Harmony Black (8 page)

TWELVE

I
turned my attention to the workbench. Scalpels, bone saws, chisels, tools for cutting and breaking the human body. Most hadn’t even been cleaned off from Dr. Hirsch’s last “patient.” What really caught my eye, though, were the only sterile things in the room: a stack of small white Styrofoam coolers, each wrapped in plastic and waiting to be put to use.

Each one had a biohazard sticker on the side. Like the kind they put on organ-transplant coolers.

I heard voices up ahead. We kept moving, getting closer. At the end of a short hallway, an archway opened onto the heart of the old meatpacking plant—an open floor zigzagged by a dead conveyor belt, rusty meat hooks still dangling from the overhead track.

The doctors’ hired guns lounged at a plastic picnic table in the middle of the room, keeping a watchful eye on the rolling gurneys where two of the Gresham brothers slumbered on a chemical drip. Sound asleep, they wore their human faces. The third brother, I presumed, had ended up in the black vinyl body bag on the concrete floor. Construction lights on tripods, encased in bright-yellow plastic, provided illumination; cables ran to a small portable generator in the corner.

“This is absurd,” Victoria said, throwing up her hands as she paced. Her voice echoed through the drafty factory. “We’re throwing money away. Do you
know
the aftermarket value of cambion organs?”

“She just said the magic word,” Jessie breathed.

Emmanuel Hirsch followed Victoria like a puppy dog on a leash, his hands fluttering.

“And do
you
know how long it would take to find buyers?” he said. “We can’t do that kind of volume without the Flowers sniffing our way.”

“So we make a deal.”

“You don’t—you don’t
get
it. You can buy off the police, you can buy off the feds,
you can’t buy off the hound
. These men were working for the Flowers. They protect their own, and when hell comes calling, the Detroit Partnership isn’t going to save us.”

“Heard enough?” Jessie whispered. I nodded. Time to shut this operation down.

We slipped through the doorway and split up, her going left, me going right, crouching and using the shadows for cover. On the far side of the picnic table, she looked my way and gave me a nod.

“Freeze!” I shouted, springing up and holding my pistol in a two-hand grip. “Federal agents, nobody move!”

“Hands!” Jessie roared at the same time, dropping a bead on the guards at the table. “Let me see your hands!”

Emmanuel shot his hands straight up, his jaw dropping. Victoria froze. Their hired guns both sprang to their feet, startled, one of them going for his piece. He got it clear of the holster, a squat machine pistol in black matte, just in time for Jessie to give her trigger two quick squeezes. The Glock barked twice and the thug dropped, his shirt billowing red. His partner wised up and reached for the sky.

“On your knees!” I said, moving in with slow, careful side steps. “All of you, right now. Lace your fingers behind your heads.”

“This is a mistake,” Emmanuel stammered as he sank to one knee. “This is all a terrible mistake.”

Victoria didn’t kneel. She just stared at me. And whispered.

I couldn’t hear it at first, but the sibilant lisping verse slowly grew in strength and speed, twisting like a knot in the air around my head. No.
In
my head.

I swung the muzzle of my pistol, aiming for center mass. My arm felt heavy, like the gun had put on ten pounds of weight in the last five seconds.

“You want to stop doing that,” I told her. “Right now.”

Over by the table, Jessie moved in, reaching under the gunman’s leather jacket to take his weapon. Whatever Victoria was pulling, it hit Jessie harder than it hit me. Just enough to slow her reactions by a second or two. Just enough for the gunman to grab her wrist, spin, and draw his revolver. He held her like a human shield and pressed the barrel to her head.

“Drop your gun,” he snapped. Instead, I turned and took careful aim. Right between the eyes.

“No,” I told him.

He blinked. “Are you deaf? Drop your fucking gun!”

I kept one eye closed, sighting down the barrel. It felt good, closing one eye.
Why not close both?
The chant swirling in my brain said.
It’s bedtime. So nice, so warm. Sleep.

“A federal agent,” I said calmly, “never surrenders her weapon.”

“I
will
shoot her!” he shouted, looking desperate. Desperate wasn’t good. Desperate people do stupid things. Desperate people pull triggers.

“No, you won’t. Because your body drops one second after hers does. Something you should know: I took top score in my marksmanship classes at Quantico. If you’re thinking I’ll miss? Don’t. The best, smartest thing you can do for yourself is surrender.”

