“The fort was right across the street,” I said.
Zola shook her head. “No, Ah mean major, like Gettysburg, Shiloh, Chickamauga, Stones River.” Her voice faded as she listed the last, and I didn’t press the issue.
The car took one more jarring bounce and we were suddenly driving on an undamaged piece of Highway 21, the steady hiss of tires on pavement a heady balm. “Hallelujah,” I muttered. “Should we really just leave the gravemaker back there?”
“The incantations around the town will keep commoners away until morning, at the very least,” Zola said. “That monstrosity will be gone by then.”
“Gone where?”
Zola rubbed her hands together and stared at the passenger window for a minute. “To wait for another awakening, Ah suppose. No one knows for sure, but they’re never truly gone.”
Foster was silent on the dashboard, flexing his damaged wing and wincing. His back was to the windshield and his eyes angled back toward the city. “What happens to all those people?”
Zola sighed. “They’re gone. The power binding the town will expire soon.” She looked back toward the burning town. “The ground will swallow the long dead. The others …” she shrugged, “Ah suspect most will be burned in the fire. No one ever tried to give a zombie chicken guts for being smart.”
“Chicken what?” Foster squeaked.
I laughed. “You know, like honor braids in the military? They used to use braids to designate officers way back in Zola’s time. Some people called them chicken guts.”
“That’s just weird.” Foster rubbed the bottom of his right wing and shook his head. “Weird.”
Zola cleared her throat and I caught her glare as I glanced across the seat.
“Did I say way back? That’s not what I meant.”
Foster and Zola both let a little laugh escape and I couldn’t help but smile.
My eyes trailed over the rearview mirror and my brief moment of humor died. I could see smoke rising from Pilot Knob, lit from below by the red and deep orange flames. It was a twisted memorial to the worst violence the town had seen since the Civil War. My fingers tightened on the steering wheel and I gritted my teeth. “The whole town, Zola, fuck.”
“Ah know Damian, Ah know.”
We drove back to Saint Louis in relative silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Cara greeted us with a brief wave from the counter as we entered the store. Foster gave her a quick hug, then bobbed and jerked through the air towards the back room on his lopsided wing. He hadn’t stopped talking about Aideen since the halo of light over Saint Louis appeared on the horizon on the trip home. The cu siths started barking and growling like poster children for rabies as Foster cleared the door frame. Less than a minute later, he returned with Aideen in tow. The fact he was flying straight was a dead giveaway his wing was already healed by his wife’s arts. I smiled at Aideen as she glided down to stand beside Foster and Cara.
“At least he was still in one piece,” I said.
“Indeed,” she said. “Only a crippling wound from which he could have lost his wing.”
Foster rolled his eyes behind Aideen. My lips quivered as I hid a smile. Aideen sighed, swung her fist blindly to her left side, and caught Foster on the jaw. He stumbled backwards, eyes wide in surprise as he tripped over a pencil, flailed his arms, and crashed into a small pile of paperclips.
Cara snorted a laugh. “Idiot. Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
I looked down at Bubbles. She was sitting on her haunches, gleefully smacking her tail against the ground in a green-black blur.
“You hear that?” I said.
She sneezed.
I narrowed my eyes. Bubbles jumped in place, sniffed the air a few times, and went back to thumping her tail beside Zola. The cu sith stared up at my master until Zola’s eyebrow finally started to rise.
“Aideen,” I said. “I don’t think you needed to-”
Cara held up a hand to silence everyone and jumped onto the shelves beside Zola. Cara’s face sobered and her eyes locked on the book in Zola’s arms. “What do you have?”
“Nothing good,” Zola said as she drew the thin metal plate from the back of the old book, an empty smile on her lips. Bubbles growled as the plate slid free of its cover. It chimed as Zola sat it on the display case beside the register and slid it toward the fairies.
Cara jumped down from the shelf of dried herbs she was on and squatted beside the gray plate. She ran her hand down the etched metal. “This … this we can make something of.” Her wings opened and closed slowly.
“There is much evil in that iron, Cara.” Aideen grimaced and moved closer to Foster.
“We can make a fairy bottle.” Cara nodded to herself and flattened her hand against the metal plate. “It will be a powerful bottle indeed.”
“Dangerous,” Aideen whispered, “but yes, it would be powerful.”
