King of the Dead (Jeremiah Hunt Chronicle) (22 page)

Denise and Jeremiah were discussing the latest developments with Simon when his cell phone rang. He glanced at the number, excused himself from the conversation, and answered the call.

When he hung up a few minutes later, his face was flushed red with excitement.

“Come on,” he said, as he snatched his coat off the back of his chair. “We’ve got to get over to the Garden District.”

“Why?” Denise asked, even as she jumped to her feet and reached for her own jacket.

“Dmitri’s waiting for us at the Sidhe enclave over on St. Mark’s.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“He says they’ve caught a live one.”

It took her a minute to realize he was talking about a Sorrow.

The Sidhe had captured a Sorrow!

The SUVs were all in use so they took her car and Simon played navigator as she drove through the empty streets. Hunt spent most of it staring out the window at the darkened city. Just a few days ago the streets had been full of revelers, but now their numbers had dwindled. It was almost as if they’d caught wind of what was going on, some survival instinct in the back of their minds telling them that now was not a good time to be out and about on the streets of New Orleans. She couldn’t say she blamed them.

They pulled up in front of another gleaming estate, this one of white marble, and parked in the circular drive. Seconds later they were clustered together on the front steps as Simon rang the bell.

35

HUNT

The Sidhe met us at the door with their glamour firmly in place, doing their best to pass as ordinary humans. Their magick was no match for my ghostsight, however; it stripped the illusion away and let me see them as they truly were. To my surprise, they didn’t look all that different from you and me, provided you could ignore their snow white hair, violet eyes, and skin the color of a Minnesotan in midwinter. The pointed ears were a bit of a giveaway as well.

Gallagher had called them Sidhe, but it would have been easier if he’d just said elves. For that was exactly what they looked like to me, Elrond with an attitude.

No sooner had we stepped inside the door than Gallagher and Denise began a heated discussion with our hosts in a language I didn’t understand, leaving me to fend for myself for a few minutes. Unfortunately, the house we were in, an old plantation home built in the late 1700s, was lit so well that all I could see was an ocean of white. Even my ghostsight wasn’t very helpful; I could see the Sidhe, sure, but nothing beyond that.

Which, when I thought about it for a moment, didn’t make any sense.

Where were all the ghosts?

An old place like this should’ve had at least one or two resident spirits hanging around in the background. Usually they would be popping out of the woodwork right about now, as if my very presence had summoned them to take a look, like they’d done that first day outside the clinic.

But there wasn’t a ghost in sight.

Come to think of it, I’d seen very few on the ride over as well. That realization was vaguely disquieting; when we’d arrived in New Orleans a few days ago, they had been practically everywhere. You couldn’t turn your head without seeing a ghost hanging on a street corner or watching from behind the window glass. Suddenly they’d all disappeared?

Gallagher’s negotiation was still going strong and I was bored standing around in the light, so I decided a little experimentation was in order.

I took out my harmonica and played a short tune, looking to borrow someone else’s eyes for a while in order to see what was happening around me.

For the first time since I’d been actively summoning ghosts, nothing happened.

Frowning, I brought the harmonica back to my lips and tried again, this time playing with a bit more force, letting my sense of the city around me affect the tune. What came out was a bit harsher, a bit more demanding, than the previous attempt had been. I played for almost five minutes. Long enough that I could feel the others’ attention on me, wondering what the hell I was doing, I’m sure. At that point, unable to summon even a single spirit, I gave up.

Maybe the Sidhe had done something to keep them out of the house—wards at the door, that kind of thing. Or maybe there was something else going on here that I hadn’t considered.

I heard footsteps approaching and turned toward them.

“Put that thing away,” Gallagher told me as he got closer. “You’re making our hosts uncomfortable.”

I obliged, sliding my harmonica in my pocket while at the same time making a mental note to try again once I was outside the boundaries of the Sidhe’s property.

