged at Irish, who sidestepped with the grace of a matador and slashed a pair of its eyes as it passed. The movement carried the creature fifteen or twenty feet in our direction and Grace hauled Leonard and Tyler back. The creature made a deep, low grumbling noise, less a roar and more a groan, wobbling badly as it lurched clear of the clouds of mist and gloom. I got my first clear look at it with my own eyes since the Inquisitors had started harrying it. It was billowing mist and bleeding stringy, running gobs of black tarry ichor it in its wake, thick puddles that sprouted eye stalks and writhing filaments that stretched up from the ground, clutching at Irish’s boots as he came after the monster. It was badly wounded. The thing was missing entire limbs, and it staggered from side to side just to remain upright – but even so it was rebuilding as it went.
I realized half a face and one of the long, thin arms that looked suspiciously like one of Grace’s had once belonged to one of the vampires that had been attacking it. It was still wearing the sleeve of its orange hunter’s jacket. In another spot, a long gash across its stomach? Back? had simply grown teeth and had been repurposed as a mouth with a long barbed tongue. The creature’s feet clacked on the floor, armored to the knees by bits of crumbled marble and broken floor tiles. Two legs were useless, dangling on threads of meat and sinew and dragging behind it. As I watched, runners of thick black goo spewed from the thing’s wounds, wrapping up around the damaged legs and dragging them in closer. It wasn’t healing, as such, so much as reallocating tissue to where it did the most good and assimilating what materials it could find.
I held my ground, standing in a shooter’s stance. I closed my eyes, concentrating on my shadow’s feel of the fight. Cat darted in again with that liquid agility, ducking a pair of segmented arms. She let the barbed tongue wrap around her wrist, pulling it taut and severing it near the base. The creature kicked at her, and she posted off the incoming limb, letting it add to her leap away.
It cleared my line of fire, and I squeezed off two shots. The first did fuck-all, nothing more than a stone bullet that punctured the creature’s trunk and left a tiny hole that leaked black ooze and pearlescent mist. The second, though, struck a little higher and to the left and a portion of skin and teeth and shopping-cart-metal armor a little bigger than a steering-wheel crackled and turned into solid granite. The petrified section included part of one armpit, too, leaving a large bicep with two forearms attached to a single elbow flailing ineffectually in the air, unable to move any lower.
Irish darted in, using the opening in the creature’s guard as though he’d been waiting for it. He drove his sword into the creature’s side right at the edge of the petrification effect. It rained ham-fisted blows down on Irish from either side, or tried to, but Irish side-stepped out of the way, taking a light knock on the shoulder that barely put him off his stride. The arm above where he stood broke itself at the elbow and reached down for him with a pair of clawed hands, and Irish ducked down, heaving the handle of his sword down as he went. The creature bellowed anew as Irish pried the whole stone section loose, and with my shadow right there I could hear the wet ripping sound it made as it separated from the surrounding tissue and I could taste the vile torrent of ichor and mist that flowed from the wound.
I opened my eyes in shock, realizing what he was doing. I saw Irish grit his teeth and shift his grip, abandoning the blade to take hold of the stone. We could taste the blood that dripped from his hands as they seized the jagged edges of stone. It kicked at him with one of the newly-reattached legs, and he took a hit to the hip that shoved him back. The blow only helped him as he ripped the stone free, and I was somewhat gratified to see that it was almost three feet long, the petrification having extended a lot deeper into the creature than I’d first thought.
Mist poured out of the hollowman in a rush that was thicker and slicker and greasier, almost liquid now. Something about that caught the shadow’s interest, and I felt all that background information fading out as she turned her attention to the hollowman. She purred in my head and I felt her influence rushing back to the building, rolling like a deep tide as the room darkened. I hadn’t realized how thin she’d spread herself until she began pulling herself in, bringing herself home, and I could feel every crack in the walls and floor, every speck of dirt, every splash of blood and black goo and blinking vacuous eye stalk, every scrap of dead flesh littering the floor, every burnt cinder. Shit, we’d made a real mess of the place.
Cat was cutting the monster faster than ever, darting in and leaving long furrows that oozed and bled black, steaming clouds of vapor as they knit closed again. She targeted eyes and eyestalks, blinding it on one side and hurting it as fast as she could, trying to distract it. She knew what Irish was doing, too. He used the distraction to recover his sword and sever two of the hollowman’s arms at the shoulder. Cat was a blur, a dervish of knives and motion but she was so focused on her task that she got a little careless. That, or the creature’s enraged flailing scored a lucky hit.
