Last Breath (25 page)

I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Hey.”

When I turned Raven was staring at me intently. It would have been a poignant moment in our friendship had she not had wads of toilet paper stuffed up her nose.

“I’m helping you get that mark off of you. That Balsur… I’m helping you. If it’s the last thing I do I’ll make sure that mark is removed. That demon isn’t getting your soul, and he’s not getting a free pass here on your skin either.”

Again I felt a wash of relief flow through me. Balsur had kicked her ass. He’d casually blown past her magic, overcome her charged circle with a flick of his finger. But it still felt good to know someone was on my side. Together we’d figure this out.

She’d once been the closest thing I’d ever had to a best friend. I’d been crushed when Haul Du had thrown me out and she’d turned her back on me with the rest of the mages. But now…? Just talking with her the last few days brought back to me how much we’d had in common, how much I’d enjoyed our easy banter. My bestie was back. I wondered if she liked to LARP?

“Thanks. Let’s take care of all this demon/human sacrifice/angel bullshit, then we’ll turn our attention to Balsur.

She picked up one of the books and plopped down on the sofa, one of the blood-soaked chunks of toilet paper falling out of her nose as she threw her feet up on the cushions. “Deal. I gotta ask though—Solaria Angelique Ainsworth? What the fuck kind of name is that?”

W
E WERE BURIED
in demonology reference books and sticky notes when someone started banging on my door.

“Police!” I recognized Tremelay’s voice even with an unfamiliar edge of panic in it. “Ainsworth! You in there?”

Ugh. I’d forgotten about the dead guy in my parking space.

“Coming!”

I threw open the door. The detective sagged with relief, his eyes traveling over me. “I need you to come downstairs and see something.”

I shot Raven a quick look and she waved me on, her nose buried in a thick leather-bound tome. Stepping into the hallway, I shut the door behind me and followed Tremelay down the stairs.

“I’m so sorry. I should have called you but I knew you were dealing with the other crime scene, and there was something I had to do right at midnight.”

He halted on the steps so abruptly I nearly ran into his backside, his face incredulous as he spun around to face me. “You knew? You just left them there for other tenants to find?”

“I know, I know. I meant to call you right after the summoning, but Raven and I jumped right into research. I figured he wasn’t going anywhere, and the quicker we can banish the four demons running around the city the better.”

It sounded lame. I could have spared the time for one phone call, but honestly I’d been so shaken up from my encounter with Balsur that I’d forgotten.

Tremelay shook his head, murmuring something about crazy women and continued down the stairs. I winced and followed, already seeing the flash of blue and red through the open door to the apartment building.

John Ash had company. There wasn’t just one dead guy in my parking space, there were five. They were neatly stacked side by side, evenly spaced. Either this angel had an OCD streak, or the police had moved them.

Tremelay waved his hand toward the bodies. “I’m guessing here, but our angel is back? Not happy with druggies and a cosplay guy in a park, he’s now killing accountants and engineers and displaying them at your doorstep like gruesome offerings?”

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. How much sleep had Tremelay gotten in the past few days? Probably not much more than I had. One of the cops walking up to us had a steaming cup of coffee in hand, and I eyed it enviously, wishing this was all over with so I could catch some shut-eye.

“John Ash. He’s the one with the beard at the end. He’s also one of the names on the list we found at David Alban’s house in DC. I’m sure if you get the ID on the others you’ll see they’re on the list, too.”

I quickly told Tremelay about what we’d found at Bliss’s house and my theory on why Araziel was killing these guys, as well as what my chat with Balsur had revealed about the mass murder this evening. Gryla’s information I attributed to Balsur, not wanting to get into my confrontation with the elderly woman in my parking lot. Besides, I had no idea where those dead mages were. Hopefully she or someone else had already alerted the police about
that
crime scene.

“Vigilante angel and demons bent on revenge.” The detective shook his head, then turned his scowl on me. “And you went through the guy’s pockets to get his ID, leaving your fingerprints all over him? Then you left him here in the parking lot while you ran upstairs to summon another demon?”

