J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough (31 page)

As he spoke the shadows of undeveloped, primordial Sidhe spirits coalesced about the Summer Queen’s flame-red hair. “The Netherworld is quiet, Your Majesty, with no overt unrest. But when I look closely there is a certain watchfulness there, as if certain high-caste nether beings are pleased at the emergence of a necromancer. And I find their anticipation discomforting.”

The flames had returned to her eyes, and the spirits fluttering about her had become unsettled. “And let’s not forget the Morrigan,” she said.

Cadilus nodded. “Yes. The triple goddess is  . . . aroused, though quiescent. But the mere fact that she is focused on the matter, that she finds it of such keen interest  . . . I know not what to make of that.”

“Perhaps you should have a word with the black.”

Cadilus grimaced, and Magreth frowned sympathetically. “Yes, my dear Cadilus, an unpleasant task, and difficult, and so a task I can only trust to you.”

Cadilus sighed. “I’ll have to think carefully how to approach them. And who among them to approach. And what inducement I can offer such unstable creatures.”

“I’m sure you’ll come up with something,” she said. “The black are, after all, most effective when focused on the right target.”

Anogh waited impatiently in the old fortress. He could sense that Taal’mara was near, and the very prospect of seeing her again sent his heart racing. He stood on a balcony high in the old fortress looking out upon the territories of the non-aligned fey, ruled by neither Court, beholden to none, the home of the wild fey, leprechauns, sprites, pixies, banshees—and most dangerous of all, the black fey.

“My darling,” Taal’mara whispered behind him as her arms encircled his waist.

He turned slowly to face her, still held within her arms, wrapped his own arms about her and reveled in her beauty. Her almond shaped eyes had dark, vertically slit pupils framed by amber irises, offset by the pale white skin that marked true Sidhe royalty. Her dark hair cascaded past her shoulders in a wealth of ringlets and curls. And she’d chosen a diaphanous gown that thrilled and excited him with delightful hints of the pleasures that awaited them both. Their lips met, a long, delicate kiss. Their passion could wait. They’d waited months since their last assignation, and Anogh just wanted to hold her for a moment, to glory in the scent of her, the nearness of her.

When their lips parted she whispered, “I’ve missed you so.”

“And I you,” he said.

“If only we could be wed, then we’d no longer need to meet in secret, to steal hidden moments, concealed trysts, veiled glances at some event we must both attend.”

Anogh sighed wearily. “We’ve talked of this a thousand times. Ag would never allow the Summer Knight to wed the Winter Princess. If he knew his daughter had given her heart to me  . . . it could mean war.”

She laid her head on his shoulder. “Yes. We must content ourselves with our little stolen encounters.” She stepped out of his arms, took his hand, turned and led him into the bedroom  . . .

 . . . Anogh stared at the portrait of Taal’mara. It was the only pleasure not denied him in more than six hundred years. She had stolen his heart then, long ago, and Ag had stolen her from him.

“And so my brother knight weeps for his lost love. How touching!”

Anogh turned slowly toward the sound of Simuth’s voice. The Winter Knight strode toward him across the Hall of Memories, a broad grin splitting his face. As always, his rapier hung at his side, and also, as always, he wore a cloak of arrogance and cruelty. “Does her image make your heart beat fondly, even after all these centuries, my brother?”

“You know nothing of my heart,” Anogh said coldly. “Nor of any heart, for that matter  . . .” He put as much sarcasm as he could into his voice, “ . . . my brother knight.”

Simuth’s grin disappeared. “Do not mock me, oh tenderly devoted knight, he who still foolishly loves a dead princess, a princess dead now for more than six centuries. Bring forth my ire, and I will chastise you.”

It was Anogh’s turn to grin. “Please. Do so.” He called forth his own rapier to hang at his side, took a menacing step toward the Winter Knight with his hand resting casually on its hilt. “My oaths bind me only so much, my brother knight. They will not prevent me from spoiling your lovely smile, should you choose to be the aggressor.”

Simuth stepped back, successfully hiding his fear, though Anogh could see it as no one else could. “You have only begun to pay the price of your folly with Taal’mara,” Simuth snarled. “Six hundred years is nothing, Anogh. I have all eternity to watch you squirm.”

Anogh smiled coldly. “Perhaps you do, Simuth. Then again, perhaps not.”

