Forsaken (3 page)

“Thank God. They’ve called an emergency Guild meeting. Warn her what she’s in for.”

“Will do.” Beck stashed the phone in his jacket pocket.

Riley halted a few feet away, her eyes narrowing when she saw him. There was a rip in the leg of her jeans, a bright red mark on a cheek, and streaks of green on her face, clothes, and hands where the demon had marked her. One earring was missing.

Beck could play this two ways—sympathy or sarcasm. She wouldn’t believe the first, not from him, so that left the other.

He cracked a mock grin. “I’m in awe, kid. If ya can do that kind of damage goin’ after a One, I can’t wait to see what ya got in mind for a Five.”

Her deep brown eyes flared. “I’m not a kid.”

“Ya are by my calendar,” he said, gesturing toward his old Ford pickup. “Get in.”

“I don’t hang with geezers,” she snapped back.

It took Beck a second to decipher the insult. “I’m not old.”

“Then stop acting like it.”

Seeing she wasn’t going to give an inch, he explained, “There’s an emergency Guild meetin’.”

“So why aren’t you there?”

“We both will be, just as soon as ya get in the damn truck.”

Realization dawned in her eyes. “The meeting’s about me?”

“Duh? Who else?”

“Oh…”

When she reached for the door handle, she hesitated. Beck realized the problem by the way she held her hand. “Demon bite ya?” A reluctant nod. “Did ya treat it?”

“No. And don’t bitch at me. I don’t need it right now.”

Grumbling to himself, Beck dug in his trapping bag on the front seat. Pulling out a pint bottle of Holy Water and a bandage, he headed around the truck.

Riley leaned against the door, weary, eyes not really focusing on much. She was shivering now, more from the experience than the cold.

“This is gonna hurt.” He angled his head toward the news van. “It would be best if ya not make too much noise. We don’t want them over here.”

She nodded and closed her eyes, preparing herself. He gently turned her hand over, studying the wound. Deep, but it didn’t need stitches. The demon’s teeth didn’t rip as much as slice. The Holy Water would do the trick, and it would heal just fine.

Riley winced and clenched her jaw as the sanctified liquid touched the wound. It bubbled and vaporized like some supernatural hydrogen peroxide, removing the demonic taint. When the liquid had entirely evaporated, he shot a quick look at her face. Her eyes were open now, watering, but she’d not uttered a peep.

Tough, just like her daddy.

A few quick wraps of a bandage, a little tape and it was done.

“That’ll do,” he said. “In ya go.”

He thought he heard a reluctant “Thanks” as she climbed inside the truck, still clutching the messenger bag. Beck hopped in, elbowed the door lock, and then started the engine. He pushed the heater control to its highest mark. He’d broil, but the girl needed warmth.

“Do you really use that thing?” she asked, pointing a green-tipped finger at the steel pipe that poked out of the top of the duffel bag on the seat between them.

“Sure do. Handy for Threes when they get rowdy. Really good if they sink a claw in ya.”

“How?” she asked, frowning.

“Gives ya leverage to push the fiend away. Of course, that rips the claw out, but that’s for the best. Worst case, the claw breaks off inside ya and yer body starts to rot.” He paused for effect. “It’s this really gross brown stuff.”

He’d been graphic on purpose, testing her. If she was squeamish she might as well give it up now. He waited for her reaction, but there was none.

“So what happened back there?” he asked.

Riley turned toward the window, cradling her injured hand.

“Okay, don’t tell me. I just thought we could talk it out, figure out where it went wrong. I’ve had my ass chewed enough by the Guild, so I thought I could give ya some pointers.”

Her shoulders convulsed, and for a moment he thought she would cry.

“I did everything like I was supposed to,” she whispered hoarsely.

“So tell me what happened.”

He listened intently as she told him how she’d trapped the Biblio-Fiend. The girl really had done almost everything right.

“Yer sayin’ the books were flyin’ all over the place?” he quizzed.

“Yeah, and the bookshelf tore itself out of the wall. I thought it was going to crush me.”

Beck’s gut knotted. None of this was right. To calm his worries, he tried to remember how Paul had handled him after the MARTA incident when he was sure his career was over. “What would ya do different next time?”

