His Father's Eyes - eARC (21 page)

“And you should learn to show some respect.”

“Where’d she come from?” Bear asked, trying to keep up with events. “Who are you?”

She sauntered past me into the middle of the room. Rolon caught my eye and raised an eyebrow. At the same time, he made a small gesture with the hand holding his pistol. I shook my head.

Saorla paused in front of Bear. Even sitting, he appeared huge compared to her; to the untrained eye it might have seemed that he could crush her with one hand. And yet, he seemed to dwindle beside her, becoming little more than an overgrown boy.

“You are a were,” she said. “A bear, I believe. Is that right?”

“Yeah, how did you—?”

She held a slender finger to her lips. “Do not speak more than is necessary. Among the minds in this room, yours is the least worthy. You have nothing to say that I wish to hear.”

He blinked, frowned. But he held his tongue.

She focused her attention to Rolon. “You should put away your firearm. It will not help you fight me. More likely than not, you will hurt yourself or one of these others.”

He glanced my way again. I nodded, and he slipped the weapon back into his shoulder holster.

Facing me, Saorla smiled in a way that promised either death or a night to remember. At that moment I couldn’t decide which. “I did not think we would meet again so soon, although I did hope.”

“You’re turning weres into slaves,” I said.

“I am?” she said, her lovely face a study in innocence. “I have done no such thing.”

“My pardon. The weremancers who work for you are turning them.”

“Weremancers.” Her smile thinned. “That sounds like a term Namid’skemu would use. I suppose to him I am a necromancer.”

“Yes, you are.”

“He can call me such if he wishes; I cannot stop him. Yet. If the name crosses your lips, you will die in agony.”

“What would you prefer I call you?”

“I am a runemyste, just as he is.”

I shook my head. “No, you’re not. The runemystes were chosen by the Runeclave. You made yourself immortal using magic you should never have attempted.”

“Brave words, Justis Fearsson. But you should know better than to challenge me when Namid’skemu is not here to protect you.”

“What are you doing with the weres?”

“You said we are making slaves. We are not. We are making soldiers.”

That brought me up short. And it made all kinds of sense.

“Soldiers?” Bear said.

Saorla ignored him, still watching me. “Think about it. With weres, weremystes, and runemystes like myself, we have an imposing army. It is like a chess set. Those of us with power can accomplish much, but we need our pawns. And the weres will serve quite well in that capacity.”

Her pale eyes flicked in Martell’s direction for no more than an instant. But in that scintilla of time, magic filled the room; the air practically shimmered with it.

Bear let out a roar and tipped out of his chair onto his hands and knees. I cursed, having seen this the day before in Gary Hacker’s single-wide. Bear screamed again.

“Jay, what’s going on?” Rolon’s voice had gone up half an octave, and for the first time since we’d met, he appeared truly frightened. He had pulled out his weapon again, and had it aimed at Bear.

“No! Not the pistol. The trank.”

Bones snapped, Bear’s body contorted, and another ear-splitting howl of pain made the walls shake.

Rolon seemed finally to grasp what was happening. He holstered the SIG Sauer and pulled out the tranquilizer gun.

“No,” Saorla said. She didn’t raise her voice, but I heard her anyway.

Rolon cried out. The trank fell from his hand, its grip glowing red. As I watched, the barrel flattened, as if some giant beast had stomped on it.

“If you want to stop the were from turning,” Saorla said, “you will have to kill it.” She shrugged. “As I said, he is a soldier.”

Martell bellowed once more. His hair was becoming fur; already he had grown larger. His T-shirt hung in tatters from his body.

“Why would you waste one of your army?”

“It is not a waste. As it is, you are wanted for murder. And here you stand with a servant of the criminal Amaya. If you kill the bear, he will shift back into the man, and the police will pursue you with that much more rigor.”

Crap. It was time to leave.

I should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.

The front door opened, and a man stepped inside. Tall, lean, a trim beard and dark eyes beneath a shock of black hair. Dimples, whom Bear had called Palmer Hain. I couldn’t make out the details of his face because they were blurred by his magic. He was at least as powerful as I was. In a battle of spells, Rolon wouldn’t stand a chance against him.