“From what I’ve been told, the Sidhe awoke in the middle of the night to find the Sorrow trying to reap the soul from one of their comrades,” Gallagher explained. “They eventually managed to overpower it and decided that a living Sorrow might help us solve this thing faster than a dead one. They’ve got it locked up in a shed out back. Dmitri and one of the Sidhe are standing guard.”

I knew how tough the Sorrows were, knew what it took to kill them, so hearing that our hosts had actually captured one alive gave me new respect for their abilities.

It also made me wonder why they weren’t in charge of tracking these things down and containing them. I put the question to my companion.

“The Sidhe are an … ancient race,” he said. “They live among us but don’t normally get involved in what they consider ‘human’ issues.”

“Human issues? But they’ve been attacked too!”

He sighed. “Yes, and in their view they dealt with the threat just as they will do again if necessary. The only reason they called us at all was because of a debt they owe the Council and, as Marshal of the city, I’m the Council’s most accessible representative.”

Sounded pretty damned selfish, if you asked me.

Gallagher went on. “When we get out there, I’d like you to use that unique perspective of yours and let me know if you see anything unusual. Denise and I will be doing the same.”

I was standing in a fairy enclave, taking orders from a mage and getting ready to look at a soul-sucking beast through the eyes of a ghost. And he wanted me to point out the unusual?

Denise slid her arm through mine. “Ready?” she asked.

I kept the irony of my thoughts to myself. “Lead on, woman, lead on.”

She did so, using a low voice to narrate what she was seeing as we moved through the house so that I wouldn’t be left out of the loop. The Sidhe took us through the sitting room, into the kitchen, out the rear door and across the lawn to a shed as big as a three-car garage.

Once outside, the whiteout faded as my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could see again. Dmitri was waiting for us by the shed door. When he saw us coming, he took a key from his pocket and turned to the door behind him, unlocking the thick chain that held it secure. Another of the fairy folk stood at his side, a modern compound bow in hand. As Dmitri unlocked the door, the Sidhe fitted an iron-tipped arrow into his bow and drew it back into the ready position.

Seems they weren’t taking any chances.

Denise pulled a jar of that foul-smelling salve out of her pocket and smeared some around her eyes before passing it to Gallagher, who did the same.

Dmitri opened the shed door and ushered us inside the space.

The smell of engine oil and gasoline was still hanging in the air, but whatever had once filled the space had been moved elsewhere. In its place was a massive wooden table that looked like it would take several men to move.

A good thing, too, for the captured Sorrow was secured right to the top of it.

Beside me, Denise let out a gasp, and I decided that this would be a good time to have a look for myself. I activated my ghostsight.

The Sorrow swam into view in front of me.

Thick iron chains crossed the creature’s chest at several intervals, pinning its arms to its sides, and several more secured its legs at thigh, knee, and ankle. A wide leather strap held its head against the tabletop in an upright position, a thick steel buckle dead center in the middle of the Sorrow’s forehead.

For a moment it lay there unmoving, almost as if it couldn’t sense that we were there, but then its eyes flew open and it snapped its jaws at us repeatedly.

I made sure to keep my distance; after seeing how quickly they could rend one’s soul to tattered slivers, I wasn’t going to take any chances. But my companions didn’t share my reservations, and after watching them work for a few minutes I got over my hesitation, trusting that whoever strapped it down knew what they were doing.

This Sorrow didn’t look much different than the last one I had examined. The same wrinkled gray flesh. The same buzz saw–like mouth. The same strange odor, like a wet dog crossed with an angry skunk.

But there was nothing else.

Nothing new.

My shoulders slumped in resignation.

Gallagher must have seen my reaction, for he said, “We’re not done yet, Hunt.”

He stepped up to the foot of the table, just a few inches beyond the creature’s reach, and took a moment to prepare himself. Or at least that’s what I think he was doing, as he stood there with his head hanging down and his arms extended out to either side, palms up and open. I’d seen Denise in a similar posture a couple of times, usually when she was about to try a minor working, and figured that Gallagher was getting ready to do the same.