Jessie sagged in his arms, out cold. I could hear my blood pounding in my veins, pumping to the tune of Victoria’s chant. Down on his knees, Emmanuel laughed.

“Quite a dilemma, Agent. If you don’t shoot my friend Victoria, you’ll fall prey to her enchantment in short order. But if you
do
turn your gun to aim at her, well, my other friend will shoot your partner, then you. What to do, what to do?”

“Last chance,” I said, even as my vision started to blur. It felt like the sights on my gun were swinging slowly, rocking like a cradle, swimming away from me. I had once chance: shoot the gunman, hope he didn’t reflex pull his own trigger, then spin and take out Victoria.

In other words, no chance at all. Too much risk, too easy for Jessie to catch a bullet. I could save myself, sure, but not at that price. We’d both survive this, or neither of us would.

That was the last thought that passed through my mind as my pistol slipped from my numb, slack fingers and I crashed to the concrete floor.

I
woke to pain. My arms burned, wrists ached, shoulders pulled taut. As my vision slowly swam back, images unblurring and becoming one, I understood why.

They’d hung us from the old conveyor belt. Scratchy, stiff rope coiled around my wrists, tossed up and over the curve of an old, rusty meat hook. I dangled, helpless, my toes draping about an inch over the stained concrete floor. Jessie faced me, about ten feet away and hanging from her own hook, her head shaking as she slowly came to.

They’d taken our jackets, our guns and holsters, everything in our pockets, piling it all on the plastic picnic table. Emmanuel looked over at us and smacked his lips.

“Ah, look who’s awake. Well, Agents”—he glanced down at the Bureau ID cards in his hand—“Temple and Black, I’m going to have to ask your patience. We have a very important customer about to arrive, and dealing with you will have to wait. You’ll get your turn, no worries. Fredo, get the door, please?”

Fredo—the surviving gunman—ambled out of sight. I took a deep breath, as deep as I could manage.

“Clever scam,” I said. “You put the word out that you offer fix-up services for criminals, totally off the books. They show up here, desperate for help, only to discover your
real
business: selling bootleg organs. This is a chop shop for human beings.”

Victoria smiled, beyond pleased with herself. “We’re performing a community service. We take beautiful, healthy organs from human garbage and bequeath them to needy people. Deserving people. Wealthy people.”

“And not all of our patients end up on the chopping block,” Emmanuel added. “Our connection to the Detroit Partnership is quite real. Can’t go carving up mafiosi, after all. They have powerful friends. I suppose you could say that made men get our white-glove treatment, while
un
-made men get . . . 
un-made
.”

“We’ve got powerful friends, too, fucker,” Jessie grunted.

He shook his head, gloating. “I’m afraid the FBI is quite incapable of understanding us, let alone pursuing us. Do you even know why you fell asleep? I imagine you must think it was some sort of gas, or a toxin. But what if . . . what if, my dears, I told you it was a magical spell?”

I caught Jessie’s look and snorted. “Magic? You’re crazy. No such thing.”

“Poor, poor dears.” He sounded genuinely regretful. “I’m afraid you’ve stumbled into a world you know nothing about and cannot imagine. And once you’ve entered this world, well . . . escape is quite impossible.”

The loading bay door on the far side of the plant rattled upward, chains squealing. Fredo came back with a new friend, a barrel-chested man in stonewashed jeans and a cowboy hat. Gold chains and black chest hair poked out from under his half-unbuttoned shirt, and he licked his fat lips as he took a look around the room. His gaze traveled from the corpse on the floor, to the unconscious cambion on the gurneys, to us.

“Now, what the ever-lovin’ fuck,” he said, “happened here? Did I miss a party or what?”

“A minor setback,” Victoria said, striding over to offer her hand. “You must be Buck.”

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips. She cringed, faintly, as it came away glistening wet.

“And you must be the lovely and talented Dr. Carnes. Where’s my meat at, sweet thing? I wanna check out the goods before we talk price.”

“Right here,” Emmanuel said, gesturing to the gurneys. “They’re on a morphine drip, and restrained. Quite harmless.”

Buck shook his head and pointed at the body bag on the floor. “Told you on the phone, I ain’t interested in the dead one. My establishment don’t cater to necrophiliacs. Not often, anyway. That’s a special-request kinda deal. Besides, don’t got a freezer on my plane. He’d be all squishy and smelly by the time I got him back to LA.”