In her haste, she missed the hollowman’s movement, and took a fist to the side that sent her flying.
“Caitlyn!” Irish turned, backing away from the hollowman, and I felt Cat slam to the ground some twenty feet back, all the air leaving her lungs in a rush as she landed in a heap.
“She’s fine!” I shouted as I felt the vibrations of Cat’s pounding heart, and the shadow took my voice and bounced it off the walls, an echoing whisper that resounded in the thickening darkness.
Cat confirmed my answer with a low, groaning “Oow,” as she levered herself up, clutching her ribs. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t take some satisfaction from that. The way she’d deliberately hit me in my broken ribs last night had left me with a bit of a grudge.
The shadow was stepping forward in my mind, borrowing my eyes to see, her glee and anticipation drowning out my inclination to watch Cat suffer a little. She forcibly turned my gaze back to the hollowman. I felt my lips peel back, my face twisting into a hard, cold smile as the darkness thickened around the creature until it was hard to tell what was ichor and what was clinging shadow.
The hollowman took advantage of the distraction to round on Irish, legs moving in perfect tramping harmony to swivel its body and bring its remaining few upper limbs to bear. But Irish was already turning, ducking under the first two blows and side-stepping the third in a lunge that ended with his sword driving into the gaping hole in the creature’s side, striking at its core. Bone split with a sick dry crack and the shadow followed the metal inwards, past the wet rotten flavor of the hollowman’s ichor to the heat inside, the bitter taste of corrupted human flesh, and the swollen, blackened heart, studded with wide, blinking eyes and runneled like a brain. Cold metal pierced the hot, throbbing heart, splitting it wide open, and Irish twisted the blade.
It screamed. We felt it more than heard it, because the sound it made echoed somewhere beyond the limits of human hearing. It was enough to shake the building, though. Ichor poured out, squirting with the heart’s faltering beats and drenching Irish in black gore. He heaved himself back, wrenching his sword free and brushing at the dozens of pale tentacles and eyestalks that were clinging to him and growing from the ooze that coated his head and shoulders the entirety of his sword arm. The creature staggered and fell to its knees, dozens of eyes swiveling in panicked circles in their meaty sockets as goo and mist poured from the deep wound.
More of my darkness poured into the hole left by his blade, wallowing in all that godawful flavor to suck the heat away, penetrating to the heart and leaving ice in its wake. The heart spasmed, squirting ichor that cooled and gelled and froze before it could effect any repairs, and the hollowman lurched, hissed, and fell in a thunderous heap that crushed two of its own arms under its weight. Deep in its chest, my shadow and I were squeezing the life out of the nine-chambered mutant heart, and it actually manifested a mouth that moaned and squealed in agony as it leaked more of that greasy, liquid fog.
The heart, still squealing, managed one more frantic, convulsive beat, then the squeal stopped.
The shadow shuddered in my head, giggling. The heart – Carl’s heart, I realized, had been where the outsider had sheltered. It permeated his system, and had added layers of protection to its fleshy suit of armor, but here it was, exposed. In the flesh, sort of. It was the mist. And here, where the mist was the thickest, where it pooled like mercury in the chambers of Carl’s dead heart, my shadow attacked it, freezing it and sucking the living essence right out of it. With Carl dead, it didn’t take long.
The darkness subsided a little, drifting in triumphant ribbons and coils as the last of the silver mist drifted down in dull gray, lifeless sparkles on a still hollowman coated in frost. She chased across the remaining globs and streams of black goo, freezing tendrils and eye stalks and leaving them a frosted nightmare field of ice sculptures with dead, stupid stares.
A couple of small fires still crackled, quickly smothered by the shadow. Pardell had quit playing a few minutes ago, his rats wandering aimlessly now, exploring the ruins with little squeaks and chitters. It was quiet now, the city noise seeming muted after the cacophony of the fight. Bits of the walls and ceiling crumbled down, sending dusty echoes through the room. The golem creaked and pinged like a cooling engine as it watched.
“We need to burn that thing,” Tyler said, behind me.
“Yeah, I got it.” I pulled my lighter out of my pocket as Irish crossed to where Cat lay, propped up on one elbow, holding her ribs. I lit a cigarette, my last, which worked out, since I was about to ruin my lighter.
“What’s the problem?” I looked up as the dragon lady picked her way around a litter of corpses, smoke still trailing from her nostrils, escaping from her lips as she grinned, revealing a mouth full of neat, white pointed teeth. “You need fire?”
