Dead to Rites (31 page)

And then she pulled her hands, one hooked in the upper half of McCall’s skull, one in the lower, in opposite directions.

I shut my eyes just in time to avoid seeing the results, but I couldn’t shut my ears to the horrible
crack
or the moist tearing sounds that followed.

Instead I finally turned over and dragged myself to my feet. The pain was already subsiding some, though I wasn’t gonna be able to heal right until I got those damn shards outta me. Still, between those and the gunshot, I was pretty proud of the fact that I wasn’t limping
too
bad as I made my way over to Nessumontu, where he stood over the lone survivor of the once fearsome Uptown Boys gang.

Nolan Shea, of course. He was nursin’ a mangled left arm and his mug was pale with shock and pain, but he’d probably make it.

“How you doin’, old man?” I asked the mummy. Hey, there ain’t a lotta people I can honestly call that, y’know?

“In more than a small amount of discomfort, in truth. I think, however, far better than I would have been without your assistance, Mick Oberon. Thank you.”

“Yeah, well. You’re welcome. I didn’t realize you had that kinda power, though. How’d they even take you in the first place?”

“Surprise. And I cannot invoke such
heka
easily. I have been gathering strength every moment I was encased in their cage of glass, and it will be some time before I can even contemplate doing so again. I require rest.”

“You’n me, both. I—”

Shea interrupted us with a deliberate cough.

“Gloat all you want, Oberon. You’re a dead man.”

“I wasn’t gloating. You’d know if I was—”

“Fleischer’s gonna come for you. You won’t see it comin’, but you’re already a corpse. You just…” Another cough, then a pained wheeze as he clutched at his arm. “You just don’t—”

“Shea.” I took a step, stood over him. “Fleischer’s long gone, isn’t he? Dusted outta here soon as this whole mess started, I figure.”

“Yep. You won’t find him. But he’ll find—”

“Means he knows I was part of what happened here, but he don’t know how much, or what exactly I did. Not what happened, not in any detail. And there ain’t anybody who
did
see the whole thing who’s gonna be able to tell him.”

“What? Yeah, there—”

I wonder if he saw it coming.

I stepped back away from the corpse—didn’t need blood and brain on my shoes—and slid Pete’s gat into a coat pocket. Then I turned to meet Nessumontu’s questioning gaze.

“I ain’t proud of that,” I told him. Wasn’t lyin’, either. Killing that casually don’t sit right with me at all. Especially not after… some of what I’ve done in the past. “But I can’t afford to let Fleischer find out the details of what happened here, and I
sure
can’t have him hearin’ it from someone who already had a grudge against me and woulda painted it even worse than it was. As it is, he’s another new enemy I can’t afford, especially given the kinda power he can bring to bear. So anything I can do to keep him in the dark, make me less of a priority to him…”

“You need not justify yourself to me, Mick Oberon.”

“Oh, but you fucking well do to
me
, you bastard!”

Ramona staggered up from behind me, still drenched in blood. She’d resumed human form, so I couldn’t see how bad her wings mighta been mangled, but she still bore rents and gashes across nearly every inch of exposed flesh. Some of ’em had already started to close, but it was gonna be a good long while before she was anywhere near whole. She took another step, winced, and angrily tore a flap of hanging skin off her arm.

“You’ve looked better, doll. But then, pretty sure so have—”

“How did she know I was here, Mick?”

I thought about lyin’, but really, what was the point?

“I called her. Told her I’d lured you here with the promise of the mummy, that if she met me here with Pete, I’d have you trussed up out back and ready for delivery.”

From her expression, that didn’t come as a surprise, but she was
not
happy about it. Her forehead bulged as her horns tried to emerge again.

“You betrayed me!”

“Not at all. My deal with McCall was that I serve you up helpless and ready to be dragged home. I didn’t. Hell, I helped you beat her, or didn’t you notice me pluggin’ her in the back?”

“
Look
at me! Look at what she did to me! Because of
you
!”

“You’ll heal. And it’s better than her draggin’ you home, ain’t it? Or havin’ to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life?”

“Are you trying to tell me you did this
for me
? Because that’s a load of horse shit even for you, Mick!”

