Minutes to Midnight (4 page)

THE PERiPHERAL

Mike's idea of getting an early start was
heading back to The Night Pub where we got the tip about
Bonaventure Cemetery. The bar was one of Savannah's landmarks. It'd
been several things over the years, from a boarding house to a
brothel. The building sat in what was once Savannah's red-light
district, diagonal to Franklin Square.

The name came from a time when this part of
town was known as the Red Light area and the building was used as a
brothel. Later the building was turned into a three story single
family home before it sat vacant for a number of years. It was
finally bought in 1995 and turned into a bar. The place was always
busy.

And there was always the rumor of ghosts.
Recent ghost-hunting shows had brought attention to Savannah over
the years, and a local hunter team had a successful night at The
Night Pub.

I've been a ghost magnet all of my life and
I'd been in the place a dozen times and the only thing I saw
regularly were drunks, women, and a floor covered in peanuts. If
there were ghosts, they were on an extended vacation.

The place wasn't open when we got there.
Hours on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were 1 p.m. to 3 a.m. I
expected to be knocking for some time, and given Mike was a bit of
an obsessive when he made a decision, I settled in for the long
haul. But for some reason, the moment Mike knocked on the door at
this un-bar-like hour, it opened.

Darius Parker appeared in the doorway but
didn't open it for us to enter. He stood half-hidden by the door's
shadow as he glared at Mike, then down at me. Darius was a bit of a
legend on the seedier side of Savannah. And I don't mean red-light
seedy. He knew about the planes and what lived in them. Darius had
been a bit of a Hunter in his time, claiming to have abbreviated
(that's what he called it) Fetches, Daemons, Symbionts, and a
succubus. But even I had a hard time believing in that last one. Of
all the things I'd seen and experienced in the past few months, the
idea of a succubus just never came up. I wasn't going to toss the
idea, though, anymore than I wanted Mike to toss the idea of
vampires.

Like him, I just hadn't met one yet.

Darius's constant stare at
me made me a little bit uncomfortable. He was a big guy, standing a
good half foot taller than Mike. Dark skin, a head full of braids
pulled back in a ponytail, and eyes the color of light beer. The
dude was scary and he slung a mean drink. "You know," he said in
his rumbling voice. "I never would have thought of
you
as dangerous." He
stepped away from the door and pointed a good-sized gun at me,
holding his arm up in front of Mike as if to prevent him from
interceding. "But from what I hear, you might just have something
of value that could make a lot of people a whole lot of
money."

I straightened up with my hands out to my
sides. I hadn't come armed—why would I? It was nearly ten in the
morning on a Saturday! Not that I was any good with a gun.

Mike moved faster than I'd
ever not-seen him. Two beats and he had Darius's gun in his hand
and released the magazine from the handle. I didn't know what model
the gun was—I only knew he'd been pointing it at
me
. When I knew the big
guy had been disarmed, I finally found my voice. "'The hell,
Dar?"

"I second that," Mike said as he shoved the
magazine into his back pocket and handed the gun back to the
bartender. "Why the fuck are you pointing a gun at Dags? And why in
the hell do you think he would have something that would make any
money?"

Darius took the gun, and for
a split second I thought he might try and clock Mike with it—which
would be just plain stupid on a monumental scale. I mean, come on,
the guy just disarmed you and didn't break a sweat. He didn't hit
Mike, but he did give him a nasty look. "You can't bring him in
here right now." Darius tilted his head down toward me when he said
the word
him
.

"What…" I put a tennis shoe on the single
step into the bar, but Mike put a hand up. I stopped, not because
he told me to, but because, well…Darius is a lot bigger than me.
"This is ridiculous. I was just in here last night, Dar. I didn't
do anything."

"You can't come in here
right
now
." The
bartender continued looking me over as if I were a curious bug. I
wondered if something else was going on here.

"Darius, we have a problem,
and I'm pretty sure you don't want to hash it out here on the
street," Mike said. "I got information from someone in your bar.
Information that led us smack-dab into a little gathering of
zombies. We need to talk.
Now
." Mike moved to the right, on
Darius's left, and braced himself against the brick wall to the
right of the door. When Mike looked as if he wasn't ready to hurt
someone, that's when he was at his most dangerous.

And Darius knew it. He finally tore his very
uncomfortable gaze from me and looked at Mike. "Meet me across the
street. I'll be over in five." He stepped back and slammed the
door.

Mike and I exchanged looks.
Mine simply read,
What the hell is going
on?
But Mike's…well…his was unreadable. He
looked serious. And pissed off. "Come on."

Apparently,
across the street
meant
meet down the sidewalk
to Martin Luther King Blvd., and then right. I
glanced in the window of Zen Sushi as I followed Mike, and then we
made another right and walked up that sidewalk. By the time we were
finished, we were in Franklin Square, diagonal to The Night Pub and
across from the City Market. The smell of fried chicken and Chinese
food set my stomach off and my mouth watered. I'd eaten a good
breakfast—how could I possibly be hungry again? The place was
filling up fast with locals as well as visitors, everyone out for
food or sightseeing. A tour trolley was parked near the Square,
along with a horse and buggy.