“What the hell is that?” Tyler exclaimed.
“We haven’t met, but her reputation precedes her. This is Soo Lin, a half-dragon,” I said, watching as Irish offered his daughter a hand up. She reached to take it. “Soo Lin, this is Tyler. He’s always that tactful. Get all the black goo, would you?” I started marching toward the fallen hollowman.
“Quarter-dragon, actually, on my father’s side,” Soo Lin corrected. There was a ghost of an accent in her voice, hardly noticeable unless you were paying attention. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be so small, eh?”
“Whatever.” I waved her towards a runner of frozen eyestalks as I stepped up on the hollowman’s near leg, frozen solid as stone. Cat took her father’s hand, the start of a rather shy little smile on her mouth. I heaved a sigh as I tipped my lighter over the hollowman and willed it into overload. Hopefully the little father-daughter scene wasn’t going to take all damn night. There was still work to do. Irish started to pull her up, and she fell back as she dropped his hand like it burned her. I paused as napalm poured out of the lighter, spilling into the hollowman’s chest. A little gush of flame roared up behind me as Soo Lin set to work.
“Caitlyn – what’s wrong?” The shadow brought me Irish’s voice, surprised, as Soo Lin let another loose with another little ball of fire and cackled.
“Most fun I’ve had in years,” she confided. “It feels good to cut loose once in a while!”
“You’re not him,” Cat said, scooting back on her ass, wide-eyed.
“Yeah. A real blast,” I muttered towards Soo Lin, paying no attention to her at all. I dropped the lighter into the glowing pile of embers burning into the hollowman and jumped down as the spreading pool of napalm caught in the silver dust and ignited.
“Caitlin, what’re ye on about?” Irish said, reaching out for Cat as she scrambled to her feet, wincing and holding her side. “Who d’ye think I am?”
“You,” she exclaimed, stepping back out of his reach. “You’re not –”
“Are you all right?” Irish stepped forward again, like he was going to catch Cat’s shoulders and she flinched way from his touch, here eyes narrowing, angry. “It’s me. I know they probably told you something awful, but it’s me. I’m your father!”
“You are not.” She slapped his hand away and I started across the room toward them as my lighter blew up behind me. Well, it was more of a pop, really. It blew the remaining napalm all over the hollowman in a rushing sizzle like a steak on a grill.
“You’re not thinking clearly,” Irish said, tone soothing, patient. “Of course I am. Who else would I be?” He shrugged out of his shirt, using it to wipe at the bits of black ooze that clung to his face and hair, but I was fairly sure that wasn’t her issue.
“Get away from me,” she hissed, and as he took another step towards her, she pulled a knife. Seriously, where did she keep getting those from? “I said stay back!”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He held his hands out, placating, but he was still holding the sword. He’d done that to me before, and I’d never found it very reassuring, either. It was like he forgot he had the damn thing sometimes. “Hell… that’s probably it, isn’t it? It’s the demon, Caitlyn. It’s messin’ with yer mind. Just –”
“Oh, sure, it tries, but I’m stronger than that,” she sneered. “I knew what I was getting into when I made the deal. What did you get into?”
“What’re you talking about?” I reached Irish’s side as his tone started slipping out of ‘patient’ and into ‘annoyed,’ and Cat transferred her angry glare to me.
“What did you do?” she whispered at me. “What did you talk him into?”
“Excuse me?” I flicked my cigarette, raising my eyebrows. “I didn’t do anything.” Gunfire chattered outside, cutting off Cat’s response, and Irish turned towards the sound, frowning at the interruption. Cat glanced at his back, and there was anger in her eyes, but there was something else, there, too.
Fear.
I started to say something, and she cut her gaze back to me, hot, hateful, stopping me cold. I looked sideways at Irish, wondering what in the hell she’d seen in him to set her off. A chill rolled down my spine as more gunfire went off outside and someone, possibly Damian, started shouting. I didn’t have any shadow outside at the moment, so I had no idea what was going on… but I suspected that this, right here, was more important just now.
“Cat,” I began, “what did you…” Before I could finish the sentence, Cat spun on her heel and headed for the door. “Hey, wait!” I started forward, expecting Irish to follow her, and stopped when I realized he was just standing there. “The hell?” I turned on him. “Aren’t’ you going to do something about that?” I tossed my hand back towards Cat, disappearing into the darkness towards the concourse.
