Demon's Vow: Part 2 of the Final Asylum Tales (The Asylum Tales series) (13 page)

A sigh slipped from my parted lips as I shut the door behind Serah and watched her walk down the street toward her little blue sedan. Too many questions and I didn’t have any of the fucking answers.

Chapter 9

E
ddie was a pain in the ass.

Detective Edward Lebeau appeared at Asylum just before seven and promptly informed me that he thought it was total bullshit that some con man tattoo artist had been forced on him during a sting operation. In fact, the loudmouth prick didn’t hesitate to give me his opinion on tattoos, tattoo artists, and women on the police force—none of which was positive.

I naturally took some pleasure informing him that he wouldn’t only be accompanied by me, but by Bronx as well. As soon as Serah left the parlor, I was on the phone to my friend, informing him of the plan. Bronx was eager to help, but it had all depended upon the cop showing up after sundown. For once we were lucky.

The troll’s massive bulk and dark expression helped to intimidate dear Eddie, but it was a small bit of hypnosis on my part that finally changed the asshole’s mind about not letting Bronx tag along, which was a good thing in the end. Serah’s anxiety was already on the rise as I was sure she was either at the doctor’s office or on her way. I didn’t need to be distracted by the beanpole with attitude to spare. There was already plenty to worry about.

Eddie reached over and turned up a crackling police radio that was tuned to the operation. A stern voice was giving a quick update on a woman who had left the hospital and was headed toward the main southern transfer station for the Low Town bus service, putting her in the opposite direction from Serah.

A couple minutes later, he whipped the twenty-year-old Chevy Malibu with rust spots on the doors into an opening halfway between the medical offices building and the hospital. The position gave us a clear view of the path that Serah would take while the growing darkness helped to keep us hidden. I didn’t have high hopes that we would keep such a clear view of her the whole time since we wouldn’t be able to follow closely without raising suspicion.

“I need my feet on the ground,” Bronx suddenly announced as he pushed open the passenger side door and slid out.

“What the fuck!” Eddie snarled, starting to lean across the seat to grab for the troll, but Bronx moved a lot faster and smoother than a person might expect. Eddie never touched him. “You’re going to blow our fucking cover!”

Before he could continue ranting, I tapped my index finger in the dead center of Eddie’s forehead and the man froze. His mind dropped instantly into a hypnotic trance, his entire body locked up as if someone had hit the pause button. It was a shame I couldn’t keep him like that indefinitely.

Ignoring Eddie for now, I slid out of the backseat and joined Bronx on the sidewalk. The troll didn’t bother looking down at me, his sharp yellow eyes continuously sweeping the area, trying to spot if anyone was watching us.

“Bronx?”

“It’s a feeling. A kind of warning that I can’t explain. After working for Reave for years, I learned to trust it. Kept me alive through some bad stuff.”

“Got it,” I murmured, my mind already working. I dug through the pockets of my coat, looking for something I could charm, but I didn’t have much on hand. Just my wand, a handful of chalk, and a couple peppermints. You never charmed food. Stupid accidents always followed when you charmed food.

“How about this?” Bronx suggested, pulling on the collar of his wool coat to draw my attention to the onyx stone in a silver setting pinned to the lapel. When the stone caught the light, I saw there was a protection symbol etched into it. It was the first time I’d ever seen Bronx wear anything like it. The troll wasn’t religious and didn’t buy into protection symbols, but I was willing to bet that being my friend had convinced him that having such a thing certainly wouldn’t hurt.

“I knew you were a mind reader,” I joked, pulling the pin a little closer to me as I traced the same tracking spell on the onyx stone that I’d used earlier for Serah.

Bronx gave me a little smirk. “Nope. Just guessed that you’d like to keep an eye on me as well.”

“Definitely.” I drew a second spell over the stone, turning it into a two-way radio. “Talk and I’ll be able to hear you.”

“Will I be able to hear you?”

“Yep, but it’s got only about a six-block range.” I released the pin and stepped back, letting the troll readjust his coat.

“Like a walkie-talkie?”

“Better. I’ll also know where you are and that range is pretty damn far. Try to stay close and hidden all the same.”