Maybe Rolon saw this as well. For a third time, he produced his weapon. Hain’s expression betrayed no hint of fear. He made a small, sharp gesture with his right hand, and Rolon went down in a heap, his eyes rolling back in his head, the pistol slipping from his fingers. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

Nor did I have time to find out. I warded myself: Hain, me, and a sheath of power. I didn’t bother warding myself against Saorla; her power was beyond me. If she wanted to kill me herself, there was precious little I could do about it.

Hain’s gaze snapped to my face as I cast. He threw a spell at me. I couldn’t tell what it was. The impact jarred me, made me take a step back. But my warding held, and a second later he swayed as his attack rebounded on him.

By this time, Bear’s transformation was nearly complete. The good news was he had taken the form of a black bear, as opposed to a grizzly. The bad news was that he might have been the biggest black bear I’d ever seen. His bellow had become a full ursine roar. I backed away, thought about reaching for my Glock, but reconsidered. I didn’t want to kill the guy, for his sake and mine.

“I had thought to spare you, Justis Fearsson. I saved your life more than once because I thought you could help us kill Namid’skemu. But that opportunity has passed.”

The bear lumbered toward me, Hain behind him and to the side. If one of them didn’t kill me, the other would.

Weres, when they shifted, took on the attributes of their totem creatures, and black bears, as a rule, tended to be timid. They weren’t natural killers. I cast again: a solid piece of wood, the bear’s nose, and a good hard thwack. Bear howled and reared at the impact of my spell, but he broke off his advance.

I wasn’t done. Hain, unlike the bear, was every bit a killer. I’d seen the look in his eyes the night he murdered the homeless man. And I was certain that he had warded himself against any direct magical assault.

I threw another spell at Bear, this one more aggressive. I heard bone snap and a deafening shriek of agony, watched as the animal toppled over, narrowly missing Hain. And as the weremancer danced out of the way of the werebear, I cast my third spell. My magic, Hain, and a hole in the floor beneath him.

He fell, though he was able to throw himself to the side and avoid being swallowed by the hole I’d conjured. Bear continued to flail and howl, and Hain had to roll away from the creature.

Hain, Bear’s CD rack, and a firm shove. The rack crashed down on the weremancer with a cascade of jewel cases and discs. He groaned and tried to push the rack off of him. But by then I was in motion. I closed the distance between us in two quick strides and kicked him in the head. Hain went still.

Bear’s cries had become loud whines, and his writhing had slowed. Still, I held out some hope that he would crush Hain and finish him off.

“Impressive,” Saorla said from behind me.

I spun, bracing myself at the first touch of charged air on my face. But still I could do nothing to keep her spell from hammering into me. I flew across Bear’s living room, slammed into a wall, and slid to the floor, dazed and sore. It was like I’d been backhanded by King Kong.

She walked to where I lay and stood over me, her mouth set in a thin, hard line.

“I am not certain what I ought to do with you. You are more than you seem, and we have invested much in preparing you for Namid’skemu’s death. We learned your defenses, studied your wardings, saved your life when we had to. That took time, effort. I am loath to waste it.”

“When did you do all of that?” I asked, trying to clear my head and buy myself a little time.

“We have been doing it for quite a while now. This is why we studied your father.”

That got my attention. “You’ve been hurting my father so that you could learn about me?”

“Of course. Why else would we bother with an old man who has lost his mind? You use different warding spells, but your magic and his are similar, as is the case with all children of weremystes.”

I nodded slowly, and sat up. I had noticed in the past that the blurring effect I saw with every other myste I met was absent in my dad, and I had even wondered if this was because our magic, for lack of a better analogy, operated on the same frequency. Here was proof.

“He was right, then,” I said. “He kept telling me that he didn’t matter, but that I did. You were testing him to get at me.”

“Aye, we were. But now Namid is warned against us. He will not be so quick to answer your summons, and he will be ever more cautious. Your value to us is largely gone. I ought to kill you and be done. But you intrigue me, and you have proven yourself unusually resourceful.” She glanced back at Hain, who hadn’t moved since I kicked him. “He is one of my best, and you defeated him. I did not expect that.”

