Hellforged (16 page)

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Authors: Nancy Holzner

Tags: #Fantasy, #Contemporary, #Fiction, #General, #Demonology

BOOK: Hellforged
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IN THE LOBBY OF MY BUILDING, THE STRONG SMELL OF AMMONIA tickled my nose and made my eyes water. Two zombies, wearing jumpsuits with DIRTY JOB CLEANING stenciled across the back, pushed mops across the floor.
Clyde looked up from his
Boston Globe
. No
News of the Dead
for Clyde—he wouldn’t be caught undead reading that rag.
I greeted him. “I met the new doorman last night,” I said. “Nice guy.”
Clyde harrumphed. “
Former
doorman, you mean.”
“He quit?” That surprised me.
“Presumably. He deserted his post. Lord knows how long the building went unattended last night.”
Huh. Maybe Juliet
had
come home. Maybe she and her admirer Gary hit it off so well that the two of them ran away together. The idea made me smile.
“That wasn’t even the worst of it,” Clyde continued. “He left the lobby in shocking condition. Filthy, just filthy. I had to call in the cleaning company, and we weren’t on their schedule for today. They’ve only just arrived. I had to sit here for hours with a reeking mess. The smell was so horrendous I was forced to cover my nose with my handkerchief.”
Dread squeezed my heart with icy fingers. One of the zombies lifted his mop to dunk it in his bucket. Black slime dripped from the mop head in long strings.
Abandoning Clyde, I ran to the nearest zombie. “Did you find any brass buttons while you were cleaning?”
He kept his head down, straight brown hair hiding his eyes, and swiped up more black goo with his mop.
The other zombie came over. He was older and shorter than the mopping one. “Ricky’s a good worker, but he’s not too bright. He’s shy around strangers. Let me.” He touched Ricky’s arm and spoke softly. “Ricky, tell the nice lady. Did you pick up anything here?”
Ricky kept looking at his boots, but he quit mopping. He stood motionless for several seconds. Then he dug into his pocket. He pulled out his hand, closed in a tight fist, and held it against his chest. He glanced at the older zombie, who nodded. Then, all at once, he smiled and held out his open palm. Sitting there were three slime-streaked buttons.
“Shiny,” said Ricky.
It’s happened again.
I closed my eyes and took deep breaths to dispel the adrenaline that had my body on red alert. Nothing to fight. Nothing to flee—as much as I’d like to run out of here screaming. I opened my eyes again. “Clyde,” I said over my shoulder, “call the Goon Squad.”
Ricky’s face tightened in panic. He dropped his mop and clutched his fist against his chest, shielding it with his other hand. “You’re not in trouble, Ricky,” I said, making my voice gentle. “But the police officers will need those buttons as evidence. Here …” I dug into my own pocket and pulled out a handful of coins. “This money is shiny, too. Can I buy your buttons?”
“Money?” Ricky gazed at the coins doubtfully, and I moved my hand so they’d catch the light. He tilted his head at his supervisor, who nodded. Ricky carefully placed the three buttons in my hand, then scooped up the coins. He held them out to his supervisor. “Shiny!”
Clyde hadn’t picked up the phone. I strode back to his desk and dropped the buttons on the blotter. “Gary didn’t quit,” I said. “He was killed. The same thing happened yesterday to another zombie in the Zone. Call the Goon Squad, now. Ask for Brian Sykes. No, wait.” I remembered what Lynne Hong had said on the phone. “Sykes has been—Um, he’s on leave. Ask for Elmer Norden.” Norden was a jerk, but he was as outraged as Sykes when those detectives cut short the Creature Comforts investigation. “No more cleaning until he gets here.”
Clyde stared at me, phone in hand. “But the lobby—”
“Is full of evidence. Don’t disturb it any more than it’s already been disturbed.”
“What if someone comes in?”
“This is more important than a clean lobby, Clyde. Anyway, we’re in Deadtown. Besides a few day-shift workers, everyone’s home sleeping behind blackout shades. Who’s going to come in?”