“Nah.” He shrugged. “It’ll be fine,” he said, shaking his head. “She’ll come around. Come on. We better see to those vampires.”
“She’ll… come around?” It didn’t make any more sense when I repeated it than when he’d said it, and he was already turning towards the front doors. Now, granted, most of my experience in family matters comes from watching old Brady Bunch reruns on TV, but I was fairly sure Irish should have been a whole hell of a lot more upset than he seemed to be.
“Oh, aye. She’s upset about something, but she’ll soon see it’s nothing. It’ll work out. Things always do, around me. You’ll see.” He cracked his knuckles and tipped his head to one side, making his neck crack. He gave me a warm, friendly smile and tightened the straps on his Kevlar vest. “Now, then. Let’s go put those vampires in their place, eh?”
My mouth fell open as he started towards the doors. They always do, around me? What the hell was that supposed to mean? The shadow coiled around my confused thoughts, and I remembered Irish’s knack for getting people to open up, talk too much. Kind of like he was influencing people. Changing their inclinations.
A cold that had nothing to do with the shadow shivered through my nerves, and I swallowed hard. Grace and I needed to have a serious chat. What the hell had happened to Irish?
More gunfire and an explosion resounded outside, startling me out of my worried thoughts. Okay, Grace and I needed to have a serious chat after I made sure Gianna won this little fight. After all, if Duane was here to clear out all of Gianna’s people, that included me.
I plugged my cigarette between my lips and headed for the doors, the shadow spilling out ahead of me. She rolled passed Leonard, who was ignoring Grace’s calls and heading for the door himself. His lips were pressed together in a thin, annoyed line as he patted down his pockets.
Most of the B-List Brigade were standing in a small group by the doors, except for Soo Lin who was still chasing down and burning out the last few patches of alien tar. I didn’t see Mike or Larry, either. Irish gave them a friendly nod and a smile, and they shuffled back out of his way as he exited. They started to close ranks just as Leonard reached them, shoving through without a glance at them. Pardell glared at his back as he left, but didn’t say anything.
“Where’d Mikey go?” I asked, reaching them. It was borderline tragic that I was thinking of Micheal deAngelo as my go-to for the voice of reason, but if anyone was going to talk Gianna down off the proverbial clock tower, he probably had the best chance.
Pardell shrugged. “With Larry. Outside. With, um, I guess it’s his mother?” He peeked out the door as I looked around at the crowd, getting my first up-close look at the bunch of them. The half-fae gave me a plastic store-mannequin grin, just as creepy and just as pretty as he’d been when he’d gone past me in the fight. The younger Jew nodded at me, reaching out to shake my hand, and I glanced past him to the older one, who was polishing his glasses. He set them back on his nose and looked up at me. His face went white and his eyes wide, and he grabbed the younger man’s arm in a death grip and jerked him back away from me. I flicked him a withering glare. Dragons and fae and a nutjob who thought he was half-alien were no problem, apparently, but one little hollowman shook him right up.
Some people.
I cruised on by without stopping for introductions. The shadow preceded me, darkening the frigid pavement, flowing past Irish and Leonard, out into the park, and over and around eight corpses sprawled on the lawn. I took up a position between the two men, and looked around for Gianna. I didn’t see her anywhere, which meant she was probably still inside one of the cars parked along the curb. A handful of Gianna’s remaining men were taking shelter behind the cars, and I spotted Mikey along with them, one hand firm on Larry’s arm as he held the kid down in a crouch behind a dark sedan. Larry held his cellphone up over the hood of the car, presumably snapping pictures or taking video. He had a huge grin on his face, the moron.
Out in the park, Duane and his men stood behind the scrawny little trees dotting the edge of the lawn. They weren’t so much hiding as just relaxing, two of them passing a cigarette between them, and a third picking chunks of flesh out of his teeth as he leaned against a tree.
Duane himself was stepping out of the darkness, into the island of light cast by one of the nearby lampposts. He grinned, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He wore a white silk smoking jacket, lightly spattered in blood, and his mullet was shiny with a fresh coat of gel. “Damian. Can we talk?”
Damian stood alone between the two groups. He stood tall and straight, his hands held out by his sides. His tailored suit was clean and neat, not even wrinkled from the chaos inside the station. His face was a tight frown, and the designer sunglasses made him look cold and distant. The way he was alternately lit and shadowed by the four glowballs that orbited around him at waist height added to the effect, and he was standing in the center of a large spiral of burnt grass that spoke volumes for his ability at dramatic entrances. “Eldest,” he replied, giving a small nod at Duane. “Care to explain this?”