Bear, still in animal form, continued to watch us, even as he licked gently at his broken leg.

“Well, you might as well kill me,” I said to the necromancer. “Because I won’t be joining your army. I’m no chess piece.”

She faced me again, solemn and beautiful. “I can compel you,” she said. “Not all the time, but during the phasings. And I might even be able to force you into a phasing, as we force the weres to turn.”

I felt myself blanch. The phasings were bad enough three nights out of each month. But to be subject to them at someone else’s whim might have been enough to convince me that I ought to take blockers, the drugs some weremystes used to suppress the phasings. I had refused in the past to take them because the relief they offered from what Namid called the moontimes came at a cost, namely my access to magic. I was willing to endure the phasings as the price of being a runecrafter. But I would give up spellmaking forever before I allowed Saorla to use me as another of her magical slaves.

“This frightens you. I can see it in your eyes.”

“I’ll take blockers,” I said. “I’ll take my own life if I have to. You will not own me in that way.”

“You choose death, then.”

“I choose to fight.”

I cast the spell as quickly as I had ever crafted any conjuring. Namid had long wanted me to cast without hesitation, to make my magic as immediate as thought. That’s what I tried to do now.

Yes, she was a creature of magic, much as Namid was. But she had taken corporeal form here in this house, and I was banking on this being her one potential weakness. I didn’t go for a direct assault; she’d be expecting that. And there were no more shelves to bring down on her; I’d used that up on Hain.

But there was plenty of stuff lying around the room. I opted for something small and hard that wouldn’t draw her attention. The elements flashed through my mind. Saorla, the stone ashtray on Bear’s coffee table, and the distance between them. I didn’t wait for the magic to build. I didn’t even pause to visualize the spell in action. It was the runecrafting equivalent of grabbing the ashtray and hurling it blindly. Except far more accurate.

The ashtray spun like a Frisbee and rammed into her face, an inch below her left eye. She let out an enraged screech, even as she fell to the floor. She was on her feet again before I could cast a second spell, blood pouring from an uneven gash across her cheekbone. Pain exploded in my head—a thousand hot metal spikes piercing my skull. I clutched at my temples, screaming, unable to stop myself.

“You will pay for that, Justis Fearsson,” I heard her say, so close she might as well have been breathing the words into my ear. “You will die in anguish, slowly, so that you have plenty of time—”

Gunshots blared, three of them in quick succession, and blood began to spread across the front of Saorla’s dress. I glanced to my right. Rolon lay on his side, his pistol held before him, his face wan. I grabbed my Glock from my pocket and opened fire as well, squeezing off six shots. Every one found its mark. Her chest and her gut were glazed with blood. Her body convulsed with the impact of each bullet, but she didn’t go down. I knew we couldn’t kill her; and the next time I saw her she would be totally healed, not to mention totally pissed. But all I cared about right now was surviving this encounter.

Rolon shot her four more times, twice in the chest, once in the neck, and once in the forehead. Wailing, she changed to her ghoulish form. The bloody wounds remained. She took a step in our direction, and I shot her again, staggering her. She bared her teeth and then vanished entirely.

As soon as she was gone, Bear roared and began to change back into a human. Hain, I saw, was gone as well. I guessed that Saorla had taken him with her.

“Nice shooting,” I said to Rolon.

He nodded. “You, too.”

“Are you well enough to get the hell out of here?”

“Damn right.”

I stood and helped him up, and we lurched to the door.

Bear was halfway through his change: He remained very hairy, and his face still had a certain ursine look to it, but his eyes were more human than bear. With his leg still broken, he wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but I couldn’t worry about that right now.

I glanced around at the mess we’d made of his living room. “Too bad about your house,” I said, and left with Rolon behind me.

CHAPTER 21

Rolon was unsteady on his feet, and his face remained gray. I had no idea what kind of magic Hain had thrown at him, but I had a feeling he was lucky to be alive. I helped him into the Lexus, hurried around to the driver’s side, and got us out of there as fast as I could without drawing the notice of traffic cops. Once on the freeway, I headed back to Amaya’s place.