My question was rhetorical. But as if in answer, the street door opened. Lynne Hong, wearing her red parka, marched across the lobby, looking determined. Pretty brave of her to venture into Deadtown alone, even in the middle of the day.
“Ms. Vaughn,” she said. “I’m glad I caught you. I have some questions about our phone conversation.”
“I can’t talk now.” I was already late for my meeting with Daniel. “But I can tell you I was right. There
has
been another zombie death, and it happened right here. The night doorman is dead. His name was Gary, and that black stuff over there is all that’s left of him.”
Hong pulled a reporter’s notebook from her bag. “You said Gary?” she asked. “Last name?”
“I don’t know.” I nodded toward the doorman’s desk. “Clyde can fill you in. And Norden—Sykes’s partner—should be here in a few minutes. I’m late for an appointment.”
Hong started to protest, but I pushed past her and headed toward the door. In a clean corner of the floor, Ricky sat sorting his coins into piles. His supervisor stared at the pool of black stuff, rubbing his neck.
Poor Gary, I thought, pushing open the door. He never did get the chance to talk Shakespeare with Juliet.
13
AS I CROSSED BOSTON COMMON, THICK CLOUDS LOOMED overhead, threatening snow, but at least the cloud cover warmed up the day a little. If you call five or six degrees below freezing warm. The skaters on the Frog Pond didn’t seem to mind the cold. Bundled up in a rainbow of brightly colored jackets, hats, and mittens, they laughed and twirled and zipped around and around the frozen pond. Couples held hands. Little kids toppled over and got up again, standing shakily on their skates and waving away Mom’s or Nanny’s proffered hand.
The cold, gloomy weather matched my mood better than theirs. I exited the Common, crossed Beacon Street, and turned left, passing tall, stately houses built of brick and stone, unable to blot out the images that pushed into my mind. A stub of finger wearing a ring. Three brass buttons streaked with filth. Pools of stinking black goo. I hoped Daniel had some answers.
As I turned right toward the footbridge over Storrow Drive, I also hoped I hadn’t missed him. I was ten minutes late, and it was the middle of a workday for him. A crazy workday, from what he’d said, with Commissioner Hampson up in arms. He was taking a risk to meet me.
It was colder on the footbridge. The icy wind from the Charles River smacked me full in the face. I narrowed my watering eyes and hurried across the bridge. From here, I could see a few lunchtime fitness fanatics running along the Esplanade. And a single pacing figure, his collar turned up against the wind.
“Daniel!” I shouted, but the wind blew my words away. I doubted he could hear me over the roar of Storrow Drive traffic, anyway. But he was waiting for me. I broke into a jog.
He was checking his watch as I puffed up to him. He saw me and grinned, his smile a sudden beam of sunlight in the dim day. He stepped forward, raising his arms like he wanted to give me a hug, but he stopped and shoved his hands into his coat pockets. His smile stayed in place.
I could’ve used the hug. Why was Daniel always so tentative around me?
“Sorry I’m late,” I said, then blurted out the question that had bothered me all the way over here. “Why didn’t you tell me the second zombie death happened in my building?”
Daniel’s smile melted into a puzzled half-scowl. That’s when it hit me: Daniel
couldn’t
have known about Gary’s death. Until I’d stumbled across the scene half an hour ago, Clyde hadn’t called anyone besides the cleaning company.
When Daniel had said, “It’s happened again,” he’d been talking about someone else.
We stared at each other, horrified realization dawning. “Who was killed in your building?” Daniel asked.
“The night doorman, Gary. He was new. But this is the first you’ve heard about it, right?”
He nodded. “I was talking about a Goon Squad officer. Brian Sykes.”
Oh, God, no.
A gust from the river slammed into me. Not Sykes. Not the one zombie who could walk away from a bleeding human. Not the guy who put up with an asshole partner and tried to do the right thing.
“I knew him, Daniel.” My voice shook. “I knew all of them.”
More than two thousand zombies lived in Deadtown. I was on speaking terms with—how many? Maybe fifty, sixty? All three deaths were zombies I knew. I didn’t like those odds.