“No. I did this for him…” I pointed a thumb at Nessumontu. “But mostly for Pete. Who wouldn’ta been dragged into any of this if not for McCall. You might wanna remember this, just in case you ever feel the urge to threaten any of my friends.”

“So I was here as a… what? Distraction? I was just a pawn in your plan?”

“If that
were
the case,” I told her, tryin’ hard not to growl it, “it’d make us about even, wouldn’t it?”

Horns burst free, talons extended again… And just as quickly retracted. Ramona spun on her heel and stalked off into the shadows, leavin’ a trail of wet, squelching footprints behind her.

I wondered where things might stand next time we bumped into each other.

And apparently I wasn’t the only one.

“I fear assisting me has made you several new enemies this day,” Nessumontu said.

“Eh, I’m used to it. What’s next for you?”

“I? I shall return to the bazaar, at least for a time. It is… not the most dignified of resting places, but it will allow me time to recuperate—and to prepare the spells necessary to safeguard myself from events such as these repeating themselves in the future. Do you believe Tsura Sava might be willing to assist in watching over me until such time as I have completed those preparations?”

Huh. I hadn’t even thought about the fact that she’d be leavin’ when the carnival did. Found I didn’t much care for the notion. But, “Yeah. I mean, I’ll ask, but I’m sure she would.”

“I owe you both a great debt, Mick Oberon. Is there anything I might do for you, before I return to my slumber?”

“Nah, I don’t…”

Wait a minute.

“Actually, pal…” I stepped over, draped my arm around his shoulders. He looked puzzled, least as much as he could without peepers in his head, but didn’t move. “There just might be.”

“Don’t do it, Mick.”

It’d been the first thing she’d said to me, after Nessumontu and me’d slipped outta the warehouse and found her hiding with Pete in a neighboring alleyway.

“Huh?”

“What you’re planning. Don’t do it.”

“You don’t even
know
what I’m—”

“It doesn’t matter.” She’d looked just as upset, just as scared, as she had back when the bullets and the blood were flyin’. “I don’t have to. I’ve sensed it, felt it. Whatever it is… it’s terrifying. Dreadful. Please, Mick, for God’s sake, don’t do it.”

I almost listened.

I trusted her; she’d earned that, and more, over the past days. To hear her react this strongly, almost begging, made my blood run cold.

But in the end, I couldn’t. I’d worked too hard, owed too much to too many people, not to try. Not now, when I could finally give back a life that’d been stolen too many times already.

Which is why I was standin’, the next evening, in a bedroom that’d gotten
real
crowded. Lacy sheets matched lacy curtains, all kindsa pretty gewgaws sat on the shelves, and I could barely even see any of it through the thick, suffocating haze of emotion. Agonizing hope and an almost comfortable fear. Soft sobs and rasping breaths, nervous sweat and the subtle tang of a mother’s tears.

It was maybe just as well that Tsura, caught up in the lingering worry of her vision, had refused to come into the house, let alone the room, instead waiting outside and pacing the lawn. We couldn’t have fit another soul in here.

I’d squeezed myself into a far corner, tryin’ to keep outta the way. Archie waited next to me, rollin’ an unlit cigarette between two fingers, peepers locked on his boss and friend. Fino and Bianca Ottati held each other tight, her arm around his waist, his around her shoulder. She wept openly; he was praying under his breath in Italian. Celia stood across from them in the doorway, steadyin’ herself with one hand on the jamb.

Between ’em, lyin’ flat in the same bed she hadn’t left in over a year, lay the slumbering Adalina. And over her, arms outstretched and entering the second half-hour of his unbroken chant, stood Nessumontu.

Spells of protection, revival… and
awakening.

I’d found the mummy some less conspicuous clothing, a complete suit and greatcoat, as well as a pair of cheaters with real dark lenses to hide his suspicious lack of eyes. It made him look kinda hinky, wearing ’em inside, but less so than the alternative. Besides, the Ottatis didn’t much care who the fella was, if he could do what we all hoped he could do.

Archie was, under the circumstances, a little more suspicious.

“Where’d you say you found this mug?” he whispered at me.

“Just an old acquaintance,” I answered.

“Old acquaintance. Right.”

Well, it was true. We were acquainted, and he was
real
old, so…

“Why?” I asked.

“Just… if this don’t work… I don’t wanna see the boss disappointed again. I dunno if he can take it.”