The Redneck Lord of the Undead gave a shrug and kicked at the turf casually. “I don’t mean to be pushy, my friend, but you’re interfering with my job.” He nodded amiably towards the line of cars as Day cracked his knuckles and glared at the vampire. “One of my vampires got out of hand, disobeyed orders. Specifically, the wop bitch in the car over there. I’m just cleaning up the mess.”
“You’re cleaning up the mess?” Day glanced around at the dead bodies bleeding out all over the grass. Some of them were just pieces of bodies. One of them was impaled on the fence near the road. “This is cleaning up a mess?”
“Well, she started shooting at us.” Duane shrugged, grinning a big aw shucks sort of grin. “My boy Stick back there, he spent four hundred bucks on his new jacket, and now it’s all full of holes. He was a little pissed.”
Stick, a tall, thin thing built like a scarecrow, with long, mousy brown hair, tipped us a wave and went back to smoking his cigarette. His jacket was, indeed, all full of holes. So was he. It didn’t seem to be bothering him much.
“Besides,” Duane went on, good old boy charm in full swing, “we’ll clean it up when we’re done killing her, her family, and everyone who works for them. Come on, we always do. This ain’t our first rodeo.” He flicked a look past Damian, and nodded at me. “Oh, and we’re gonna need that red-headed twat dead, too. You know she’s with Gianna, right? I can produce the pay stubs if you don’t believe me.”
Leonard turned a hard look on me, and I gave him innocent eyes. “I’d hardly say I’m ‘with her.’” I shrugged. “She bought some wards. We do a little business.”
“You’re building wards for vampires.” Leonard’s tone was frigid.
“Just little wards.” I held my fingers up, less than an inch apart. “Teeny ones. Early warning system. Day could have circumvented them any time he wanted, she’d never have known.” I took a long drag off my cigarette and made a point of looking elsewhere while Leonard glared at me.
“No. You don’t get any of my magicians, Duane,” Day said, without bothering to look back at me, which took me by surprise. I’d have expected him to at least think it over. I’d have at least thought it over.
“My, my, but you’ve been a busy little thing,” Leonard said softly, still studying me with speculative eyes. “Keeping secrets and making friends in the most unusual places. Golems. Dragons. Vampires, oh my.”
“See, that’s a problem,” Duane went on. “I can’t have your little pissant mages stepping up to me. No. Not with me. You Knights make the rules, sure, everybody knows that. I’m fine with that. We have a good arrangement. But the rank-and-file? Giving magic to that twat deAngelo? Shooting me with a magic gun in a bar parking lot? It makes me look bad. How am I supposed to keep these blood-thirsty bastards in line when you let your guys go around making me look bad?” Duane held his hands out, still grinning. “No one listens to a bitch, Damian.”
“I just told you how it was going to be, Duane.” Day crossed his arms, glowering at the vampire.
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Duane tucked his thumbs back in his pockets. “I wasn’t listening.”
Day set his jaw as the handful of vampires in the dark snickered. “Ow,” I whispered. “He walked right into that one.”
The glowglobes flared brighter, and Damian nodded, waiting out the guffaws of the damned. “If that’s how you want it…” he said pleasantly, “I guess we’ll just put a new bloodsucker in charge. My way or no way. That’s the rule. Cope.”
“Damn his temper,” Leonard muttered, and all hell broke loose in one go, surprising me.
Vampires lunged out of the darkness, so fast even the shadow was impressed. Before I had time to drop my smoke and grab for my gun, one of them was in my face, all snarls. I let out a squeak of shock as the shadow boiled up around me and the air whistled, and a second later a headless corpse slumped against me. This one had the decency to stay dead as Irish spun away, skewering a second vampire, pulling his sword back, and lopping its head off in one clean move. The vampire’s skull make a dull wet thumping noise as it bounced off the cement at my feet, and while I was busy watching that, gunfire roared, and the screaming started over by the cars.
I looked up in time to see Mikey snag a vampire, heft him up, and snap his spine in half as Larry scrambled under the car. Gianna’s mortal gunmen opened fire, but it didn’t accomplish much. The deAngelos had more bodies, but Duane had brought more vampires. In seconds, five of them were torn limb from limb, and the rest were scrambling for cover, shooting blind. Men screamed and died, blood falling in a red rain to soak the pavement.