“How powerful?” I said.
Foster shrugged. “It depends. We won’t really know until it’s made.”
Aideen leaned against Foster as he nodded and glanced between me, the metal plate, and Cara.
The elder fairy met my eyes and said, very quietly, “We won’t really know until it is used.” Her eyes trailed back to the metal and she paced along its length. “There may be enough material for two bottles. Look at the design in the center. It is perfectly halved.” Cara sat down on the edge of the display case. “We’ll worry about the bottle later. I have grave news to share, but I believe it gives us a better understanding of what’s happening.”
“And that would be?” Zola said.
Cara sighed and folded her legs beneath her. “It seems to be an old group of vampires. Most of the Pits call them timewalkers. They’re an obsessed lot, ancient and certifiably insane by any standard.”
Zola cursed.
“You’ve heard of them?” I said.
She nodded.
“What makes them so bad?”
“Damian,” Cara said, “most vampires look at timewalkers the way commoners look at cults. It’s a devoted group, devoted to a fault, to demons of all things.”
“Are you kidding?” I said as I shook my head and gestured at nothing, images of the zombie horde flashing through my mind, memories of the lives destroyed. “Are you
kidding?
Demon-worshipping vampires? What the hell kind of crap is that?”
Cara could have maimed me with a stray thought. Instead, she just glared at me.
I cringed. Oh, you would have too.
“Mind your tongue, young man.” Her voice quickened and rose in heat. “This comes from a very reliable source. My friend, you know him by the name Glenn.” She paused. “I know him by the name Gwynn ap Nudd.”
“Shit,” Zola and I said together. My jaw gaped open in disbelief. Never underestimate the Fae. They probably know someone who could wipe you out in a blink. Or worse, wipe you out over a long, slow, horrible, slow, stretch of time. Like Gwynn ap Nudd, for example, Lord of the Dead, sometimes leader of the Wild Hunt, oh, and King of the Sidhe. You know, Glenn, the cheery fellow I had in my store yesterday. I blinked, I think.
Cara sighed and then placed her hands on her small stomach and threw her head back in laughter. It was a beautiful ringing, and it raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She quieted and wiped her eye with her right hand. “Oh Damian, sometimes I forget why Foster likes you so much.”
I frowned, trying to decide what she meant by that before my mind jumped back to Glenn a moment later. I raced over everything he’d said to us, and shock turned to rage in a heartbeat.
“That son of a bitch sent us into that mess. He sent us into the middle of a goddamn zombie horde! What the
hell?!”
I pounded my fist on the door frame to the back room. “He could have wiped out the gravemaker without a second thought and he sent us down there to die.” I snarled in frustration and kicked the door.
“Gravemaker?” Cara said. Her eyes were wide as Foster nodded. Aideen paled and she squeezed Foster in a fierce hug.
“Yes, mother, and did you catch the other part?” Foster said. “We had to fight our way out of a zombie horde.” He threw his arms wide and Aideen narrowly ducked his flailing limbs. “A bloody horde!”
“Queen save us,” Cara whispered. “They’ve already done it.”
“Done what?” I said.
Her lips quivered. “Glenn would have warned us if he had known. There’s only one thing in this world that could raise a gravemaker and a horde without the Sidhe knowing. They’ve already brought a demon over.”
Zola inhaled sharply. The room fell silent except for the faint tick of the grandfather clock and an old car rumbling by on the cobblestones outside.
I glanced at Zola and her eyes were wide. “So that’s it? You’re sure
Glenn
would have warned us if he’d known?”
“Yes,” Cara said.
My master nodded and slid her hand along the edge of the glass counter before she collapsed onto the stool behind it. “Gods save us. That’s how the vampires are creating puppets. Philip started this.” She closed her eyes and her knuckles whitened around the old book. “Philip’s the only one who would know.”
Cara nodded. “Others could know. You know, and you know who else knows.”
Zola shook her head. “They aren’t here. Ah haven’t seen the Old Man in a lifetime, and Ezekiel … this is not his work. He was never a subtle man.”
“There’s a demon among the mortals,” Cara said as she turned to me.
“But is it corporeal, or just living in a host?” Zola said. “If it’s corporeal already, Ah don’t think we can face it alone.”