Along the way, I pulled out my phone and dialed Kona’s number.

She answered on the first ring.

“You’re hot, partner,” she said. “Don’t go home, don’t go to your office.”

“I won’t. Thanks. You have a pencil?”

“Yeah, why?”

I gave her Bear’s name and address.

“Avondale is outside my jurisdiction,” she said.

“I think that falls under the heading of ‘not my problem.’”

“I suppose it does,” she said. “Who is he?”

“One of the Sweetwater Park killers. The other, the brains behind the killing, is a dark sorcerer named Palmer Hain. Dark hair, trim dark beard, dark eyes. He’s about six feet tall, one-eighty, and he drives a late-model silver sedan of unknown make. Be careful with him. He’s dangerous as hell, even for me.”

“Thanks, Justis. I’m . . . I’m sorry about all this. I know you didn’t kill that girl.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. Hopefully I can clean up this mess before long.”

“That would be good. Where are you now?”

I hesitated. “Maui,” I said. “Wish you were here.”

“Sorry, shouldn’t have asked. Habit, you know? I swear that’s all it was.”

“I believe you. Gotta go.”

“Right. Stay safe.”

“I’m trying.”

I closed the phone and glanced at Rolon, who was already watching me.

“You’re in some serious trouble, aren’t you?”

I wasn’t crazy about the idea of sharing my problems with one of Jacinto Amaya’s attack dogs, but right about now he was the best friend I had. And moments ago he’d saved my life.

“I’m wanted for a murder I didn’t commit, and for the life of me I don’t know how I can prove I didn’t do it. So, yeah, I guess you could say I’m in some trouble.”

“And still you’re helping the cops. They might be able to track you with that call.”

I shrugged, my eyes on the road. “Would you let dark sorcerers get away with murder just to save your own skin?”

“I might. I’m not sure. But you didn’t, and I respect that.” He stared out his side window. “So will Jacinto.”

We got stuck in traffic passing through Phoenix on our way to North Scottsdale, and if it hadn’t been for the impending start of the phasing, I wouldn’t have minded at all. This was a very, very nice car. But I begrudged every minute we lost.

When we reached Amaya’s mansion, Rolon got us past the security guys without delay—maybe he sensed my impatience. He was still wobbly on his feet, and he made a show of letting me help him into the house, which I appreciated.

“What happened?” Jacinto asked, meeting us inside the door.

I explained it all as succinctly as I could: the visits to Hacker and then Bear, Saorla’s appearance and Hain’s arrival, and our escape.

“Your man saved my life,” I said, as Rolon sat on a couch sipping club soda. “And he’s lucky to be alive.”

“Good thing I’m built like a brick shithouse, eh,
amigo
?”

I grinned.

Jacinto smiled, too, but soon turned grim again. “I can’t help you with Saorla,” he said. “She’s beyond me. But this man Hain, I might be able to track him down.”

“I have the police working on it,” I said.

“I’m better than the police.”

I didn’t doubt it, but I also didn’t want Hain being found dead within a day or two of me mentioning his name to Kona. “Why don’t we give the police a chance first.”

He nodded. “All right.”

“I need the car for a while longer,” I said, already eager to get going. “Is that all right?”

Jacinto opened his hands, smiling faintly. “
Mi coche es tu coche
.”

“Thanks. And also for the Glock, by the way. It came in handy.”

“Where are you going next?”

I took a breath. “To be honest, I’m not sure.” I checked the time. Two o’clock. Daylight was slipping away, and I didn’t have much confidence in my ability to win this fight and exonerate myself before night fell and the phasing began.

“He needs a place to spend the night,” Rolon said. “He can’t go home.”

“Is that true?” Amaya asked.

“It’s true that I can’t go home.” As soon as I gave the matter even a moment’s thought, though, I knew that I couldn’t stay here, either. “But I have somewhere else I need to be.”

“With the woman? Miss Castle?”