Gianna’s passenger side door flew open, and a big, barrel-chested Italian in a positively gorgeous Armani suit stepped up out of the car, ducking an arm that flipped his way, drenching his salt-and-pepper hair in gore. He snatched the vampire responsible – Stick – and planted a machine gun under his chin, pulling the trigger. Stick’s head vanished in a red cloud.
I got my gun out as the big Italian – I was pretty sure it was Gustavo, Gianna’s oldest son – emptied the rest of his clip into another vampire’s chest, slowing him, but not stopping him. He rammed the hot barrel of his uzi into the oncoming vampire’s gaping mouth and his level best to force it down his throat. I could hear the jaw snap from where I stood. Irish grabbed my shoulder as I leveled my gun, aiming to shoot somebody, by god. I hate to miss a chance to shoot somebody, and I thought it might not hurt if Gianna saw me putting down some of the other team. Irish pulled me back a step, hissing in my ear, “Let ‘em kill each other.”
“But – shooting!” I exclaimed, waving my free hand at the gory melee.
I glanced over at Damian as his four glowballs circled faster, burning white hot and leaving incandescent streaks behind them. Duane lunged at Day, ducking under one of the burning spheres and the air seemed to shatter in front of Damain as the Eldest plowed through is shielding like it wasn’t even there. The vampire couldn’t put the bite on him – true to form the Knight of Pentacles had a backup defense in place, a shimmering golden aura that held the gleaming white fangs at bay – but knocking him down had disrupted whatever spell Day meant to throw, leaving the glowballs to circle aimlessly. I shifted my aim that way, because Day had been nice enough to stick up for me, and hey, I didn’t like Duane anyway. Who did?
“Now, where did I…” Leonard muttered, fishing through his pockets unhurriedly. A vampire came at him from the side, but at the last minute, it stumbled to a stop, shaking its head. It reoriented on one of Gianna’s gunmen, kneeling behind a cement water fountain, and tore off in that direction. Leonard never even looked up. I moved to stand closer to him.
My shadow was gleefully watching everything, and while I tried to line up my shot, she let me feel the deaths of four more men over by the cars, and under the car, Larry letting out a high-pitched squeal of pure terror as a head bounced under there with him. He batted at it, knocking it away with one hand as he clutched his phone to his chest with the other. Michael took a wooden stake in the lung, barely turning aside in time to avoid a strike to his heart as he was attacked by a slender black female vampire. She snarled and wrenched her weapon out of his chest, and he brought his fists down on her shoulders with enough force to break her back. Seconds later, the stake was slammed home in her chest while she spat curses that were abruptly cut off.
“Ah, there it is,” Leonard said, holding up something small and bright. I glanced at it and saw a round lens trailing a silver chain, the illusory lens I’d given him last night in exchange for the ectoplasm. What the hell was he going to do with that?
The glowballs circled back down as Day got his shit together. Duane let out an outraged shout as they hit him, flaring hotter and whiter, leaving spots dancing in my vision so I missed exactly what happened, but smoke rolled up off the vampire as he rolled away off Damian, and his smoking jacket hung in tatters. The shadow shared the stink of burned meat as Duane rolled across the ground in a futile effort to put himself out.
By the cars, Gustavo grappled with some other vampire, a big, meaty guy with a short buzz cut and an unpleasant grimace of a grin on his face, and Mike held another guy in a bear hug. Through the shadow, I heard bones cracking, but while those two were busy, a third deAngelo boy, Tony maybe, or possibly Cesar, it was hard to keep track of their names, was pounded to paste on the pavement by two of Duane’s men. Another of the Eldest’s vampires was busy killing Gianna’s mobsters. It cost him about as much effort as a toddler picking daisies. It occurred to me that Duane still had two more guys back by the tree, finishing off their cigarette.
Oh, speaking of which – I snagged the last hit off mine, flicking it away.
“Here we go.” Leonard held up the lens I’d made and aimed a bright blue lapis lazuli pendant at it, and suddenly, for thirty yards in every direction, it was daylight.
Vampires screamed like little girls and dove for cover, causing Larry to come boiling out from under the car like his ass was on fire and his hair was catching. He scuttled over the pavement, blinking in the sudden daylight, face streaked in sweat and dirt. He’d lost his glasses somewhere, and I could see his eyes, as big around as dinner plates.
“How the hell does that work?” Irish exclaimed, staring at the lens and pendant Leonard held up.