When Paul returned to McGowan’s kitchen Colleen was waiting for him, seated at the table with a steaming cup of tea in front of her. As he sat down opposite her she swept her hair back from her face, but it refused to obey and fluttered forward, almost as if it were elemental, with a mind of its own. It draped about her shoulders, bright red locks intertwined with small silver charms. If he looked away from her, looked slightly to one side so she was only visible in the periphery of his vision, he got the distinct impression her hair drifted on a light breeze. But when he looked directly her way there was no such breeze, and her curly red locks lay static and immobile, though even looking directly at them he still had the impression of motion.

“Walter sends his apologies,” she said. “He has business elsewhere, so I’ll work with you today.” She lifted the cup of tea to her lips and blew softly at the steam. “He said Katherine was teaching you about salt, silver and iron. Tell me what you learned.”

Paul repeated the points Katherine had made about salt and silver. “I don’t think she was finished with silver, and she really didn’t talk about iron.”

Colleen fingered one of the sliver trinkets in her hair. “For we mortals, silver has two primary uses. It’s an excellent focus to contain spells, or to hold power for later use, though that’s a bit advanced for you at this stage. More importantly, silver will burn the flesh of a nether being, and spelled silver can annihilate any netherlife that’s crossed to the Mortal Plane.”

“That’s why my bullets had an effect on that Tertius in Katherine’s home, right? But why the iron? Why does Devoe mix iron in the bullets too? He said something about the fey.”

Colleen spoke thoughtfully. “I don’t know Mr. Devoe at all well, but apparently he can be a very dangerous man. And Walter swears by him. And you say he mixes iron in his ammunition?”

“He told me so himself. Iron and silver.”

“That means he wants to be prepared to kill fey as well as demons. Iron doesn’t exist in Faerie in any form, and cold iron burns the flesh of the fey the way silver burns that of a demon. The royal Sidhe are immortal. They don’t age and die, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be killed, though we only have rumors about how to do so. It must involve iron in some way, but just shooting one with an iron bullet, or stabbing one with an iron or steel knife; that alone won’t do it, though it will give them considerable pain and grief until the bullet or knife is removed. It’s rumored that beheading is involved, but again that alone won’t do it. And again that’s only unconfirmed rumor.”

“They can survive being beheaded?”

Colleen looked into her tea thoughtfully, and Paul wondered if she was going to teach him how to read tea leaves. “The royal Sidhe are reputed to be able to heal any wound, given time and power. But then I’ve never killed one, or beheaded one, nor has any mortal I know of, so it’s all speculation.”

She changed the subject abruptly. “I don’t sense your arcane abilities as I did a few weeks ago. You’ve been doing your exercises, eh?”

Paul had become quite adept at the fire spell. He could turn it on and off at will, could control its intensity and the size of the blaze, could even hold fire cupped in the palm of his hand without the need for something like paper to burn, and could do it without burning himself.

“Ya,” he said. “You want me to demonstrate?”

Colleen glanced at the ceiling, the table and the floor, and her eyes widened. “No fire spells.”

Paul shook his head. “I’m never going to live that down, am I?”

She grinned. “Not for some time yet, young man. Let’s go out on the patio. Things are less flammable out there.”

She was such a lovely child, blond hair, blue eyes. The first time he’d seen her she’d been wearing a gray pinafore over a pale-blue blouse, with matching pale-blue knee-high stockings and shiny black shoes—very
Alice in Wonderland
. He loved
Alice in Wonderland
, not the story but the girl herself. He wished Alice was real so he could love her, truly love her.

“Alice,” he said to her, as she sat shivering in the passenger seat next to him. He reached out and ran a finger along her jawline.

“My name’s not Alice,” she said, her voice barely more than a squeak. “You’ve got the wrong girl. Let me go. Please, let me go.”

It had been trivial to spell her, though the spell itself was not trivial. He had to control her, make her walk willingly into his car, make her cooperate, do as he said without screaming or crying out. But at the same time her perception of the situation must not be masked. She mustn’t be absolved of the fear. The fear was too important, the terror too much a part of his need. He wished he could spare her that, but his soul would never allow that.

He caressed her cheek again and she shivered, tears streaming down her face.

She pleaded, “I am not who you think I am.”

She had a deep, south Texas accent, and the
am’s
came out more like
ayum
, a good syllable and a half.
I ayum not who you think I ayum.