I shook my head. “The police will be looking for me there. But Saorla will be looking for me out at my father’s place in Wofford. And if I’m not there, she’ll hurt him.”

“If you are there,” Rolon said, “she’ll kill you.”

“She’ll try.”

“Where does your father live?” Amaya asked, drawing my gaze.

In his saner moments, my father would be no happier than Kona about me working for Jacinto. He certainly wouldn’t want the man on his property, even to fight on the right side of a magical battle. Twenty years after leaving the force, my dad was still a cop to the core. And I wasn’t sure I gave a crap.

Long ago, as a safety precaution, I had memorized the GPS coordinates for my dad’s trailer. I wrote them down for Amaya.

He glanced at the paper and met my gaze once more. “Your old man crazy?”

I bristled at the question but kept my voice under control as I said, “Most of the time.”

He nodded. “Mine, too. If you let me help, I won’t allow anything bad to happen to him.”

“What’s your interest in this, Mister Amaya? You hired me, you put me on Regina Witcombe’s trail, you’re being more kind to me than I have any right to expect. And for the life of me, I don’t understand why. What’s in it for you?”

“Isn’t it possible that I do this because it’s the right thing to do? Even vicious drug lords have moments of altruism.”

I said nothing. I waited, watching him.

A brittle smile touched his lips. “Rolon, if you’re feeling up to it, find Paco and tell him we might be heading out to Wofford later in the day.”

Rolon eyed us both, then stood. “Sure thing.” He left the room, his gait steadier now than it was when we reached the house.

Once we were alone, Jacinto said, “There is an element of altruism in this. You can believe that or not, but it’s true. I meant what I said to you the first night you came here. Blood magic is an abomination. Even on those rare occasions when the ‘donors’ are volunteers, they rarely have a full understanding of what it is they’re about to do. And most of them are conscripts.”

I thought of Heather, and of Jeff, the man in Sweetwater Park, and I couldn’t quite suppress a shudder.

Amaya took a breath. “And as it happens, in this case my altruism dovetails nicely with my business interests.”

“How so?”

“Dark sorcerers are relatively new to the Phoenix area. They haven’t yet established themselves here to the extent they have in, say, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, New York, even Chicago. But in those other places, they have insinuated themselves into the street culture. They deal drugs, run prostitution rings, sell weapons to gangs.”

“Forgive me for saying so, Mister Amaya, but they sound a bit like you.”

I thought he might take offense, but he merely raised an eyebrow, a faint grin curving his lips.

“I told you, I have a business stake in this. The last thing I want is to have my . . . enterprises competing with those of dark sorcerers.” He sobered. “But it’s more than that. Yes, some of the drugs I bring into the city find their way to people you and I would call kids, even if they don’t see themselves that way. And some of the prostitution money that comes my way is sourced in the same age group. But when these dark crafters are hunting for blood for their spells, they almost always prey on the young, the kids living out in the streets. That might not be the pattern here yet, but it will be soon enough. It’s what they do in those other cities I mentioned. They kill kids for spells. That’s how dark magic works. And you in particular know this as well as I do, because it’s what Etienne de Cahors did with the Blind Angel killings.”

He was right. Almost every one of the Blind Angel victims, more than thirty all told, were street kids, many of them Latino or African American.

“I don’t want the competition,” he said, without any apparent shame. “And I don’t want them killing off my clientele.”

“That’s hardly admirable,” I said.

“I never claimed otherwise. You asked about my interest in all of this. I’m being honest.”

“But not entirely.”

Amaya’s expression calcified. “Meaning what?”

“I think there was another reason you had me brought here that first night. For some reason you thought that Witcombe and the others might come after you. You wanted them worrying about me instead.”

His mouth twitched to the side. “They were already worried about you,” he said. An admission. “I think you know they were. After Cahors you were more important to them, more of a threat. I gave them one more reason to focus their energy on you.”

“And in the process you took some of the heat off yourself.”

“Yes,” he said. “But the rest of what I told you is true. They’re a danger to my livelihood, and I don’t take that lightly.”

“So you think that Regina Witcombe is prepared to bankroll a criminal empire to match yours?”