“Not a problem.” Bronx gave a little salute and then turned away, trudging down the street with his head down and hands in his pockets.

After less than a minute, he became little more than a massive black shadow, disappearing into the growing darkness. The troll had spent time working for the local mafia boss, Reave, before he could finally escape that life to become a tattoo artist. He rarely spoke of that time and I never got the impression that he enjoyed it. Unlike most of his kind, Bronx had a finer sensibility. He had the soul of an artist and, while his size and strength might lend itself to brutality, he wasn’t a violent creature.

Even knowing that, when shit got crazy, Bronx never turned away from me. He was always there to help at the risk of his own happiness and life. I hated a part of myself for constantly drawing him into danger and darkness. And yet, he was the one who I relied to watch my back. Trixie was my heart, but Bronx—he was my rock.

Jumping into the front passenger seat of the car, I took a moment to close my eyes and focus on the two threads of emotion that were attached to my brain now. Serah was anxious with a hard edge of determination. Bronx was a Zen pool of calm. The troll was a master of control, his own worries and fear locked down so that he could focus on the job before him.

With my companions taken care of, I turned my attention back to the cop. I shoved Eddie so that he was sitting back in his seat with his eyes staring blindly forward. “You told Bronx to talk a walk and find some shadows to hide in so he could watch for the killer. He just left to follow your instructions,” I said and then tapped his forehead again.

Eddie blinked a few times and looked around a little confused when he spotted me in the passenger seat beside him. “That troll gone?”

“Hiding, like you said.”

He grunted and relaxed in his seat, accepting what I said. With his eyes on the building, Eddie pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his ragged coat pocket and I quickly lowered my window a few inches rather than allow him to fill the warm stagnant air with smoke.

“Not a smoker?” he asked with a sneer. “I thought you tattoo artists were into all the vices.”

“I’ve got a few,” I mumbled.

“What? Knitting pillows and collecting salt and pepper shakers?” he mocked.

First I was worthless slime and now I was a pussy. The guy was getting on my last good nerve and I hadn’t been with him for more than fifteen minutes. I bit my tongue. I figured drinking and casting hexes were bad enough vices. I was pretty sure that I didn’t need another. It didn’t matter. I had nothing to prove to this asshole.

“So I gotta know something,” Eddie said after an extended silence in which he listened to the radio and glared at his dwindling cigarette. He paused and took another draw off his cigarette before rolling down his window a couple inches to pitch the glowing butt onto the street. “You were the guy that bastard grabbed, right? Why didn’t he kill you?”

I sighed and rubbed my burning eyes with my thumb and index finger. The lowered window hadn’t helped much when it came to the smoke. “You’re going to have to be more specific. I know a lot of bastards.”

Eddie turned a little in his seat to look at me. He had unbuttoned his coat to reveal an old Iowa State sweatshirt that looked as if it had seen better days. But then so had this guy. The lines on his face and sprinkling of gray in the dark brown stubble on his chin said this guy was closing in on forty, but there was a youthfulness in his voice that made me think that his job and lifestyle were sucking the years out of him like some medieval torture device.

“You know, that Towers bastard who appeared at the site of the last killing,” he pressed.

I finally realized that this asshole had been at the crime scene that morning, but I hadn’t noticed him. Of course, I’d been half asleep when I strolled onto the scene and couldn’t remember anyone besides that lard butt detective and the dead woman.

“The warlock?”

“Yes! Why the fuck didn’t he kill you?

I gave a shrug, turning my gaze from the detective to the street just past his shoulder, looking for Serah. She should be exiting any moment now, and I was anxious to get this show on the road.

“I don’t know. He asked if I knew anything about the potion that had been tattooed on the killer. I told him what little I knew.”

“And . . .” he prompted when I fell silent.

“That’s it.” He pushed me around a little and then . . . nothing. Guess he had better things to do with his time than kill me.”

. . .
Subject 2 is descending the elevator to the ground floor. Eyes on in two minutes.