Someday she’d be a pretty little cheerleader in high school.

No,
the voice said. It crawled across his soul like sandpaper on a piece of oak.
She’s not going to high school.

He turned down a street not far from her home, pulled off to the side of the road and killed the engine. It was early evening, dark, just after dinner, a residential street. This wouldn’t take long.

“No,” she said. “No  . . . no  . . . no.”

“Alice,” he said, and his voice sounded like the
voice
within him. “This is how it must be.”

Release me,
the voice demanded.
Now.

He reached out, gently caressed the girl he loved and released the
voice
within his soul.

She screamed, she cried, she struggled. She fought, but he was careful not to harm her in any way, not in any physical way, not in any visible way. There mustn’t be any outward signs of trauma or harm.

She struggled for an eternity, but a time that was really only the blink of an eye for mortal men. And then she died, and her death washed over him, filled him with sorrow. It would have been wonderful if he could have loved Alice a little longer, just for a time, the two of them.

He’d drop the body off near her home. There’d be less suspicion that way.

Chapter 1: No Safe Harbor

Katherine McGowan met her father in the reception room outside her office. “Hi, father,” she said, and gave him a big hug. “I hope this is really urgent like you said, because it’s been a long day.”

He just grinned, followed her back into her office, sat down on the couch against one wall. She stepped behind her desk, kicked off her shoes and sat down. She was wearing a tight, black skirt, so, hidden by her desk, she had to slide her skirt up to almost indecent heights to lift one leg up to the chair and massage a foot. “Those high heels are murder.”

He frowned. “Then why wear them?”

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling and said, “They look good. And I look good in them.”

“Female vanity,” he said, shaking his head.

“And not ashamed to admit it.”

He looked up at her degrees hanging on the wall, beamed with pride. That always gave her a warm, fuzzy feeling, when he did that. She wouldn’t call herself a great psychiatrist; she was a better witch. But she’d combined the two effectively, could use a simple spell to help gain the trust of a recalcitrant child, often accomplish in a few weeks what took her more mundane colleagues months. In that, as a professional, she always felt she was a bit of a fraud. But no one could deny the results. She could help people, especially children, and that she liked.

“Please, father, it has been a long day. What’s so urgent that it can’t wait until we have dinner this weekend?”

Walter McGowan took a deep breath and she knew she wasn’t going to like this. “I need your help with Paul? I need you to take a more active role in his training. He responds to you nicely. And next week Salisteen wants me bring him down to Dallas. She suspects some sort of netherlife crossed over some time ago and is feeding in the Dallas area, and she’d like to see if Paul’s special abilities might prove advantageous.”

Katherine was certain the old man was purposefully omitting something. “Paul’s not ready for a hunt. It was pure luck that that fiasco with the Secundus didn’t end in a terrible tragedy.”

Her father was a horrible liar, and at that moment he looked exceedingly uncomfortable. “I don’t think it was luck,” he said. “I’ve been reading up on necromancers—had to brush up on my Latin. I’ve got a grimoire written by a ninth century Saxon monk. I trust his written word more than most because his spells and incantations actually work. And he believed that chance conforms subtly to the needs of a necromancer, and that the people he needs to help him do whatever he’s supposed to do are drawn to him.”

He shut up and let her chew on that for a moment. She didn’t like the idea that she might be drawn into some arcane, mysterious sequence of events, regardless of her own desires. But if practitioners were being drawn to Paul, that meant  . . . “Wait! You mean you and Colleen and me?”

McGowan nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “Colleen and I have discussed this, and yes, that’s probably what’s happened. And, oddly enough, that probably means he needs those ass-hole Russians in some way. But you and he seem to work together in a special way, so I think the rest of us are the backup group, while you and Paul are the headline act.”

She couldn’t hold back her anger, stood and leaned forward on her desk. “No! Absolutely not! Before he came along I was just a simple, little witch. I’d never met a demon, never been to the Netherworld, never met leprechauns and Sidhe, never been kidnapped to Faerie—never even been to Faerie for that matter, never had a bunch of crazy Russians shooting at me  . . .” She ran out of steam, sat down in her chair and closed her eyes.

“You know how strong he is?” the old man asked calmly. “When I was trying to locate him he repeatedly snapped my locator spell with nothing more than a shrug.”

Now that was intriguing. There weren’t more than a couple practitioners in the world who could snap one of Walter McGowan’s spells, let alone do so easily with just a shrug.