“No. Missus Witcombe is providing money now, to get them started. But I’m sure she’ll steer well clear of the drugs and prostitution.”

That made sense, too. Something Patty had said to me about Witcombe when I was under her control came back to me now.
Before long, I’ll have access to enough income that we won’t need her . . .
Did Patty Hesslan-Fine envision herself as a potential rival to Jacinto Amaya? Was that what Saorla had promised her, a criminal empire run from behind the unimpeachable façade of Sonoran Winds Realty? And in return, Saorla would have a veritable blood factory: thousands of kids trapped by drugs and prostitution, easy pickings for her and her weremancers. It made sense, in a twisted, terrifying way.

For now I kept this thought to myself, saying instead, “I figured out why they went to Washington, by the way, and why it is that Saorla would have been willing to kill Jimmy Howell and ground the plane to keep Witcombe and her companion safe.”

“Tell me.”

“They’ve figured out how to kill the Runeclave’s runemystes.”

For the first time since I’d met Amaya, I had the feeling that he had no earthly idea what to say. He stared at me, appearing stunned and more than a little frightened.

“They murdered one near Washington,” I said. “That’s also why they wanted me. They tried to use me to kill a runemyste I know. I was reluctant to tell you because generally speaking I don’t like to announce to the world that a runemyste has taken an interest in me. But I figure that if Saorla manages to kill me in the next day or two, someone else should know.”

“Does that mean you’ve come to trust me?”

I checked my watch again—another fifteen minutes gone. “I suppose so. Don’t tell anyone, all right?”

We both grinned.

“You have a reputation to uphold.”

“Exactly. Listen, I have to leave. I’m guessing that Saorla wants to find me again before the phasing begins and her weremyste friends are no longer any use to her. And that’s fine with me, but I need to be prepared.”

“As I’ve told you before, I can help you with this. I’ll fight.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m still wanted by the police, and I’m not sure it would be helpful to either of us to be seen together.”

“You were planning to bring in the police for a fight against dark sorcerers?”

I started to shake my head, then stopped myself. And as I did an idea came to me, a crazy idea, but one that might allow me to solve all of my problems at once. Something else occurred to me as well, and before I knew it I had the bare outlines of a plan. “All right,” I said. “I’d be glad to have your help with this.” I pointed at the paper on which I’d written the coordinates of my dad’s trailer. “Meet me there an hour before the moonrise. And bring Paco and Rolon—Luis, too, if you can get word to him.” I started toward his front door.

“Anything else?”

I heard the irony in his tone; he wasn’t used to taking orders from anyone. Fortunately, he seemed more amused than offended by my manner. “Yeah,” I said over my shoulder. “Make sure you ward yourselves.”

I climbed back into the Lexus and drove to one of the fancy malls in Scottsdale that had a covered parking complex. Once there, I sent Kona a text message telling her to meet me on level three of the parking garage.

I knew that it would take her some time to get there, and also that she wouldn’t know what car to watch for. I was fine with that. I didn’t think that Kona and Kevin intended to arrest me for Heather’s murder, but I preferred to go into this encounter with a few advantages, just in case. I sat in the car and waited, checking out each vehicle as it cruised onto the third level, making sure that none of the cars carried detectives.

I spotted Kona and Kevin about half an hour later, almost as soon as they drove into the lot. Still, I remained in the Lexus as they pulled into a space and turned off their car. They got out right away. I didn’t. I hunkered down a bit lower and watched them for a few minutes, waiting for any sign that they had backup with them. When I was convinced that they didn’t, I got out and walked toward them, my steps echoing off the low cement ceiling.

Kona spotted me right off, but she didn’t move and she didn’t seem to say anything to Kevin, at least not until I was close to them.

I halted about twenty feet short of where they stood, and glanced around. “Thanks for coming,” I said.

Kona buried her hands in her blazer pocket. “There a reason we’re here, and not in the open someplace?”

I shook my head. “Not a good one. I didn’t feel like waiting for you in the sun.”

She gazed past me, trying to get a glimpse of the car I’d been in. “What are you driving?”