Irregulars: Stories by Nicole Kimberling, Josh Lanyon, Ginn Hale and Astrid Amara (39 page)

Deven recognized the mark. It was the same one they’d seen on Carlos and Beatriz Rodriguez’s bodies. But it didn’t look immediately fatal and Deven felt relief. August wasn’t going to die.

Yet.

“Can you sit up?” Deven reached behind August and cradled his head to help him up. His fingers tangled in August’s damp, sweaty hair. Once he was sitting up, August opened his eyes and glanced down at his chest. A look of panic crossed his eyes.

“Oh God,” he said, his voice weak.

“I think we can guess why Carlos and Bea were searching for Night Axe,” Deven said.

August glanced to the door. “Is he gone?”

“He flew out the window.”

August’s eyes widened. “He can
fly
?”

“He turned into an owl.”

“Aztaw lords can do that?” He scowled.

“Transformation is his house power.” Deven glanced at the closed window. “As soon as he gets that glamour bomb out of his mouth he’ll be back, you know.”

“I know.” August breathed heavily, wincing. He rested his shaking hands over his bruise. “How does he even know who Klakow is?”

Deven frowned. He had no answer to that.

There was a knock on the door. August’s muscles tensed under Deven’s hand.

“I doubt he’d knock twice,” Deven commented.

“Probably not.” August nearly fell as he attempted to stand and his face went sheet white.

“Are you in pain?” Deven asked.

“I just feel weak.” August slumped onto Deven’s unmade bed. A bruise was beginning to form over his right eye, where he’d slammed into Night Axe’s hard skull.

The person at the door knocked again. Given the destruction of their room, Deven hoped it wasn’t housekeeping.

He picked up his knife from where it had fallen and peered through the door’s peephole.

Agent Klakow stood there, looking pissed off.

“Hold your ID up,” Deven ordered.

“You have to be kidding me.” Klakow grimaced.

“Do it!”

“Fine, fine...” Klakow muttered as he fumbled with the identification in his back pocket. Instantly, Deven relaxed. Night Axe might be able to mimic the look and sound of a person, but he wouldn’t know one’s habits or gestures.

Still, he waited until Agent Klakow held up the badge before opening the door.

Klakow stepped inside and gaped at the disarray. “What have you two been doing in here?”

At his entry, August leaped to his feet, looking stunned. Klakow glared back at August. His eyes caught the bloody mess of August’s clothes and remaining particles of glamour, and his haughty expression faltered. “Jesus Christ, what happened to you?”

“Had a visitor,” August growled, sitting back down. His body slumped against the wall. “Looked like you, actually. Have you been downstairs in the lobby long?”

“Fuckin’ ages. The front desk wouldn’t tell me your room number, no matter how many times I asked. I had to call the field office to get the info.”

August’s eyes closed. “And you came directly from the field office, I presume.”

“Of course.” Klakow moved to August’s side. “You sure you’re okay? You look like shit.”

“I just got fisted in all the wrong ways.”

Klakow grimaced. “You’re a perverted fuckhead.” Despite his tone, however, he looked concerned. “I’m calling a field team ambulance—”

“Not yet,” August interrupted. “We’ve got a lord of the underworld in the form of a bird who plans to flap back here and finish the job he started five minutes ago.” He endeavored to sit up and then gave up, slumping back against the wall. “Deven, you still have your pen?”

Deven reached his hand down the front of his trousers and pulled it out.

Klakow made another face. “You keep
stuff
in there?”

Deven put the pen back in his hair without commenting.

“Would you hand me a clean shirt?” August asked.

Despite not fully unpacking, August had still managed to hang up all his clothes the night before. Deven picked out a dark-colored dress shirt in case blood seeped through the fabric. He also chose a pair of trousers, because it made Deven’s eyes hurt interpreting what was his suit and what was leftover glamour residue.

He fetched a wet washcloth and handed it to August. The agent offered him a weak smile. “Thanks.” He started undressing and cleaning himself off, moving slowly.

Klakow stared out the window. “You want me to see if we can trace the glamour trail?”

“He’ll come back for us, we don’t need to look for him,” August replied. “What are you here for anyway?”

“Elia in forensics sent me. She ran further tests on the filaments attached to the obsidian particles from Rodriguez’s sister’s and identified the visual spectrum.” He handed August a small card with a barcode on it. “The monster’s hidden lair, revealed.”

“About fucking time.” August’s hands still shook and he struggled to button his clean trousers.

Deven found himself staring and looked away. “What about the ambulance?” Deven asked.

“The doctor is next. I’m not a masochist. But I’m tired of being surprised by this bastard. Let’s see what he sees, without relying on moody serpents.” August finished dressing and, with a bit of exertion, stood and squared his shoulders. His change of clothes improved his appearance. But the bruise darkening his right eye looked garish against his deathly pallor and there was blood in his hair. Still, he winked at Deven. “Let’s make some magic, shall we?”

“Oh brother,” Klakow groaned.

***

Over the next hour, Deven developed a new respect for the talents of Irregular agents, if only for their ability to memorize proper procedure.

He never thought bureaucracy had a place in magic, but that was the indissoluble effect of government, it seemed. The Irregulars had converted the supernatural into a set of standard operating procedures.

“Wrong!” August slapped a wire from Klakow’s hand. “Damn it, didn’t you ever read the
Occult Agency Guidelines
? You can’t transfer energy until all safety bindings are in place.”