Riley’s misty eyes swung toward him. “Next time? Get real. They’re going to throw me out of the Guild and laugh about this for years. Dad is so disappointed. I totally blew it. We won’t be able to pay the—” She looked away, but not before he caught sight of a tear rolling down an abraded cheek.

Medical bills.
The ones left behind after Riley’s mom died. From what Paul had told him they were barely getting by. It was why they lived in a dinky-ass apartment that used to be a hotel room and why Riley pushed herself so hard to learn the business. Why Paul had to take any trapping job he could find to make money, though it cost him time with his only child.

Troubled silence fell between them as Beck concentrated on the traffic and what the evening might bring. The trappers weren’t easy about change, and having a girl as one of their own made a lot of them just downright pissy. Riley needed to talk it out, get over the guilt before the meeting, or they’d eat her alive.

After honking at a rusty MINI Cooper that cut him off, he took the turn toward downtown. The intersection ahead of them was a tangle of bikes and motor scooters. One guy was pushing a shopping cart filled with old tires, another on Rollerblades, his hair streaming behind him, gliding through the traffic like a speed skater. Nowadays people used whatever it took to get around the city. With the ridiculous cost of gas even horses made sense now.

The biggest problem was the empty air above the intersection: the traffic lights were gone.

“They keep this up and there won’t be one damned light left in the city,” Beck complained.

Most of them had been stolen and sold for scrap by metal thieves. It took some guts to climb up on those things in the middle of the night and dismantle them. Every now and then a thief slipped and ended up a grease spot on the road, buried in a tangle of metal.

Like so many things, the city turned a blind eye to the thievery, saying they couldn’t afford to replace every missing light. Too many other things to worry about in this bankrupt capital of five million souls.

Beck nearly clipped some idiot on a moped and then made it through the intersection; his hands clutched the wheel tighter than was needed.

Talk to me, kid. Ya can’t do this alone.

Riley flipped down the visor and stared into the cracked mirror.

“Omigod,” she said. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she gingerly touched the green areas where the demon pee had dyed her skin.

“It’ll be gone in a couple days,” Beck said, trying to sound helpful.

“It has to be gone by tomorrow night. I’ve got school.”

“Just tell ’em yer a trapper. That should impress ’em.”

“Wrong! The trick is to blend in, Beck, not glow like a radioactive frog.”

He shrugged. He’d never blended in and didn’t see why it mattered that much. But maybe to a girl it did.

Turning to the mirror, Riley began to dislodge the tangles. Tears formed as she pulled a comb through her long hair. It took time to get presentable. She put on some lip gloss but apparently decided it didn’t work with the splotchy green and wiped it off with a tissue.

It was only then she looked over at him and took a deep breath.

“I should have … treated the doorway into the Rare Book Room with Holy Water. That way if the demon got loose, he wouldn’t have been able to get in there.”

“Dead right. Not protectin’ that room was the only mistake I see. Bein’ a good trapper is just a matter of learnin’ from yer mistakes.”

“But
you
never learn,” she snapped.

“Maybe so, but I’m not the one who’s gonna get reamed by the Guild tonight.”

“Thanks, I’d
so
forgotten that,” she said. “Why were the books flying all over the place?”

“I’d say the Biblio had backup.”

She shook her head. “Dad says demons don’t work together, that the higher-level fiends think the little ones are nuisances, like cockroaches.”

“They do, but I’ll bet there was another demon in that library somewheres. Did ya smell sulfur?” Riley shrugged. “See anyone watchin’ ya?”

She gave a bark of bitter laughter. “All of them, Beck. Every single one of them. I looked like a total moron.”

He’d been there often enough to know how that felt, but right now that wasn’t the issue. Why would a senior demon play games with an apprentice trapper? What was the point? She wasn’t a threat to Hell in any real sense.

At least not yet.

Riley shut down after that, staring out the passenger-side window and fidgeting with the strap on her bag. Beck had a lot of things he wanted to say—like how he was proud of her for holding up as well as she did. Paul always said the mark of a good trapper is how he handled the bad stuff, but telling Riley that wouldn’t work. She’d only believe it if she heard it from her father, not someone she considered the enemy.