“We’d really prefer to make this a package deal.”

“Look,” Buck said, “live cambion? That’s always a winner. Some of these freaks really get off on cutting ’em up and guzzling some demon blood. As a consequence, there’s, ah, turnover in my stock that always needs replacin’.”

Victoria strolled up from behind and rested her hands on his shoulders. “And you’re certain that none of these . . . freaks can come up with
any
uses for a dead one? Even at a discount?”

“Ha. Honey, my place has all kinds of special attractions. Hell, we got a real live succubus chained up in the basement, if you’re crazy enough to take that ride. It ain’t a lack of possibilities, it’s just that humpin’ dead bodies is a niche kinda thing, and I don’t see myself recouping my investment. I’ll give you twenty grand for the two live ones, and that’s the deal.”

“Listen,” I said. They all looked my way. “We’re federal agents. You do
not
want to be associated with these people. Set us free and we can work something out. Something that keeps you out of prison.”

Emmanuel snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it. Twenty-two thousand for all three cambion,
and
we throw in those two.”

Buck frowned, scratching under his hat. “What are they?”

“What are they? Er, human.”

“Now, what sounds like a better business plan to you?” Buck asked him. “Option A: I hold two feds hostage, have to keep ’em tied up and under constant guard the rest of their lives, and my customers get lousy service. Or, option B: I go to a couple of professional whores and say, ‘Hey, ladies. Wanna be my whores?
I will pay you
,’ in which case I get a couple of happy employees and a whole lot of happy customers.”

“I . . . see your point,” Emmanuel said.

“Trust me, there are enough women willing to work on their backs, I don’t need to force ’em. Now, you
are
gonna end these two, right? Considerin’ they’ve seen my face and all?”

“With great pleasure,” Victoria said.

“Good deal. So. Twenty grand for the two live ones. Take it or leave it.”

Emmanuel’s shoulders sagged. “We’ll take it. Fredo, wheel them out to the truck while our new friend gets his money. He has a plane to catch.”

As Fredo shoved one of the gurneys to the door, rolling it on a spinning, squeaky wheel, I wasn’t sure what was worse: that I had no idea how we were going to escape, or that the single lead we had for catching the Bogeyman was about to fly right out of our grasp.

THIRTEEN

B
uck came back with a briefcase full of twenties, held in tight bundles by greasy rubber bands. Emmanuel didn’t bother to count it. They just shook hands and called it a deal.

Jessie hadn’t said a word in ten minutes. She kept her eyes squeezed shut, head bowed, burrowing somewhere deep inside herself.

I needed free hands. I needed to ease my burning arms, my aching shoulders. It felt like my wrists were being sliced open every time I swayed on the rough, scratchy ropes. I needed focus, to conjure up a defense. They didn’t know I was a witch; that meant I’d get one shot, just one, to blindside them with my own magic. I had to make it count.

Fredo wheeled in a cart, bringing it to a stop right beside me. I looked and wished I hadn’t. Scalpels, saws, a gleaming stainless-steel rib cracker—everything a mortician needed for an autopsy.

Before I could kick out, Fredo grabbed my legs from behind. I squirmed as he lashed my ankles together with another coil of rope, then pulled the rope taut and tied it to a metal ring set into the floor. I hung there, suspended between the two ropes, breathing through my gritted teeth.

Victoria hung back, watching from a few feet away, as Emmanuel moved in for the kill.

“You’re making a big mistake,” I told him.

“No, my dear, quite the contrary. Not only will your organs benefit many needy people—and, if I may be vulgar, my offshore bank account—but it’s a very effective means of disappearing a person. You and your friend will simply vanish off the face of the earth. No muss, no fuss.”

Behind him, Jessie raised her head.

“Let me out,” she growled in a voice that wasn’t entirely hers.

Emmanuel reached out and fumbled with my tie, his fingers unraveling the knot. “Patience, please. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

I tried to head-butt him when he started to unbutton my blouse, but the ropes kept me from anything but useless squirming. He reached for a scalpel.

“I will not be caged,”
Jessie said through gritted teeth.