The old man continued. “I thought you liked him.”

She opened her eyes. “I do. I did. But  . . . there’s something wrong about him. It just doesn’t feel right. My instincts tell me to stay away from him. That he’ll hurt me, or someone I care about. You know, he told me himself he thought he was nuts, and he’s probably right.”

“I thought shrinks didn’t use words like nuts.”

“Ok,” she hissed. “Then let’s use the proper technical terms. He’s probably all fucked up. You know, bongo, wacko. I don’t need to be around someone like that.”

“But he’s not. He’s quite sane. He thought he was bug-fuck nuts—those are his words, by the way. I would never use such derogatory terms—”

She groaned, “Ah jeese! Get to the point. Please.”

The old man hesitated, and for the first time in her life he seemed uncertain. She suddenly felt a chill, and fear gripped her. “My dear,” he said calmly, carefully, pointedly, “the point is, he is sane. And the point is  . . . I don’t understand much of the magic he’s using.”

“Oh my God,” she whispered, and dropped back into her chair.

Anogh had been summoned, and when he entered Ag’s private audience chamber he was surprised to find the unpleasant Russians there as well. Ag and Karpov were seated in large, comfortable chairs near the back of the room, speaking in hushed tones, while Karpov’s two thugs gawked about like bumpkins, and Simuth looked upon them with obvious distaste.

Anogh approached Ag but stopped at a polite distance and waited. Ag and Karpov conversed for several more minutes, then Ag looked up and took notice of the Summer Knight. Ag stood and Karpov stood with him. As they walked toward the center of the room, Anogh, Simuth and the two thugs joined them there.

“Sir Knights,” Karpov said, acknowledging Anogh and Simuth. “It appears we have common cause.”

“Yes,” Ag said. “This necromancer is a problem for us all. And I find it disquieting that he’s bound himself to the Old Wizard. It would be better if he were bound to our good friend Vasily here.”

He’d been looking at Anogh when he spoke. “And you’ll help him, won’t you, my Summer Knight?”

Anogh bowed slightly. “If that is Your Majesty’s desire, then, of course.”

Karpov looked to his two thugs and said, “And His Majesty tells me he believes a necromancer must have some demon blood in his veins.”

The big bearish fellow grumbled, “I knew he was a fucking demon.”

Karpov’s hand lashed out and struck the fellow across the cheek, the slap resounding loudly in the small room. The strike had been fast, inhumanly so, like that of a pit viper. “You will not use such crude language in the presence of His Majesty. Apologize.”

“I am sorry, Your Majesty,” the big bear grumbled in his thick accent, lowering his eyes. “Please forgive me.”

Ag waved a hand impatiently and spoke to Karpov. “These young fools all have so much to learn.” He looked Anogh’s way. “But I think you’ll find Sir Anogh to be quite resourceful on the Mortal Plane.”

Leftover pizza, the breakfast of champions. Paul finished the last cold, congealed slice, gulped down the last of a cup of coffee, stuffed both Sigs and his holsters into a cloth shopping bag, pulled on his coat and shot out the door.

Paul couldn’t find it in his heart to return to his old place. He and Suzanna had lived there since before they were married, and Cloe had spent her entire life there. And after the “home invasion” by the Russians, it had been relatively easy to break the lease. Paul had found a new apartment, a nice apartment as apartments went, just a little lonely. He missed Suzanna and Cloe, but he’d sworn a silent oath that he wouldn’t fall into that trap again. They were gone, and he was going to make himself accept that whether he liked it or not.

The new place was South of Market, an area of San Francisco devoid of the quaint charm of nineteenth-century, wood-frame houses with three or four stories of bay windows. A few years ago Paul read an article predicting that South of Market was destined to become a new, upscale, yuppie enclave. Paul hoped no one was taking advice on the stock market from the guy who wrote the article. Some people wanted to call South of Market
SoMa
, hoping to give it a fashionable flair like SoHo in New York. But tall, modern office buildings dominated the north side of the district, while the south side was filled with cheap hotels, a few rundown buildings, and some apartment buildings four or five stories high, boxy structures with little charm. In any case, Paul had signed a lease on a three-and-a-half room bachelor flat: living room, bedroom, small bathroom, half a kitchen.

When he arrived at McGowan’s the old man met him at the door and hustled him into a car with the cryptic explanation of, “We’re going to go see Clark, introduce you properly.”

