Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel (24 page)

She only looked for a second, ducking back with a sigh of relief. “It’s not Udrai. But.” She opened her mouth and sucked in a breath, the way wine tasters did to get the air flowing over their taste buds. “It’s his magic. Not, like, channeled
through
him, or gifted. Actually
his
, all stored up like a well inside the man.”

“That mean Udrai is dead, do you think?”

“No. We wouldn’t be so lucky.”

“Damn.” He dared another look. The necromancer was consulting his watch and making notes in a logbook. Trina and James were in deep conversation, oblivious to their surroundings, ignoring the man who sat watching them. “Enough of this,” said Cavale. He’d brought a small selection from his usual kit. The lightest things: salts and obsidian dust, a fat quartz crystal, a butterfly knife whose handle he’d covered in runes and sigils.

Before he could spring into the room, though, Lia held him back. “No. Not yet.”

“What?”

“Wait until she goes.” She tilted her chin toward Trina. “This has ended in horror for her once already. Let’s not add to that.”

“She wouldn’t want her husband held against his will. This is . . . The necromancer’s not going to let James show it, but it’s torture for him.” He remembered James’ manifestation at the shop, that staticky scream that had started it off. How the tears had spilled as Cavale tried to tell him good-bye in Trina’s stead.

“You see.” She was doing that emotion-skimming now, had to be. Her eyes were far away, like she was listening to music from another room.
She’s reading him, and picking me up as a bonus.
“It hurts him. But he’s handling it. He gets to see
her
again, too.”

She was right. Cavale couldn’t fathom what Trina had gone through when she got that phone call. If he were to burst in there, calling out spells and waving his knife around, whatever bittersweet good-byes Trina and James were exchanging now would fast become a nightmare. But were they good-byes? Or was this asshole going to milk her for as many meetings as he could?
Doesn’t matter. If this is the last time she sees him, it ought not end in blood.

He sat back and closed his knife. Lia nodded as reassuringly as she could, considering the circumstances.

The meeting went on for another five minutes before the necromancer spoke. “I’m sorry,” he said, not unkindly, “but time’s up. Bringing your husband through is taxing for both of us, and I won’t be able to keep the veil parted for much longer. You understand, surely.”

“I . . . I do.” Trina hesitated. Cavale knew that hitch in her breath: it meant she was about to ask a question whose answer she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Mr. West, is there a way to bring him back? Permanently, I mean?”

It was a salesman’s pause, a carrot being readied for dangling. “We could try. But the materials I’d need to do it, they’re hard to come by. Precious, some of them. Rare, others. You can see from our surroundings I’m not quite set up for that sort of high ritual.”

“I can help,” said Trina, and it was only Lia’s hand clamped on his wrist that kept Cavale from running out there and putting an end to the sham.

“I’ll get a list together and be in touch, then,” said the necromancer, West. “Now, say your
au revoirs
, and I’ll get your coat.”

Rustling as all three stood, a few last, choked sobs from Trina, and a moment later James came drifting past where Cavale and Lia crouched. The liveliness was fading from his eyes as he crossed the threshold, growing cold and uncaring as the others in the queue. Then he caught sight of the two of them and he stopped. His face unslackened as hope bloomed.

Cavale placed a finger to his lips.

Help me,
James mouthed. He turned to look back as the front door closed.

Cavale nodded and opened his knife once more. “Now,” he said to Lia, and pushed through into the living room. He didn’t get far.

The necromancer stood facing them, his back to the door, hands clasped behind him: a dignitary greeting petitioners. “She’s a good customer.”

So much for getting the jump on him. Much as he’d like to rush forward and take the man out, Cavale knew better. You didn’t make a run at a necromancer while you were still within arm’s reach of the ghosts he controlled. “You’re exploiting her grief.” Cavale stepped farther into the room warily.
Never trust an enemy
was one of Father Value’s early rules. Later had come
If you can’t see their hands, they’re likely holding your doom.

“I’m giving her what she
wants
. It’s no different than the readings she goes into your shop for. Wait, it is different. It’s
better
.”

“You have a choice. Get out of my town or I’ll throw you out.”

That struck West as funny. He brayed laughter, so loud and so hard it turned into a coughing fit that left him doubled over, wheezing and fighting for breath.