I knew that I wasn’t keeping up my end of the collaboration bargain. And although a crime was a crime, I hoped Tremelay would agree that stopping the four demons topped stopping Araziel.

The detective paced in frustration. “Will there be any of these mages left to prosecute for Bethany Scarborough and the Dead Run murders or is the angel going to take care of this with his own, twisted, heavenly justice?”

Well, that, too. I’m sure the higher ups in the police department were having a fit over all this. Riots and gang killings were bad enough; serial-killer mages and mass-murdering supernatural beings weren’t going to do much for Baltimore’s already tarnished public image.

“There are plenty of other names on that list.” Eleven by my quick mental tally. I just needed to make sure Tremelay got to them first. How the heck was I going to rein in a vigilante angel? Although there had to be a reason he was leaving these dead guys in my parking space. One corpse, I could write off as a coincidence. Maybe the mage had found me through the guy at the magical shop and was coming to talk to me as Gryla had, then just happened to have been killed here. But I doubted five guys individually were milling about my parking space when the angel tracked them down.

Why me? I glanced down at the illusion of vomit I’d put in my space to ensure visitors didn’t park there. One of the dead guys was half in it, and the police seemed to be giving the fake puke just as much respect as they were the bodies. It was my magic, stamped with an energy signature that would identify me as the mage to anyone who knew enough of the arts to successfully do an identification spell. It was a high-level spell, and tricky, with lots of false readings. But an angel might not find such a thing difficult.

I’d marked this space as mine through my magic. The angel had to be making some sort of contact here. It was a start. It was an opening I could use to perhaps sway the angel into stopping these killings and letting us humans handle justice ourselves.

“Look, I really want to concentrate on bringing this angel in and stopping him, but I need to prioritize. And four demons on a killing spree come first.”

“But they’re all after the same guys. The angel and four demons are all killing our murder suspects. Can’t you stop them all at once, like a mass banishing or something?”

I wish. “You can’t really banish angels. Let me take care of the demons first. The angel…” I looked down at the dead bodies all lined up in my parking space. There was something I was missing here, something that my sleep-deprived brain wasn’t registering. “I’m gonna try something tomorrow and see if I can get the angel to come see me. A sort of parlay.”

The police cars and obvious activity had drawn quite a crowd in spite of the early morning hour. It was still dark, but people clustered under the streetlights, watching. Some looked like they’d just gotten off third shift work, others heading out for an early job. There were some partygoers who were wild-haired and bleary-eyed. Were any of
them
Fiore Noir mages, come to see what had happened to their colleagues? Were any of them demons possessing a human to keep from being detected? I doubted any were Araziel. An angel would have no need for stealth, no fear of anything.

Which made me wonder, where
was
Araziel? Did he manifest in a human form, or was he whizzing around like a breeze or like the lightning strike at the park right before Ronald Stull had been killed? How the heck was I going to find him?

Probably the same way I was going to call the four demons. Summoning. Although I was hoping Dad would have some added information for me—information that he might be willing to part with over the phone since I didn’t have time for the obligatory face-to-face visit. Four demons and an angel, plus the eleven members of Fiore Noir that remained among the living, and this mysterious “stranger” with his soul trap and a grudge against three Haul Du mages. I had a lot of work to do and a shift at the coffee shop in six hours.

“Do you need anything else from me?” I asked Tremelay. A few more hours of research with Raven, some sleep, work, a quick phone call, then we’d start banishing. Hopefully neither of us would get killed.

“No. I’ll swing by your work later today if anything comes up.” The detective waved a hand at my very full parking spot. “We’ll need to rope this off. Hope you’ve got somewhere else to park for the next day or so.”

I didn’t, aside from finding a space on the street.

Crap. I hadn’t just forgotten about the dead guy, I’d forgotten to move my car. And sure enough when I looked a few spots over to where I’d left it, I found a Hyundai instead of my old Toyota Camry.

Great. I was demon marked. I had four demons, an angel, and a group of black magic mages to deal with. I had to work in six hours.
And
my car had been towed.