Klakow’s hand made a fist, but otherwise he didn’t respond. The three of them sat on the floor, gathered around a piece of bone Deven had extracted from his sacred bundle, August’s computer, and the wires from August’s pocket. They programmed the bar code spectrum into the laptop, wiring the bone to the machine. Blood was needed to seal the spell, but Deven had learned his lesson and didn’t volunteer to go first. He nearly laughed at the regimented procedure by which both Klakow and August calmly produced sanitized needles and small plastic receptacles, extracting only a few drops from their fingers.

August handed Deven a clean needle. “Leave your tongue for more pleasant uses.”

Klakow shook his head. “You know, Deven, this qualifies as sexual harassment and you can file a complaint.”

“Maybe I like it.” Deven’s face flushed with the admission and he didn’t miss how August’s eyes snapped to him. Deven jabbed the tip of his finger and let a few drops of blood mingle with the agents’. He accepted a bandage from Klakow.

Definitely less painful than dragging a thorned cord across his tongue.

The blood was collected on a thin slide that had a USB port and fit into his laptop. August rustled around in another of his bags and withdrew a box of small, half-dollar size disks.

“Quartz, you think?” August asked Deven. “Or jade?”

“What?”

“What stone works better for Aztaw magic?”

Deven shrugged. “Jade is everywhere in Aztaw and used in nearly every spell. Obsidian is predominantly for weapons, although it does have reflective properties.”

August selected a several small green disks and fed them one by one into his hard drive, burning the spell onto them. Deven found the entire process fascinating. They truly had distilled the ethereal qualities of magic into a universal form.

“Nice gizmos,” August mused.

“Housekeeping!” A loud knock at the door startled all three of them. Deven tensed, holding his knife.

“We’re busy!” Klakow shouted back. “Come back later!”

“¿
Qué
?”

“
Volver mas tarde,
” August called out. All three of them froze, as if waiting for the door to break down.

After a moment of silence, the woman said, “
Sí, señor,
” and they heard a cart squeak as it rolled away.

Deven felt the tension drain from him. “This is the busiest hotel room I’ve ever been in.”

August still looked panicked, even after the woman had left. “Let’s get these on.” He fumbled through his belongings once more.

“What are they?” Deven asked.

“Spell projectors. They work with special glasses, adding visual spectrums to what your eyes naturally see.” August held a small plastic device, no bigger than a credit card, and slipped one of the green jade disks into a thin slit at the top.

“Put it in your pocket, then put these on,” August ordered, handing Deven the device and a pair of sunglasses.

“Why do you carry two projectors?” Klakow asked, shaking his head. He had his own device in his hands and snapped another of the jade disks inside, clipping it to the side of his sunglasses.

“This one’s Carlos’,s” August said softly, holding a pair of sunglasses in his hands. “He’d left it in my car.” August shook his head. “He always left behind the most important equipment.”

“Well, he was on vacation,” Klakow countered, but there was no bite to the comment.

Deven put on the shades and looked around the room. Nothing noticeably changed at first, although his eye muscles strained as they adjusted. He caught the faint whiff of ozone.

As he turned his head he saw something trailing out the closed window like a maroon streamer. As the image solidified, he saw it was a thicker than ribbon, circular, and it pulsed. It went straight through the closed window and into the room. Liquid surged through it.

Deven moved closer but didn’t touch it. The texture looked rubbery. He realized he was looking at a blood vessel, which stretched out down the road as far as he could see.

His eyes followed the artery to August’s chest and understood that it was connected to the agent about the same time August did. But August’s reaction was quite different.

A look of revulsion crossed August’s face and he gripped the artery in both hands and pulled.

“Get this
off
of me!” His hands grappled with the floating artery, yanking. His face went deathly white as he did so, but he didn’t stop pulling. “Pull it out!”

August’s panicked breaths were shallow as he twisted the blood vessel stretching from his heart.

“Stop—don’t tug on it!” Deven gripped August’s hands, pinning them down to the carpet. “Just relax. Breathe!”

August’s head fell back against the foot of the bed. A sheen of sweat covered his features. “Oh God.” He look down at his chest again and shuddered. “I’m fucking attached to him, aren’t I?” His arms tensed, but Deven kept hold of his wrists.

“We’ll figure this out,” Deven told him.

“God,” August said again. He licked his lips and swallowed, clearly trying to bring moisture to his dry throat. “This is what happened to Carlos and Bea.” His voice was cracked. “They were feeding their blood to Night Axe. They were fucking
sacrifices
.”

Klakow had ripped off his glasses and dialed someone on his phone. Deven wanted to examine August’s chest and assure himself he wasn’t bleeding out, but he was afraid of letting go of August’s wrists. “If I look at your chest, will you stop trying to pull yourself free?”

August breathed through clenched teeth but didn’t answer.

“You can’t rip loose. You could bleed to death,” Deven said, sounding far more calm than he actually was. “Night Axe’s house power made this connection, so it can also disconnect it. We’ll figure out how.”

“Disconnect it?”

“House powers change the world around us but can also reverse those changes,” Deven said. He wasn’t exactly
lying
—he was, however, simplifying, since it would have to be Night Axe himself who would reverse his own spells. Deven didn’t think that level of detail would be welcome at this moment. “Until we figure this out, you need to not hurt yourself. All right?”

After a moment, August nodded. Deven slowly let go of August’s wrists. August didn’t try and grab the artery again.

“I promise we’ll cut you loose,” Deven said, although he had no idea how he would keep that promise.

Fury rushed through Deven at the thought of Night Axe doing this. It should have been
him
laying there, bleeding into Night Axe’s body. He had been Night Axe’s target. August had saved Deven and this was what he got in return.

“We’ll cut you loose,” Deven repeated. He unbuttoned August’s shirt.