Cavale knew an opening when he saw one. He launched himself forward, intent on getting the necromancer to the ground. Lia was on his heels.

West flung a hand up, and Cavale saw the bloody sigil smeared on his palm.
Where’d that come from?
He wasn’t bleeding from anywhere Cavale could see.

There wasn’t time to chase it down. The presences that had been skittering at the cusp of his awareness went quiet.

All except for one. It giggled madly, shrilly, from right behind him.
Poltergeist. He’s called a fucking—
The giggling dropped sharply, and he felt the grip of invisible hands on his ankles. It yanked him off his feet. Instinct made him twist at the last second, his shoulder taking the impact rather than, say, his jaw. A weight settled on his side, heavy enough that it became an effort to draw a full breath.

Lia grunted as she went sailing across the room, as though there were a rope tied to her waist, pulling her backward. She hit the wall and scrabbled at her throat as the poltergeist lifted her up and up and up. Her heels drummed against the plaster as she tried to squirm free.

The necromancer straightened, palm still raised. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone for another week? Another three or four days? I’ve left you be, even when you and your friends were making a mess of my work. I counted up my losses and moved on. Just a little more time, that’s all I wanted.” He coughed again, and Cavale realized where he’d gotten the blood for his palm. He spat a wad of it into his other hand and wiped it on his hip. “Just a little more time.”

“You’re dying.”

“I don’t have to.” He cocked his head. “But you can. And that will help me immensely. Kill them,” he called, and in the hallway, the ghosts stirred. “I’ll come back later and take your finger bones,” he said, “and then you’ll serve me, too.”

The weight remained on top of Cavale. Spots danced across his vision as it got heavier. Soon enough he’d black out, and the half-dozen ghosts coming for him would carry out their master’s bidding with ease. He saw James and a few others split off toward where Lia still flailed against the grip of her invisible attacker. Any hope Cavale had that James might have enough awareness to stop the others died as he saw the film across the man’s eyes.
No one’s home anymore.

The poltergeist shifted atop him, not letting up, merely getting comfortable. As it did, it pressed against the lump of quartz in Cavale’s pocket.
If I can get to it . . .
He bucked once, twice, not dislodging it, only getting himself the range of motion to reach in—there!—and clasp his fingers around the stone. The second he had it, the poltergeist tumbled away. It howled in fury, swirling around Cavale like a tiny tornado.

But it couldn’t touch him.

He threw himself past it, toward Lia. She saw him coming, stopped slapping at the empty air, and stretched out a hand toward him. When they touched, the spirit that had her recoiled with a fingernails-on-chalkboard screech that Cavale felt in his teeth. Lia’s boots hit the floor and she plucked his butterfly knife from his fist. Burst capillaries ringed her blue eyes with crimson, and angry purple bruises were already welling up on her throat. “Get us out of here,” she rasped. “Too many.”

Much as he wanted to argue, to insist they stay and send them all to rest, he knew running was the right call. The necromancer had touched off a storm in this house, and God only knew how many other spirits were lining up for a shot at them. “Stay close.” He dug out the baggie of salt and obsidian dust and scattered it ahead of them like chicken feed. Lia held on to his belt loop so she could watch their backs. She muttered under her breath as they went; it sounded like a prayer. Cavale knew banishing spells in a dozen languages, but this one was new to him.

Ask her to repeat it later. Get out alive first.

Then they were at the door, and outside, and he spread the last of his salt and dust across the threshold to keep any of the ghosts from following.

The farther across the lawn they got, the harder she leaned on him. Out on the sidewalk, Lia stopped and sat down, hard.

“Lia? Jesus, are you all right?”

She smiled wanly. “Need a minute. Forgot how to fight without . . .”

Without being a seven-foot-tall demon.
He nodded. Voices tended to carry in the quiet before dawn. He wondered if any of the neighbors had heard the fight itself, but no curtains twitched, no frightened faces peeked out from gaps in the boarded-up windows.
Bet he’s got it warded for sound.
They’d put similar ones up at Sunny and Lia’s when the Creeps were coming, to keep the humans next door from getting involved. From getting themselves or the police hurt if they called.