R
AVEN SNAPPED A
book shut and slid it onto the coffee table before rubbing her eyes. “Well, the good news is that Dalgas, Gi’nar, and Pinen all report to Mansi.”

I didn’t get how that was good news, so I just blinked and waited for her to continue.

“Balsur said the marked guy was one of Mansi’s, so I’m going to put my money on the others riding across the veil on his mark as opposed to having their own marked human gateway from hell.”

I was exhausted, but not so much that I missed the impact of her statement. “They can do that? So a high level demon, like Balsur, can bring a legion or two of his demons over on the strength of the mark he’s placed on me?”

“I hope not. It’s a mathematical formula based on the level of the demon, the strength of the mark, and the influence of the human on the veil. And don’t ask, because I have no idea what the formula is. That was lost hundreds of years ago. It’s probably in a book locked up somewhere in your Temple or something.”

Raven was sounding grumpy, but my heart jumped with excitement at the thought. I’d love to get my hands on that formula. If Dad had it somewhere I’d be set. If not… well, I wouldn’t be allowed inside the Temple without first taking my Oath of Knighthood.

“Okay, let’s hope Balsur isn’t planning on an invasion or anything and think about Mansi instead. How does that work? If a demon gets a free ride across the veil on the strength of his mark, and drags three with him, does that mean we only have to banish Mansi?”

Raven shrugged. “In theory. You’ve got more pull with the man upstairs than I do, so maybe you should start praying, because it’s going to be hard enough to banish Mansi. If we have to get rid of three more demons after that—demons who will know we’re on their trail and coming for them—we’re screwed. Royally screwed.”

My mind felt like it was full of mashed potatoes. I desperately needed sleep, but knew it would evade me if I didn’t get this off my mind. “Do we need to summon and hold all four? I’m assuming if we don’t, the other three will attack us while we have Mansi in the circle.”

Raven ran a hand through her hair. “Fuck. Fuck. You’re right. After tonight’s fiasco with that Balsur, I’m not sure I can hold that many in the circle. And if your Templar banishment is on the fritz…”

Yeah. That. “I spoke to Gryla this evening and she pledge to bring as many Fiore Noir mages as she can round up to help.”

Raven glared at me. “I’ll risk myself to save these assholes from death-by-demons because I don’t like the idea of innocents dying, but I’m
not
standing beside them in a ritual. Not.”

“We can’t do it ourselves. No one at Haul Du would help us, you know that. Fiore Noir is getting slaughtered out there. They’ll help, and right now we need all the help we can get.”

Raven made a low growl noise and threw up her hands. “Fine. You’re right. We need more than two mages to do this. They might not be experienced, but they’re highly motivated. I’m warning you now that if Mansi or any of his cronies get out, I’m using the Fiore Noir mages as a human shield.”

Fair enough. “They’ll be here just before midnight. Can you make sure you’re here early enough to help get set up?”

“Sure.” Raven ran a hand through her crimson-tipped hair. “You do know that your detective friend will want the mages turned over to him. Are you planning on having him wait outside the door to grab them after the ritual? How are you going to make a deal with these mages to banish the demons, then flip them over to the cops? Isn’t that a bit double-crossy?”

I winced. She was right. “He just wants them for questioning and he’s already spoken to a few of them. I don’t think he has anything yet he can really arrest them on.”

Raven’s glare pinned me in place. “And you’ll tell them that? Let them know that you’ll help save their lives by getting rid of these demons, and the angel, but they’ll need to face human justice on their own?”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah. A prison sentence or being ripped apart by a demon? Or having your soul torn through your rib cage along with all your internal organs by an angel?”

“I’d take prison.” Raven grimaced. “And I’d figure out a way to get out of town and change my name between you banishing the demons and my arrest.”

That would be on Tremelay’s plate, not mine. Although bringing the murderers to justice was on my plate too, if I was completely honest with myself.

Raven sighed. “There’s no way I’m driving home tonight. I get your bed. I’ll work on research and the particulars of the banishment while you’re serving up coffee tomorrow. I don’t need to do that at night.”