“I did a deal with Leonard yesterday. Back when he was still Randall. He’d found me a client who wanted to trade some supplies I needed for a lens that would make illusions solid enough to show up on camera.” I grinned at Irish’s blank look. “That means it needs to use real photons. Real light.”
“Light.” He arced an eyebrow at me, intrigued. “It makes sunlight? You can make more’ve those, right?”
“Not for free,” I snorted.
“Oh, Jesus fucking Christ,” Duane announced, standing and throwing his hands up in disgust. “You pussies – it’s just a little sunlight!” He was still smoldering, smoke rolling up off his charring skin. The glowballs had splashed where they’d hit him, splattering him in white light that was still glowing and burning as I watched. Most of his shirt was gone, revealing a toast-rack chest, skin sloughing away as Day’s spell did what the sunlight couldn’t. I could see his ribs. “And you!” He rounded on Damian, leveling a finger at him. “Do you mind?” he snapped, gesturing at himself.
“No, not at all.” Day smirked from his seat on the ground. “Smoke all you want, asshole.”
“That’s enough, Damian.” Leonard headed down the steps.
“Who the fuck is –” Duane cut himself off, shading his eyes and squinting towards Leonard. “Well, goddamn if it ain’t the man himself.”
“Are you sure?” Damian asked, looking over his shoulder at Leonard as he stood up. “Because seriously, fuck this guy.”
Leonard cut a sharp look at Damian, who shook his head and banished his spell with a wave of his hand. A few last tendrils of smoke wafted up off Duane, and then the spell fizzled out.
“Thank you.” Duane dusted himself off. His clothes were in singed tatters, jeans and legs spotted in crusty black holes. He’d lost half his mullet, too. Business in the front, full stop. I wondered if it would grow back when he healed? He straightened up, glaring around at his men. The two back by the tree were writhing on the ground, on fire. The rest had dove for the building, or under Gianna’s cars, which I felt was a really bad move on their part. At least three of those cars still had drivers.
The woman herself was still inside one, along with Gustavo, who’d dove back in when the the place broke out in a bad case of daylight. Mike had headed for the steps, and stood in the shadows at the lee of the building, back pressed to the stone and wide-eyed. I covered my mouth and fought the urge to laugh. They reminded me of a room of grade-schoolers when someone yells “the floor is lava!”
“God, you just can’t get good help,” Duane growled, crossing his arms as he surveyed the ruins of his little gang. “Amiright?” he said to Leonard as he stepped to Damian’s side. “Shit, you know what I mean. Look at your help.”
“Be quiet, you embarrassing little monster.” Leonard turned, studying the damage with his brows pulled down in an irritated frown. “I have half a mind to let Gianna have your job. At least she can organize. What were you thinking, letting her become a challenge, right under your nose?”
Duane’s eyes chilled considerably, as lively as black marbles set in a skull. “I believe I told you it was stupid to let her brats stick around,sir. I believe I suggested shipping them out. When was that, 1968? ’67? But oh, she begged and pleaded, and you let ‘em stay.” Duane shrugged. “Can’t see as how it’s my fault, when you don’t take good advice.”
Leonard wrinkled his nose as he stared at Duane and I raised my eyebrows, pretty sure we were about to witness the Eldest get blasted to cinder right on the spot. “I see. Yes, I do recall that.” Leonard’s mouth was a flat thin line. “I also recall you wanting to replace them with a group of your old ‘drinking buddies.’ Troublemakers and rabble-rousers, the lot of them. I still prefer her to your ‘friends.’” He turned towards the cars. “Gianna.”
A long, quiet moment passed, and the car door opened. Gianna stepped up out into broad daylight, which impressed me. She was covered head to toe, a tidy black slack outfit, riding boots, gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat with a veil, but she was outside.
“Here, please,” Leonard called, pointing to the ground beside him.
It was hard to tell with that veil, but I’m pretty sure Gianna shot me a look as she crossed the pavement to Leonard’s side. A worried look? An angry one? I couldn’t say. It worried me a little. I didn’t want to end up blamed for this shit.
“Your Benny is dead,” Leonard said with a bluntness that made Gianna flinch. “How many more of your family have you got half-turned?”
“None, of course,” Gianna said with an offended little gasp, as if she couldn’t believe Leonard would suggest such a thing.
“Only Benny? What was so special about him?” Leonard raised an eyebrow.