“Tell me when you’re ready. We’ll get you back to my house and I’ll break out Elly’s medic kit. Fix you up so Sunny doesn’t have a heart attack when she sees you.”

Lia was looking past him, up the hill. Her face had slowly been returning to its normal color from the strangled purple she’d turned, but now she went past that, straight to deathly pale.

“I can carry you piggyback if it’s too much,” he said, keeping his voice casual as he could as he turned. He knew it couldn’t be the climb freaking her out.

A man was coming down the sidewalk toward them. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of a down coat. He had light brown skin and a full beard, the coarse dark hair shot through with grey, though the hair on his head was all pepper, no salt. He had to have noticed them, but he swivelled his head from side to side to peer into the houses as he walked, a man on a pleasant morning stroll.

Cavale pulled Lia to her feet. She stayed slightly behind him, not quite hiding, but allowing him to protect her. He felt the cold metal of the knife as she pressed it into his hand.

The man stopped before them and tipped a hat that wasn’t there. “Mornin’.”

He wasn’t part of the working crowd, or if he was, he was headed the wrong direction. “Good morning,” said Cavale. “You look a little lost.”

He studied the house they’d fled moments before. “Nope. I think I just found what I was looking for.”

Another customer?
“I’m sorry. The person who was staying here . . . left.”

The man’s liquid brown eyes reminded Cavale of Sunny, how she never missed a trick, whether she called you on it or not. He couldn’t place the man’s age, aside from
older than me
. “That’s . . . inconvenient. I was hoping to speak with him. Do you know where he went?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

He looked past Cavale, to Lia. “And you, lady? Did you see—” He paused, and against Cavale, Lia began to tremble. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“N-no sir. I don’t think so.”

“No, maybe not.” He tipped his nonexistent hat again. “Well. If you see him again, will you tell him an old friend was looking for him? He has something of mine, and I was hoping to get it back.”

Cavale nodded, though if he caught West again, setting up a meeting with this man was at the bottom of the priority list. “Who should I tell him is looking for him? And how can he find you?”

The man had started walking again, past Cavale and Lia, past the house full of ghosts. He turned and said, “Tell him Udrai is looking for him. And that I’ll come to him.”

Lia’s nails bit into Cavale’s wrist.

20

V
AMPIRES RARELY, AS
far as Elly knew, were so crass as to fight out in the streets. The
Stregoi
had done it in Edgewood a month ago, sure, but that was because the Creeps
were
that uncouth. When it came to bloodsucker versus bloodsucker, they preferred venues that discouraged spectators. Val had talked about brawls out in the deep desert, or in subway tunnels late at night, after the trains stopped running.

In the Old World, she’d said, one of the wealthy old vampires had a castle in the mountains where, once every ten years, anyone with a grudge was welcome to come and stay. At dark the Renfields closed the gates, and the fighting raged through the halls all night. The villagers down below closed their shutters and hunkered down and said it was the wind. Whoever won, the next morning their Renfields dragged the losers into the sun.

Seemed they’d carried on some form of the tradition here in the New World, only Boston wasn’t exactly rife with abandoned castles. Near the water, though, were acres of warehouses and buildings that had fallen into disuse. The address Katya had given her led to what once, in its golden days, had been a firehouse. The building was a slab of concrete three stories high. Black paint blocked out the windows; chains secured the garage doors.

As she walked around to the back entrance, spike and stakes and holy water at the ready, she smelled the seawater and motor oil scent of the harbor. Beneath that, blood.

“Oh,
fuck me
,” she muttered.

Elly slipped through the unlocked door. The reception area was frozen in the mid–nineteen seventies, the yellowed calendar declaring it May 1976. A thick layer of dust covered everything except the path from the entrance to the door that led to the garage. As she crossed the threshold, the sounds of fighting hit her like a wave. She turned and looked, saw the spells drawn in the dust on the wall.
Brotherhood spells again. The banshee woman must be here.
The Sister, that was, from yesterday. She almost wished she’d called Chaz back after all.

She remembered those moments after the fight outside Night Owls, when Chaz had talked about the woman the Creeps were forcing to help them:
“I met a woman today who looked enough like you to be your mom.”

“She hasn’t given a shit about me for twenty years. Why should I go running off to the rescue?”