With one quick slice, Emmanuel cut through the ivory fabric of my bra, right between my breasts. “Please relax,” he said, as he pulled the fabric aside. “I’m a surgeon, not some
pervert
. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before.”

He set down the scalpel and picked up a new tool with a long ivory handle topped by a round horizontal blade about the size of my palm, saw-toothed and gleaming sharp.

“Now, then,” he said. “I must apologize. We are a very
thrifty
operation, and competition requires us to cut costs wherever we can. As such . . . I can’t really offer you any anesthetic for this procedure. That said, I’ve done this many,
many
times before, and while the first few minutes will be unpleasant for you, the pain will quickly lead to unconsciousness and death.”

He flicked his thumb against a switch on the handle, and the saw blade whined to life.

“Out,” Jessie grunted, eyes still squeezed tightly shut. She heaved herself up by her wrists and dropped down hard. The old track jolted on its bolts. She did it again and again in a thumping rhythm. “Out. Out.
Out.
”

“Oh, for the love of—” Emmanuel sighed. “Fredo, secure her, please?”

Fredo grabbed another coil of rope and strolled toward her, shaking his head. He reached for her ankles just as her eyelids snapped open. Her glowing eyes burned with hunger and hate.

“Uh, boss?”

That was all he had time to say. Her legs whipped up, scissoring around his neck, as she drew herself up on the ropes one last time. He fell backward, trying to wriggle free. Their combined body weight, one last sharp tug, was all it took: the upper curve of the meat hook snapped, rusty metal groaning, and they tumbled together to the floor.

Fredo rolled onto his back, and his eyes went wide. Jessie, wrists still bound but gripping the broken meat hook in her hands like a samurai sword, crouched low and lunged for him. She swung and drove the sharp end of the hook between his legs.

I didn’t think a scream that shrill could come from a human throat.

It only got worse as she pinned his shoulder with one foot and dragged the hook upward with all her strength, disemboweling him one brutal inch at a time. Emmanuel dropped the saw, shaking his head wildly. It spun in circles on the concrete near my feet and kicked up sparks as the blade dug grooves in the stone.

“No,” Emmanuel said. “No, no,
no
! Victoria, slow her down!”

He ran for the picnic table. For our guns. Jessie left the meat hook buried in Fredo’s stomach. He’d stopped screaming now, and all that came from his tortured throat was a wet, mindless gurgle.

Jessie turned her gaze on me.

“Jessie,” I said, “it’s me. It’s
me
. Get me down!”

She prowled toward me like I was a piece of fresh meat, ripe for the taking. Then I heard the chant. Victoria’s sibilant whisper, trying to snake its way into my ears. I pulled on my ropes, deliberately hurting my wrists, focusing on the pain. The pain kept me awake. Kept me fighting.

Jessie snatched up the saw. She peered at it, then at me. She wobbled on her feet, Victoria’s spell starting to take hold, but that didn’t diminish her hungry smile one bit.

“The ropes,” I said.
“Please.”

Jessie lashed out her arm. The blade whined as it chewed through the rope, a quarter inch above my clenched hands. I fell to all fours, hard, on the concrete at Jessie’s feet.

A gunshot snapped through the air. It went wide, the bullet chewing into a cinder block. Emmanuel clutched the stolen Glock between his shaking hands, his aim wavering like a drunk as he fought his terror and lost.

Jessie bared her teeth, crouched low, and charged at him.

I didn’t have time to cut the ropes on my ankles, but at least I could stand. Victoria was distracted, splitting her focus between me and Jessie, but her sleep curse still wove tendrils of warm velvet around my brain.

I unfurled the ropes around my wrists and tossed the severed ends to the floor. Shook my hands out, working the circulation back. Then I called to my power.

Earth. Air. Water. Fire. Garb me in your raiment. Arm me with your weapons.

Water coated me, coalescing over my body like a suit of armor. Not literal water, but the
idea
of water, pure and elemental, water like blue singing steel. I held up my left palm, blossoming in my second sight with a blazing equal-armed yellow cross. It spun like the blades of a fan and became a disc, a shimmering shield of elemental air. Her spell broke against my defenses, scattering into motes of violet light.

Victoria could see it, too. She blinked, taking a step back. “Wait, how are you—”

In my right hand, a sword. A sword of flame. I pointed its tip toward her. The air crackled between us and ignited as if someone had suspended a gasoline trail in midair. A thin streak of fire lanced across the factory and blasted Victoria in the face.