They passed a long line of ragged folks waiting their turn to get a meal at the soup kitchen on the grounds of the Jimmy Carter Library. The line’s length hadn’t shortened from last month, which meant the economy wasn’t any better. Some blamed the demons and their devious master for the city’s financial problems. Beck blamed the politicians for being too busy taking kickbacks and not paying attention to their job. In most ways, Atlanta was slowly going to Hell. Somehow he didn’t figure Lucifer would object.

A few minutes later he parked in a junk-strewn lot across from the Tabernacle and turned off the engine. He was used to ass chewing, but the girl wasn’t. If there were any way he could take her place tonight, he’d do it without thinking twice. But that wasn’t the way things worked when you were a trapper.

“Leave the demon here,” he advised. “Put him under the seat.”

“Why? I don’t want to lose him,” she said, frowning.

“They’ll have the meetin’ warded with Holy Water. He’ll tear himself apart if ya try to cross that line with him in yer bag.”

“Oh.” Before every Guild meeting an apprentice would create a large circle of Holy Water, the ward as it was called, which would serve as a sacred barrier against all things demonic. The trappers held their meeting inside that circle. Beck was right, the Biblio wouldn’t cross the ward. She pulled out the cup, tightened the lid, and did as he asked.

“One piece of advice: Don’t piss ’em off.”

Riley glared at him. “You always do.”

“The rules are different for me.”

“Because I’m a girl, is that it?” When he didn’t answer, she demanded, “Is. That. It?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “As long ya know that goin’ in.”

She hopped out of the car, hammered down the lock with her uninjured fist, then slammed the door hard enough to make his teeth rattle.

A green finger jabbed in his direction the moment he stepped out.

“I’m not backing down. I’m Paul Blackthorne’s daughter. Even the demons know who I am. Someday I’m going to be as good as my dad, and the trappers will just have to deal. That includes you, buddy.”

“The fiends know yer name?” Beck asked, taken aback.

“Hello! That’s what I said.” She squared her shoulders. “Now let’s get this over with. I’ve got homework to do.”

THREE

Riley paused on the sidewalk, shaking inside. Her outburst had cost her what little energy she had left. She needed food and a long nap, but first there was the Guild to deal with. She could already imagine their smirks, hear the good ol’ boy laughter. Then there’d be the crude jokes. They were really good at those.

I don’t deserve this.
The other apprentices made mistakes but they’d never rated an emergency Guild meeting.

The sun was setting, and for a moment she could believe there was no disappointed father waiting for her inside that old building. Her nose caught the tantalizing scent of roasted meat. Smoke rose in thin, trailing columns from multiple wood fires across the street at Centennial Park. The grounds were dotted with multicolored tents, like some modern-day Renaissance Faire. A tangle of people wandered the grounds as vendors called to them from tables piled high with goods. She could hear a baritone voice announcing that he had fresh bread for sale.

They called it the Terminus Market, after the city’s original name. At first it’d just been open on the weekends, but now it was a permanent thing. As the economy got worse the market blossomed, filling the missing holes as regular businesses went under. You could buy or barter almost anything, from live chickens to magical supplies like the spheres the trappers used. If the vendor didn’t have what you wanted, by the next night he would, no questions asked.

“Sign of the times,” Beck said under his breath. “Not that it’s right.”

Caught by the deep frown on his face, her gaze followed his. On the sidewalk was a dead guy, loaded down with packages from the market. He wore clean clothes and his hair was combed, but you could tell he was dead. The pasty gray complexion and the zoned-out expression gave it away every time. He stood a few steps behind his “owner,” a thirty-something woman with strawberry blond hair and designer jeans with the words “Smart Bitch” in sequins on the butt. Everything about her shouted money, including the car. No solar panel on the top, so she wasn’t concerned how much a gallon of gas might cost. No dents, no rust, just clean and new.

Probably has the dead guy wash it.

From what Riley had heard, a Deader wasn’t like a zombie in the movies, just a sad reminder of a past life. For people with money they were the perfect servants. They never asked for vacation and they weren’t entitled to wages. Once a necromancer pulled a corpse from the grave it was good for nearly a year, the downside of better embalming techniques. When it ceased being useful it was buried again, if the owner was compassionate. If not, the Deader would be found abandoned in a dumpster.