If it was her, she was helping the Creeps then and the
Oisín
now.
All it does is make my job harder. That’s all.

Despite those nights outside that house in Dorchester?

She took the flutter of hope in her heart, shoved it in a box marked
later
, and threw away the key.

Then Elly entered into the abattoir of Ivanov’s turf war.

When it came to inter-vampire conflict, they weren’t fond of staking their own kind. Bit too easy to realize you were only a pointy stab away from dust yourself. They favored claws and fangs, and for all Ivanov demanded civility of the
Stregoi
in public, what Elly saw when she skirted around the doorway was nothing short of animal.

She hugged the wall, keeping out of sight the best she could. It was hard to tell who was dead from which side, because so many of them had been reduced to little more than
meat
. Someone had started a corpse pile in the corner, a tangle of arms and legs and torsos, all of whose necks ended in bloody stumps. They’d fall to ash eventually, if some poor Renfield wasn’t already tasked with dragging them into the sun in the morning.

Others, who hadn’t received the swift death of decapitation but who were effectively out of the fight, lay writhing on the cracked concrete floor. At least, it was
probably
concrete. Enough blood had been shed to cover it like a coat of varnish.

Ivanov had never been forthcoming about the number of
Stregoi
in the colony. Val had guessed it at about fifty, once, and from Elly’s attempt at a tally over the last month, it had seemed about right. They were moving too fast now for her to get a count of who was left, but it couldn’t be more than a couple dozen altogether.

This isn’t right. The numbers, the layout, the whole damned situation.
Opposing instincts set to war within her. Father Value’s oft-decreed
Get out, run, live to fight another day
was strong enough to make her twitch back toward the door.
But if I can find out what Ivanov’s planning . . .

Just a peek.
She’d do her recon and go, and figure out how to explain her absence to Katya and Ivanov later. Maybe she’d even bring Cavale with her as backup when she did.

First thing to do was get the numbers. Had both sides sent all their people here? No, she decided. There weren’t enough vampires here for all of Ivanov’s to be present.
Maybe a third of them, all told.
She craned her neck, looking for familiar faces in the fray, but the ones she caught sight of in the dim light were too gore-streaked for her to make out features.

A hand landed heavy on her shoulder. Elly spun, stake raised. “Katya.”
Shit.

“So glad you could join us,
myshka
.” Her mouth was streaked with red; the tips of her chestnut hair looked like they’d been dipped in crimson paint. The outlines of what Elly was sure must be teeth bulged from the front pockets of her jeans.

Her chance at getting out of here without fighting evaporated.
I’m going to have to see this through.
“Where do you want me?”

“With Ivanov. Come.” As Katya led her around the perimeter of the garage, it struck Elly once again that this whole setup was too clean, too contained. She tried catching up to Katya to express this, though she had no idea what she could possibly say to convince the
Stregoi
woman of her misgivings. But she didn’t get the chance. Twice on the way, one of the
Oisín
scuttled close. Katya bared her fangs, and both times the new vampires found somewhere else to be. They kept on until they came to a set of stairs, and Katya sent Elly up first. At the top was a balcony overlooking the bays where the fire engines used to be housed. Ivanov stood in the middle, alone, observing the fight.

“You want me up here?”

He glanced at her briefly, a smile playing about his lips. He might as well have been a rich man watching a pack of dogs fighting, for all the concern he showed about his people dying down below. His fangs weren’t even out. “Yes.” He nodded at Katya. “Go on back to your collecting, now. I am in good hands.”

Katya didn’t wait to be told a second time. She hopped up on the railing, found herself a target down below, and leapt down atop one of the
Oisín
.

Elly scanned the roving mass of violence, partly to make sure no one was coming up to attack Ivanov, partly trying to find the woman from the Brotherhood. If she was down there, she was no longer clad in grey.
How did it get to this point? They were supposed to
talk
.
She ought not ask. She should keep her mouth shut and do her damned job, and, when the sun rose, help drag the dead and dying into the light. Then she could go home, shower, sleep, make up with her brother. And when the sun set, she could go find Justin.

But this all seemed so
wrong
, and her mouth was open before she could stop herself. “What happened after I left? You were going to talk to them.”