“He was such a good boy.” I saw Gianna swallow hard, and then give a weepy little sniff. I thought that was laying it on a bit thick, myself, and judging from the scoffing noise Irish made behind me, he agreed.
“Right,” Leonard said with desert dryness. “This is your problem,” he said, turning to Duane. “Deal with it. Kill all her sons, take every penny she has, I don’t care.”
“Oh, so basically I have permission to do my job?” Duane rolled his eyes. “Great, just like I already had,” he finished the words in an ugly little growl, but didn’t quite meet Leonard’s eyes.
“Indeed. But if it spills out into my streets again?” Leonard paused, letting the silence spin out cool and breathless. “I’ll kill you myself. I won’t even bother leaving my house to do it. I won’t have to. I can find you anytime I want, anywhere you hide. Remember that.” He stared the vampire down for a long moment.
“What about Red over there?” Duane finally muttered, looking away from Leonard. At me.
“Alice?” Leonard turned to look at me, a slow smile curving his lips as he turned back to Duane. “Seriously? You want to hunt Alice down and kill her?”
“I was thinking about a long, protracted rape and torture scenario, but yeah, something like that. Bitch was in on it.” Duane held his hands out. “Can’t just let her get away with that, can I?”
“Oh, indeed. I see what you mean. Of course not. However…” Leonard tapped his chin as I glared at him, open-mouthed with outrage as he sold me out. “It is worth pointing out she killed Benny deAngelo. You had a bit of trouble with him, didn’t you?”
“Well…” Duane huffed. “He came to breathing fire. Pointing at walls and shit, just knocking them down. He took a whole building out. It was really unexpected, you know?”
“Yes. Quite. He really was dreadfully dangerous. Alice killed him by thinking at him hard.” He shot me a flirty smile and a wink, and I took back all the bad things I’d been planning for him. Well, most of them.
“I… wait, she what?” Duane shot me a look, and I smiled and waggled my fingers at him. “What? She, like, built a thing and…”
“Oh, no. That was just Alice. All by herself. Killed him dead. If you want to go after her, I suppose it is your right, as Eldest. It’s just that I thought you wanted to live.” Leonard shrugged, and smiled coolly at the Eldest. “But who am I to gainsay the mind of the Eldest? Maybe you’ve earned your eternal rest. Speaking of which… You’ve rather let things out of hand. How old are you, exactly?”
“Why do you want to know that?” Duane frowned, watching Leonard with guarded eyes. “Ah, two hundred and seventeen. Ish.”
“Bullshit,” Gianna spat.
Day reached out and plucked a hair from Duane’s head, making him start and flinch. “I can get an exact figure for you before sunrise. No problem.”
“What the fuck?” Duane sputtered, glaring at Day.
“Well. Gianna is your problem,” Leonard said, waving at Gianna. “And Alice? Good luck. Let me know how that goes for you. But you? You’re my problem and you’re a fucking fool, Duane. I’m tired of fools. So I believe I’ll call up some of my contacts in other cities, and I may recruit someone, who’s… say… a day younger than you? And then I’ll have someone here, waiting to take your job when you screw up again. Possibly waiting impatiently, depending on how you treat him. Or her, I’m not picky.” Leonard lifted the lapis pendant and blew it out, and night plunged back down, cold and dark. “Clean up your trash and make yourself scarce, Duane. I’ve had quite enough of you for tonight.”
Leonard pocketed the lens and the pendant, and dusted his hands together, turning away from the vampire as if he no longer mattered. “I trust you can see to the rest?” he said to Damian.
“I believe I can manage, sir,” Day said mildly.
“Very good.” Leonard turned to face me. “Alice.”
Everybody was looking at me, all of a sudden. Duane, in particular, was glaring at me with murder in his eyes and a certain air of expectation, waiting to see how The Devil was going to make me suffer. Irish moved to stand a little closer to me, one hand on the hilt of his blade and a wary expression on his face. I sighed. “What?”
“You and I have some things to discuss. I’m quite annoyed at you for keeping so many secrets.” He approached the steps again, eying me as if he were trying to figure out exactly where he wanted to attack me first.
“My business is my business, that’s all.” There was also the part about how most of those secrets would have resulted in a death sentence, but I wasn’t inclined to remind him of that, in case he decided they still should.
“Mmm,” he mused, looking me in the eye and stepping closer. He was very close, and I had the sudden and baffling impression that he was smelling my hair. “I think I might enjoy learning more about your business. Dinner tomorrow?” He checked his watch. “Tonight, rather. Say, sixish?”