As McGowan pulled out onto Van Ness, he shifted into his lecture voice and said, “On the way let’s talk about the three realms: the Mortal Plane, the Netherworld, and Faerie. They’re also sometimes referred to as the three lives. First—”

“Wait,” Paul said. “First let’s talk about why you’re doing this for me.”

McGowan frowned, clearly taken aback. Paul continued. “I’m nothing to you. Nobody. But it must be costing you a great deal of money to take care of me, and certainly a great deal of effort. And most importantly I am, apparently, a dangerous unknown. And now you’re willing to put that aside. Why?”

McGowan nodded, considered his words carefully. “A lot of reasons, kid. First, if you had continued the way you were going, someone, probably me, would have had to kill you to prevent you from harming others. Think about Cassius. Two, three, four hundred years ago some sorcerer let that Secundus loose on the Mortal Plane. That demon was powerful enough that he was consuming two or three lives a week. Do the math. It doesn’t matter if that ancient sorcerer let him loose through evil intent, or merely sloppiness or inexperience. If there was the possibility you might do the same, we had to stop you, even if that meant killing you. But while I will admit I can be ruthless, I’d rather not commit murder until I know I can’t fix you properly.”

“So if I don’t cooperate you, or someone else, will kill me?”

McGowan frowned and considered Paul’s question. “I honestly don’t know. You’re not what we thought, a simple rogue, so I’d probably hold off. But I can’t vouch for those Russians.

“Another reason I’m working with you is that you’re an unknown, to us all. There hasn’t been a necromancer around for twelve hundred years, not that we know of. So I want to be close to understand why you’re here, now, at this time and place.”

“There has to be a reason?”

“I think there has to be.” McGowan looked away from the road, looked at Paul carefully for a moment, studying him, evaluating him. His eyes returned to the road and he said, “Our history books are written by historians who don’t believe in magic or sorcery, so they make events fit into their mundane framework. But I’ve spent many decades translating and studying ancient grimoires—basically cookbooks for magic and sorcery with little bits of history thrown in—written by men and women hundreds of years ago with a vastly different perspective. And believe me it’s a bitch trying to understand them. They’re vague, and superstitious, so a lot of interpretation is needed. But an alternate interpretation that emerges is that a couple thousand years ago a Primus caste demon, one of the nine princes of hell, crossed over to the Mortal Plane. That led to the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the dark ages. And it wasn’t until about eight or nine hundred years later that a necromancer came along to banish the Primus back to the Netherworld.”

Paul buried his face in his hands. “Jesus, god in heaven,” he said. His mind started racing. Maybe he could just run away and hide. Play along with McGowan for a day or two, yank all his savings out of the bank, take only cash, move to some south Pacific island, grow a beard, become a beach-bum and just hide.

“Paul!” McGowan shouted, and he realized McGowan had shouted his name several times already, but Paul’s thoughts had gone so far away he hadn’t heard him. “Calm down. It’s just all speculation, and conjecture. I told you it’s all subject to wide ranging interpretation. And you should see some of the crap those superstitious idiots wrote ten, twelve hundred years ago. Remember, these are the morons who came up with the test for a witch: drown her, and if she lives she’s a witch so kill her, but if she dies she’s innocent, so pray for her when you bury her.”

Paul had to struggle to accept that, forced himself to an artificial calm. “Well, at least now that everyone knows I’m a necromancer they’re not out trying to kill me anymore.”

McGowan sucked air through his teeth. “About that  . . .”

“Ah shit! Please tell me they’re not trying to kill me anymore.”

“Wellllll!” McGowan grimaced unhappily. “It’s not that simple. You see, the Sidhe don’t have souls, so they’re kind of  . . . not really considered among the living, so  . . . you may have some extra special powers over them, and they won’t like that.”

Paul turned on him and shouted, “What kind of powers?”

McGowan’s grimace remained. “We don’t know. Maybe none. But the Sidhe Courts, as a rule, don’t take any chances in such matters, so don’t assume anything.”

Paul felt that somehow he was supposed to remain calm and rational. “Well, at least the fucking Russians aren’t trying to kill me anymore.”

McGowan added a frown to his grimace. “About that too. It’s really hard to bring a Primus caste over, even for me, but maybe not for a necromancer. So your very existence might make it possible.”