“We tried, Eleanor. I had two of mine bring word to them, requesting a talk, and offered to give the girl Deirdre back to them if they met me peacefully. An hour later, they sent their answer. My people’s heads were delivered to the bar in a trash bag.” He shook his head. “I am glad my bartender was smart enough not to open it where there were paying customers.

“So I let Katya take the girl’s fangs and sent her back to her people. With the message to come meet us here, so we don’t call attention to ourselves on the streets.” He shrugged. “They came. And here we are.”

“I think you’re being played,” she said. “Both of you.”
Fuck, why didn’t I call Chaz?
“There’s a necromancer. He was controlling Theo, and he was controlling the ones who attacked yesterday morning. Either he
wants
you to take each other out, or—”

Ivanov leaned over the railing suddenly, showing the first signs of concern she’d seen him display in weeks. Elly stepped forward, looking to see what had alarmed him.

Katya had taken a pair of
Stregoi
with her into the thick of things, facing off against a cluster of
Oisín
. From the looks of it, the
Stregoi
were winning, except . . .

The
Stregoi
’s movements slowed, the way the vamps had in the daylight yesterday. Katya was too intent on the enemy she was trading blows with to notice her companions’ sudden change, or the way the other
Oisín
stopped paying attention to them and turned their focus on Katya. Elly was too far away to recognize them, but she saw the mark appear on one of them, the necromancer’s sigil appearing on his neck as if drawn by a ghostly hand.

“They’ll kill her. She can’t fight all of them.”

“Go to her,” said Ivanov.

That’s suicide. I’m good, but not
that
good.
“I’m not enough. Come with me. The three of us—”

“Go.”

There was no more arguing. Elly was down the stairs and sprinting across the floor before her brain could catch up.
He Commanded me.

Cold fury washed over her as her limbs propelled her toward Katya. It wasn’t like she’d signed a contract with Ivanov promising he’d never Command her, but Elly had assumed it anyway. Professional courtesy and all.
Shame on me.

There was a pack of vampires between herself and Katya—would she be able to stop and defend herself if they noticed her? Or would the Command make her push straight through, leaving her exposed and vulnerable? She braced for it, but thankfully, she didn’t get to find out. The vampires were too busy tearing one another apart to come after Elly.

She reached the cluster of fighting around Ivanov’s second and staked the first of the
Stregoi
puppets with the silver spike. She gave it a shove away from Katya and heard the sucking sound as the spike pulled out of the wound she’d made.
One down.
The order took away her ability to stay up there and question Ivanov, it seemed, but didn’t hinder her fighting skills.

Katya stared at her, incredulous. “I told you to stay with Ivanov.”

“And he sent me to you.” She turned so she and Katya were back-to-back, afraid if she maintained eye contact the woman might try to Command her right back up the stairs. How would that work? How badly would it scramble her brains, to have the two of them sending her back and forth? “The necromancer has control of
Stregoi
, too, Katya,” she said, as the vampires began to circle around them. She tucked the spike into a sheath at her waist, trading it for a cedar stake. “If you see the mark on them like Deirdre had, cut it. It should break his hold.”

“Turning our own against us. I’ll find him and tear his throat out myself.”

“Have to survive tonight first.”

Katya laughed, the peals carrying over the snarls and screams and sounds of maiming. “Oh,
myshka
, I plan to.”

They attacked then, four of them at once. Elly threw herself to the left, toward a vampire who looked no older than seventeen. His shirt might have been white once, but several gashes had been torn in it, the wounds staining the fabric dark with his blood. He didn’t expect her to come at him, or for her to use his own momentum against him. She caught his arm at the wrist and dropped, sending him ass over teakettle to the floor. He
oof
ed as he hit, but was scrambling back up even as Elly spun with her stake in hand.

She missed his heart, but the wood plunged deep into his abdomen. He made a soft noise—
hhhhh
—and clutched at his belly. It wasn’t the kind of wound that emptied your guts onto the floor. Wasn’t like he needed the use of his digestive tract even if she had—at least, not the way humans did. But she’d stabbed him with cedar, and that meant the flesh was already dying all around it. It might heal, given time and a healthy infusion of blood, but that wasn’t going to happen here in this fire station turned charnel house. He staggered away, either taking himself out of the fight to die quietly in a corner or heading out onto the streets in search of blood.