“I know,” Cara said. She sighed and leaned against the register. “I am sorry you were ambushed, Damian. We had no idea they’d come so far.”
“It’s … okay. We all made it.” My rage flickered and died as a twisted knot of dread drowned the fire in my gut. I leaned back and banged my head on the wall. “This sucks.”
“I’m afraid there is more.”
“What else?” I muttered.
She didn’t smile; she simply turned to Foster with a flat look. My heart skipped a beat as she put a hand on Foster’s shoulder. I stood up ramrod straight.
“It’s Colin.”
Foster’s brow furrowed and he slipped away from Aideen’s arm. “What happened?”
“I’m sorry, son. He was attacked by a vampire. He didn’t make it.”
Foster’s face quivered and reddened as rage and sorrow warred for dominance. “Who?” His voice was choked, ragged. “Who killed him?”
“Karen, from Sam’s Pit, she was there. She came by to tell me about Colin. It was an outsider. She said he had a runner’s body with long black hair. Not too tall, five eight or so. The vampire attacked her outside the Pit. Colin stepped in to help. He never got a chance to step back. She didn’t know anything else. But … but she saw him die as she got away. I think the shock of seeing Colin’s death was all that distracted the other vampire and saved Karen.”
“Nudd be damned!” Foster yelled as he drew his sword and stabbed it into the edge of the counter. He closed his eyes and shook for a moment, the quiver running through his wings exaggerating the motion.
“Leave us for a moment, Damian, Zola.” Cara’s voice was flat and her eyes didn’t leave the thin sheet of metal.
Zola nodded once and stepped toward the door.
“Ah,” I shrugged and glanced at Foster. He nodded once. “Okay. When should we come back?”
“You’ll know,” Cara said.
I frowned at her, left the shop with Zola, and locked the door behind me.
We drove down to the gas station and filled Vicky up. Zola waited in the car, and after grabbing a bag of beef jerky and a Mountain Dew, we headed back toward the shop.
I turned off the radio and pulled into my usual spot just outside the Double D.
“I guess we’ll wait here for now,” I said.
Zola nodded a moment before a huge flash of light erupted from the front windows and my heart skipped a beat. Half blinded, I dropped the jerky and drew my pepperbox in one motion. Zola moved behind me as we jogged to the door and unlocked the two deadbolts. Nothing looked out of sorts as I made my way down the aisles. The small gray flasks in the center of the front counter caught my attention immediately. I stared at them for a second. I could tell they weren’t flasks at all when we stepped closer.
Zola sucked in a sharp breath. I glanced at her, but her eyes stayed on the counter.
I recognized the etchings on the small bottles. They were both crafted from the iron and Magrasnetto plate. I reached out and touched the cool metal.
“Done already?” I said. “So that’s a fairy bottle, huh?”
“They are not simple fairy bottles, Damian,” Foster said. “They are dark bottles.” He landed softly on the other side of the bottles and laid a hand on the nearest one. His sword was still stuck in the edge of the counter. His finger traced the pattern of runes and interlocking circles etched into the metal. “These will hold evil souls.”
I mulled through the meaning of Foster’s words and asked, “How evil?”
“Ah reckon it will hold good souls, too.” Zola’s voice was sour.
Cara sighed and looked away. She gave only a tiny nod in response to Zola’s comment. “They will hold anything short of an arch-demon, Damian.”
“And if you bind a demon in one?” I said as I raised my eyebrows. “What then? Can we destroy it?”
Zola shook her head as Cara said, “Not with the bottles.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “Although if the bottle itself was destroyed with enough power, it could destroy a demon … it is a possibility.”
I picked up one of the gray flasks and rubbed my thumb over the etchings. “Well, I’d rather not gamble on a possibility.”
“It is a horrific torture for an aura or a soul to be ripped away and trapped in a dark bottle,” Aideen said. “It is consciousness in oblivion.”
Cara was silent, her only motion another small nod of her head.
Aideen slid her arm around Foster’s waist as they both sat down on the edge of the counter. He put his arm around her shoulder.
“What do we do now?” he said.
I didn’t answer with words. I walked to the front counter and opened the display case. The demon staff was heavy in my hands as I laid it across the top of the glass. I pulled all the Magrasnetto out of the case to my left and set it beside the staff. My hand lingered on the metal and rock.