Aware that the Sorrow probably wasn’t going to like what he was about to do all that much, I made sure I was well out of reach.

Gallagher brought his hands up in front of him and cupped them together as if he were making a snowball. Closing his eyes, he began chanting softly, repeating something in Latin several times until a light began to blossom between his hands. As he spread his hands apart, the ball grew, until it was several feet in diameter. When it was big enough, he turned his hands outward, palms toward the head of the table, and gave a little push.

The sphere of light drifted forward, washing over the Sorrow’s feet and sliding slowly toward the other end of the table.

As it passed over the Sorrow’s form, it revealed what we couldn’t see with our own eyes. Thankfully, since it was arcane in origin, I was also able to see it with just my ghostsight.

Where the flesh of the other Sorrows I’d seen had all been unmarked, the skin of this one was covered in crisscrossing bands of black energy, as if it had been wrapped in strand after strand of arcane razor wire. Each strand cut deeply into its skin, and in several places it actually disappeared down into it like a burrowing worm before reemerging from some other spot on its body several inches away. The bands pulsed with a life of their own, constricting and releasing in an odd, complicated rhythm that must have been agony to the creature as they cut again and again into its flesh.

“Holy shit!” Dmitri said and I had to agree with him.

Holy shit, indeed.

There was no way the Sorrow had done that to itself.

Which left only one explanation.

Someone was using magick to control the Sorrows’ activities!

36

CLEARWATER

Denise stared back at the others, astounded by what they’d just uncovered. Up until this point, they’d been operating on the general sense that the Sorrows were just obeying instinct; they’d evolved into predators, and predators, as a rule, fed on their prey.

But now the game had changed.

Someone else had been orchestrating this whole thing.

But who? Or what?

As she turned back to the Sorrow, an idea began to form in the back of her mind. It was a long shot, she knew, but they didn’t have much more to go on at this point and it just might work. If it did, they’d be a lot closer to putting an end to this.

With nothing to lose, she threw it out to the others.

“We have to let it go,” she said.

Hunt visibly started. “Are you nuts? If we let it go, it will just end up feeding on someone else.”

He was right: they would be taking that chance. But there were more pressing concerns right now. “And if we don’t,” she replied, “then we lose our only chance of tracking down whoever is behind all this!”

Simon frowned. “What do you mean?”

“The first scrying didn’t work as well as we wanted because we didn’t have a focus to tie us directly to our target,” she explained. “Now we do.”

She knew her old coven mate was no slouch; he got it right away. “We use blood from the Sorrow as a focus and then follow it right back to its lair!”

“And hopefully to whoever is controlling it as well.” It was that last part that was questionable. The scrying might simply show them another Sorrow nest, like those they had dealt with over the last few days, but even that would be useful as it would allow them to eliminate another of the creatures’ strongholds.

Simon thought it over, looking for holes in her logic. “We’re going to have to work fast, though. The blood will only be good as long as it is still in its liquid state. If it dries and hardens, it will be useless to us.”

That meant they were going to have to do the ritual from right here in the Sidhe’s enclave, rather than back at the clinic, but she could work with that. She’d have to replace her usual tools, but the Sidhe were sure to have substitutes lying around the house, given how mixed up in magick they were as a race.

It wasn’t the sanest plan, she knew. For it to work, they had to release the Sorrow back into the city, thereby giving it the chance to take another life, maybe more. But even if there was a one in ten chance of it leading them back to the chief architect, she thought it was worth the risk.

Unfortunately, the Sidhe didn’t think so. In fact, they almost threw her and the rest of the group out when Denise explained what they wanted to do. The only good Sorrow was a dead Sorrow, the Sidhe claimed, and they told Simon they wouldn’t even consider turning the creature over to him and his people if that was what they intended to do.

But Simon didn’t give up. He argued with them for more than an hour, personally pledging to dispatch the Sorrow himself if the scrying didn’t work, and in the end they finally gave in, though not without some trepidation.