Gotta love Southern tourism.

"We just walked in a big circle." Yeah, I
was stating the obvious. But there was a reason for it.

Mike waited until we were under an oak—a lot
of those down here—before he answered. "Darius said across the
street."

"And that's code for around the block."

"Yeah."

Oh. Well. Sure. Everyone knows that.

It wasn't long before Darius approached, a
backpack on his left shoulder and a stern expression on his face.
"Sorry for the treatment—and for pointing a gun at you, Dags."

"That was an act?" I leaned forward. "What
the hell for?"

"Who was in the pub?" Mike cut right to it.
"Because whoever or whatever they are, they've got you
spooked."

"Damn straight." Darius pulled the backpack
from his shoulder and set it on the ground between him and Mike. "I
don't have long, so here's the short version. Who'd you talk to
last night? The one who sent you into a pack of zombies?"

"Tango." Mike put his hands on his hips.
"I've never known him to set us up. Usually his info's legit."

"Yeah, he's not the problem, then. Might be
whoever sent you into zombie territory was using him. Look, I got a
visit this morning from something…" He patted his head on the side.
"Well, she wasn't like anything I've ever seen before."

I wanted him to clarify what he meant.
"Never seen before as in mundane…or Planar?"

Darius nodded at me. "I think Planar, but
I'm not sure. She wasn't like anything I've ever dealt with
before."

I felt Mike's eyes on me. "Did she feel
Ethereal or Abysmal?"

"Neither."

I narrowed my eyes. "What do you mean
neither? Mental or Astral, then?"

"No. I'm talkin' something from the 'Pheral,
kid."

"'Pheral?" What I knew of
the universe seemed vast until a few months ago. I'd been taught by
Nona that there were five planes—Physical, Mental, Astral, Abysmal,
and Ethereal—though Sam and Mike called them the Material, Mind,
Spirit, Dark, and Light Worlds. Yet a few months ago Mike,
Samantha, and I found ourselves in something called Alfheim, which
apparently wasn't
in
any of the places I know about. "I don't know what the hell
that is. Is it part of the outer planes?"

"No man, it's between the planes. The
Peripheral."

That was a new one. None of
Revenants had ever mentioned it, not even Nona. But I got it: He
was shortening the word
Peripheral
to
'Pheral
. Only, it sounded too much
like
feral
.

Darius leaned back. "You mean you don't know
anything about the 'Pheral but you know about the others?"

"Hey." I held out my right
hand. "I just got into this gig a year ago. I'm still
learning."
Learning
meaning having been schooled by a vampire and three witches
who apparently left a whole fucking world out of the lesson. "So if
the Abysmal is like what most would call Hell, and the Ethereal is
sort of, or assumed to be Heaven…do I want to know what the
Peripheral is?"

The bartender's skin actually turned ashen.
Seeing a man his size suddenly look so afraid scared the
fuckity-fuck-fuck out of me. I felt something crawl up my
spine.

"No. You don't."

AN OBSESSED FAN

I managed to stay where I was and not run
off in terror, screaming into the morning, which was a good start
for me. It didn't help that Mike looked worried. Or that he kept
giving me and Darius harsh looks.

Mike pinned Darius to the
spot with one of his less-than-subtle
sit!
looks and said, "Pretend I don't
know what the hell it is you're talking about and explain it.
Thoroughly."

Darius looked down at me. "You've never told
him?"

"Hey, I don't know what you're talking
about," I shot back. "I've never heard of the Peripheral."

Darius rubbed at his chin with his right
hand. "If you were trained by some high and mighty magic hag, Mike,
you should know what it is."

"Sorry." Mike shrugged. "Sam never mentioned
it."

Darius just stared at Mike for a few seconds
with this sort of squinty-eyed, hashed-up face. I could tell he was
having a hard time trying to figure where to start, and it was a
daunting task to educate the Planarly Challenged.

"Maybe Sam didn't know about it either." I
looked at Mike.

"That might be," Darius interjected. "It's
something nobody wants to talk about."

Mike pursed his lips as he watched Darius.
"You're talking about a new World that Dags doesn't know anything
about. Or Sam. And we've been hanging together here for six months
and you never thought to fill me in?"

Darius held out his hands. "Hey, how was I
supposed to know your training was incomplete. I never even got to
meet this Samantha Hawthorne—"

"Hey…" I held up a hand. "Can we get back to
talking about this 'pheral place?" I looked at Darius, then Mike
and back to Darius. "Just assume we don't know anything."

Darius shrugged. "All right. It's sort of a
well-kept family secret—like a bastard child who could upset the
balance of the family power." He looked at me. "There are things
there that want you—you do know that, don't you?"

"They want me?" Clouds moved overhead,
covering the sun, switching the cast of the shadows in the square
around us. "Who wants me? And what for? How do they even know about
me when I don't know about them?"

"Does it have to do with whoever's in the
pub? Did they come here looking for him?" Mike straightened, and I
could see he was already putting himself in fight mode.