“Trust me, Archie, I don’t wanna see that either. I—”

A deep, desperate, rasping breath sounded from beneath the heavy quilt. Nessumontu’s chant trailed off and the entire room fell silent.

For an instant only. Then everybody in the room who wasn’t centuries old cried out at once as Adalina bolted upright!

Bianca was already lunging in to wrap her daughter in her arms, Fino half a step behind, and I hadda practically leap across the room to bar their path.

“Hang on! Let’s make sure she’s okay before we—”

Adalina screamed, and I mean
screamed
. It was piercing, like gettin’ Ramona’s talons through the eardrums. One hand lashed out, grabbin’ me by the sleeve and hauling me in and around so we were near face-to-face. The girl’s peculiar Fae lineage made her ugly, even somehow alien, but there’d always been a kind humanity behind the bulging, widely spaced eyes and twisted, gawping mouth.

Not now. Now I couldn’t tell who—or what—I was facin’.

The painful scream dropped to a more manageable volume and for an endless few seconds she shouted at me, spouting what musta seemed an enraged gibberish to everyone else in the room. But finally,
finally
she wound down, let go of my coat and fell back on her pillows.

Again there was silence. I don’t think the Ottatis were even breathin’. And then…

“Mama? Daddy? What… What happened?”

This time I didn’t try to stop ’em. The entire family, both parents and her sorta-sister, were on the bed, near smotherin’ Adalina in hugs and tearful kisses. So far as they were concerned, whatever’d just happened was already over and done, a moment of trauma and confusion as their baby girl finally awoke.

Me, I stepped back away from ’em, and it’s a good thing everyone there already knew what I was, ’cause I totally forgot to blink, to fidget, to do anythin’ to make myself look even slightly human.

’Cause I was the only one there who knew that what Adalina’d been spouting
wasn’t
random nonsense. That for just a minute, there’d been someone else there, someone other’n a scared and confused girl.

It hadn’t been a single language, see, but a combination, switchin’ from one to the next as she shouted. I’d recognized several. Old Gaelic. Old Polish. Old East Norse, of all peculiar things.

And because of the constant switchin’, I hadn’t been able to understand most of it. Each language was gone, replaced by another, before my brain could start translatin’. But I’d caught just a snippet of meaning, at the very tail end.

Somethin’ about being woken too soon. About not being ready.

I turned my back on the sobbing, grateful family to stare out the window. Tsura, alone on the lawn, looked up just in time to catch my gaze.

* * *

All three of us were outside, now, loitering around the porch and watchin’ as one of Fino’s boys pulled up at the curb in the Shark’s burgundy LaSalle, ready to chauffeur Tsura and the mummy—which sounds like a duo act, come to think of it—back to the carnival. Nessumontu’d already refused any sorta real payment, and he’d been pretty anxious to get outta there once the grateful hugs had started flyin’ around the room. We got us a few weird glances from neighboring windows, or so the twitching curtains suggested, but I figure anyone livin’ near Fino’s place was used to odd visitors at odd hours.

Me, I was makin’ small talk with Nessumontu mostly, askin’ about plans we’d already discussed and some historical tidbits I was curious about. It beat dwelling on what’d just happened in Adalina’s room, or what the repercussions might be—or on the fact that I’d actually made me a new friend, someone without a hidden agenda and who wasn’t tryin’ to hold magical influence over me, and she wasn’t gonna be stickin’ around.

Almost as an afterthought, since he
would
be leavin’ in a few more days, I asked, “What about the curse? How far you think you’ll need to get before it fades?”

You ever see a fella with no peepers blink in confusion? It’s disturbing.

“I beg your pardon?”

“The curse? You know the… bad luck?” My stomach was suddenly sinkin’ toward my toes.

“I have no protective curse on me, Mick Oberon. I might once have, but if so, it has faded in the many years since I was taken from my proper tomb. This is one of the reasons I must prepare so many new defenses for myself.”

Yep, toes. And then even lower. If Nessumontu wasn’t the source of my recent misfortunes, unwitting or otherwise, then where the
hell
…?

Tsura reached out, brushing Nessumontu’s arm.

“Could you give us a minute, please?”

The stiff nodded, uh, stiffly.