“You’re shivering,” Daniel said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s walk.”
My feet started moving, but I didn’t see where we were going. What I saw was Difethwr’s hideous face, laughing at me in my dreams. Since its return, the Destroyer had appeared to me three times: in the dream where it destroyed my watch, in Tyler’s dream, and in my dream-phone call to Mab. Three visits from the Destroyer. Three zombie deaths.
The day darkened as another realization hit me. I thought back. Yes, it was true. In each case, the zombie who died was the last zombie I’d spoken to before I encountered the Destroyer in a dream.
I called T.J. to ask about my watch, and then I went to bed.
I spoke to Sykes outside Creature Comforts, and then I left the Zone and went to work in Tyler’s dream.
I introduced myself to Gary, and then I called Mab on the dream phone.
Shit.
It was me. Somehow, the Destroyer had used me to zero in on each victim.
No wonder Mab didn’t want me to fall asleep.
I explained all this to Daniel, who listened without interruption, nodding from time to time. “When did Sykes die?” I asked.
“Between the time he talked to that reporter and the time his partner knocked on his door at about two thirty A.M.”
That fit. I’d been in Tyler’s dream until two. “Norden found him?”
“Yeah. He wanted to see how Sykes was holding up after the commissioner suspended him. When Norden discovered Sykes’s remains, he went straight to headquarters and tore the place apart. That’s how I heard about it.”
“What happened?”
“Norden got suspended. There’s talk of pressing charges against him.”
“Hampson has to open an investigation now,” I said. “A police officer has been killed.”
Daniel shook his head. “Not going to happen. He’d like nothing better than to dismantle the Goon Squad. He can’t because they’re the only ones willing to patrol Deadtown and the Zone. He’s probably hoping that whatever did this will wipe out all the zombies in Deadtown.”
“I won’t let that happen.” I’d beaten Difethwr once before; I could do it again—somehow. We stopped walking and stared gloomily over the Charles. “I get it that the Destroyer is using our bond to sneak into dreams. What I don’t understand is how it’s killing the zombies. You know how the Hellion kills. It burns.”
“Yeah. Without leaving a mark on the body.”
I nodded, touching my jacket sleeve over my own demon mark. The scar there wasn’t from Difethwr’s fire; my aunt had slashed the spot with a knife to let out the Hellion’s essence. If she hadn’t, I’d have died within days, burned from the inside out.
“I’ve never encountered a demon that kills this way.” That didn’t mean such demons didn’t exist, of course.
It’s time for the next level of your training.
I’d thought I was an expert demon fighter, but apparently I still had a lot to learn. “I was hoping you could tell me more about that. You said you had information about T.J.”
“Right. I talked to one of the lab guys.” A half-smile touched his lips. “It’s ironic. If there’d been an official investigation, we would’ve waited at least a month to get test results. But because the guy was curious, he stayed late last night to run the analysis.”
“And what—?”
“Ms. Vaughn!” A woman’s voice shouted behind us, from the direction of Storrow Drive. I stepped away from Daniel and turned around to see a woman in a red parka running over the frosted grass.
“It’s Lynne Hong,” I said.
Damn it, how did she know I was here?
“The reporter Sykes talked to. Maybe you should take off.” Daniel was already walking a thin line at work.
He watched her approach, then turned to me. His blue eyes searched my face. “I’ll stay.”
Hong was panting by the time she made it across the grass to where we stood.
“We’re out here freezing our butts off because we wanted some privacy,” I said by way of a greeting. “How did you find me?”
“My driver was waiting outside the checkpoint. I called and told him to follow you.” She brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. “He almost lost you when you cut across the Common.”
I wasn’t in the mood to praise her driver’s people-following skills, so I didn’t say anything. Plus I was annoyed I hadn’t spotted the guy.
She held out a mittened hand to Daniel. “I’m Lynne Hong,” she said. “And you are?”
“Not sure I want to talk to you.” He kept his hands in his pockets.

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