She went down, shrieking, clutching her burned face. Then she clambered back to her feet and ran for the door, leaving her partners to die. I fired another gout of flame, slicing across her shoulder. She flailed, trying to pat out her burning dress with her bare hand, still screaming as she disappeared into the night.

I moved to chase her and tumbled to the floor. Damn ropes on my ankles. The elemental energies flickered and snuffed out, my concentration shattered. Now I felt the cost, the rush of power paid for with leaden muscles and sudden, sharp cramps in my stomach.

Fight through it,
I told myself.
Fight through it.

I grabbed the saw and cut myself free. Jessie had Emmanuel pinned to the floor, her fists raining down as she pounded him into hamburger meat. I stumbled up behind them.

“Jessie,” I said. “
Jessie.
It’s done. Stop.”

She froze with one clenched fist suspended over the doctor’s bloody, terrified face.

I thought back to her reaction when she first spotted me, how she’d hesitated and cut me down from the ropes. Something in my voice had given her pause, pulled her just an inch out of her killing fugue. “Jessie,” I said again. “
Listen.
Focus on the sound of my voice.”

She didn’t move. Her fist trembled, frozen.

“Come back to me,” I whispered. “Come back.”

Her hand slowly opened. She shook her head and tiredly pushed herself to her feet. I stood beside her, looking down at Hirsch.

“Emmanuel Hirsch,” I said, “you are so under arrest, you have no idea.”

My bra was a lost cause. Under my blouse I wriggled my way out of the shoulder straps, then tossed it aside. Funny. With all that had happened, with the sheer chaos of the last ten minutes, all I could think was,
Well, that’s forty bucks I’m not getting back.
I buttoned my blouse and grabbed my holster from the table, slipping it on.

“Please,” Emmanuel moaned, “it’s not my fault. It was all Victoria’s idea. She made me do it.”

Jessie rubbed her eyes, now pale and soft, and winced. “Sorry. Spaced out there.”

“You okay?” I asked.

“Yeah.” She put her palms flat against the table and pushed herself up. She glanced back toward the overhead track, the dangling hooks. “How’d you get loose?”

“You cut me down. You don’t remember?”

“Like I said, I spaced.” She tilted her head. “Wait. I came at you with a knife, and I just cut you loose? Didn’t hurt you?”

“It was an electric saw, actually. And no.”

She rubbed the back of her head. “Huh.”

“Please,” Emmanuel begged, still fetal. “It was all Victoria. I’m innocent.”

“Did you read him his rights?” Jessie asked me.

“Nope.”

“Good. Because he doesn’t fucking have any.” She picked up her phone from the clutter on the table and hit the speed dial. “Special Agent Temple. Authorization ninety-three slash ninety-three. Yeah. We need a cleaning crew. Got two . . . wait.”

She paused, then glanced over at me. “Is Fredo dead?”

I craned my neck to look. He lay flat on his back, glassy-eyed, the broken meat hook jutting out from his ruptured chest.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s pretty dead.”

“
Three
spills, one toxic,” she said into the phone. “Also one package for offshore delivery. Also need an H. E. designation for one Dr. Victoria Carnes, details to follow in our debriefing report.”

“Offshore delivery,” Emmanuel repeated. “What does she mean?”

Jessie finished giving the details, hung up, and unceremoniously kicked Emmanuel onto his stomach. He groaned as she pinned his arms back and clicked the cuffs tight around his wrists.

“Funny story,” she told him. “We’ve got this place; it’s called Detention Site Burgundy. It’s sort of like Club Med except it’s not fun, there’s no beach, and you can never leave. You’re gonna make all
kinds
of new friends there.”

“You . . . you can’t do that. I want a lawyer!”

She stood up and dusted off her hands. “What was it you told us? ‘You’ve stumbled into a world you know nothing about, and cannot imagine. And once you’ve entered this world, well . . . escape is quite impossible.’”

“Poor dear,” I added, my voice a flat monotone.

Jessie looked over at me. “You good to fight?”

“Yeah.” The stomach cramps ebbed away slowly, just the occasional stabbing tug to punish me for conjuring up that much energy that fast. I’ve had worse.

“Good,” she said, holstering her pistol. “We’ve got a plane to catch.”