“That’s her,” Eddie said stiffly as he shifted back into cop mode. He turned in his seat so that his body was facing forward but his eyes were on the hospital. “One of these days, we’re going find a way to beat the Towers. Don’t ever doubt that,” he started, his voice low and soft so that it was creeping across the car toward me. “And when we do, we’re going to line up every last one of those bastards and bitches. We’re going to kill them slowly, make them spend the rest of their miserable lives in pain so they can pay for everything they’ve done to us.”

“And what about the kids in those Towers? Do they get to go home?” I asked despite knowing I should just keep my fucking mouth shut.

Eddie gave a snort and shook his head. “Nope. They’re no different. Why let them go so this can start all over again? We gotta snuff out all magic use so we can be free.”

“Those kids haven’t done anything.”

“Not yet.” Eddie tore his gaze away from the empty street to stare at me. “But they will. Don’t let yourself go soft on them just because one fucker didn’t kill you on the spot. I promise you, the next one will.”

He was probably right about that, but he didn’t recognize that Gideon had made a conscious choice to not kill me. He made it sound like warlocks and witches had no choice how they behaved. It was just hardwired into their DNA to be psychotic murderous assholes. Sure, I had met plenty who made me think that could be true, but I’d also been through their training, heard their rhetoric. They taught the apprentices that violence and cruelty were the only options if you wanted to survive in this world. And then they backed up their claims with horrific brutality.

A little compassion and understanding and this all could be stopped.

But Eddie didn’t care about that. He wanted to see Gideon staked in the middle of a field while his skin was stripped off with a potato peeler. This asshole didn’t give a shit about the fact that Gideon had saved countless lives through his secret protection of the people. They didn’t care that he had a wife and a daughter whom he loved deeply. Hell, they’d kill the man’s daughter in a heartbeat just to avoid the risk of her one day growing up to be a witch. Probably his wife too because she’d be viewed as a traitor.

A sickening shaft of fear sliced through my heart and I clenched my teeth against it. It wasn’t his suggestion that I was afraid of. It was the idea that most people in the world probably thought just like him. At one time, I could have almost excused it. I’d watched from a front-row seat as the Towers tortured and slaughtered the people of world. I understood their hatred and their fear.

But they couldn’t see the good within the bad; the so-called diamonds in the rough. If it was magical, it was bad and needed to die. And once they succeeded in tearing down the Towers and destroying all the witches and warlocks, what was next? The elves, because of their natural magical abilities? Or maybe the tattoo artists of the world because we knew how to mix potions?

Was this the world I was trying desperately to save? I’d be trading one horror for another.

I wanted to be sick, but couldn’t. Serah had just stepped out of the medical offices building and was heading toward the crosswalk.

She moved slowly, sort of waddling from the front door of the medical offices building and down the sidewalk toward the corner. She was wrapped in a heavy coat with a knit hat pulled down low to cover her ears as well as the Bluetooth device that was there. The only thing that looked somewhat out of place was the fact that she wasn’t wearing any gloves. One of her bare hands rested on the large stomach protruding in front of her while her other hung loosely at her side. I was willing to bet that she had a gun in her pocket and gloves would have made it impossible for her to pull the trigger.

While her shape was accurate, she didn’t quite act like a pregnant woman. There was a tension humming from her body as if she was expecting to be attacked at any second. Then again, it was likely that most women in Low Town were acting that way now that news had hit of a third murder. Staring out the front window of my shop today, I’d noticed that lone women in cars and walking down the sidewalk were few and far between. They were traveling in packs now and usually had a man close at hand.

Low Town had always had a bit of an edge to it. Maybe not like Chicago or Los Angeles, but it had its dangers. Yet, this recent turn had gone to a sickening extreme.

“What the fuck?” Eddie grumbled. “She supposed to be having twins?”

For once, I had to agree with him. Serah did look particularly stuffed between the pregnancy suit she was in and the heavy winter clothing adding a second thick layer.

“It’s like she got knocked up by the marshmallow man,” I murmured as she shuffled across the street when the light finally turned in her favor. Eddie’s wheezing laugh filled the silence as we waited.

After a couple minutes, Serah was safely inside the hospital and we all breathed a sigh of relief. I could feel the tension rush out of Serah. Her hands were probably shaking. Inside, a nurse was showing her to a private room where she would wait for approximately thirty minutes before she would set out on her long walk down the block to the grocery store.