Last Breath (34 page)

That wasn’t quite what I meant, but as long as he held back, I’d take it.

Araziel navigated me through the city streets, which were less-traveled than usual in this buffer time between night and dawn. Not to say there weren’t the occasional cabs, smoky-window SUV’s, and bleary-eyed folks either heading home or in for an early shift. We headed northwest, through downtown and Druid Heights, skirting Rosemont and into Forest Park.

I was on edge. Baltimore had more than its fair share of urban violence. While this section wasn’t the worst, it definitely wasn’t anywhere close to gentrified. Homes that had once been beautiful and well-cared for suffered from a distinct lack of maintenance. I watched the street signs as we headed up Garrison Boulevard, well aware of Gwynns Falls just a few blocks over to the west as I drove north.

“Turn here.”

Here was route 26, Liberty Road. We were heading toward Howard Park, near where I remembered there being a golf course. After six months of being clueless in the city, I’d finally gotten a map and one of those tour-guide booklets, determined to figure out what was where. It wasn’t easy. Baltimore wasn’t huge, but it was a mess of tiny neighborhoods nestled into each other like a set of Russian dolls. What further complicated things was the gentrification that like to re-name neighborhoods and change traditional boundaries in an effort to sell homes at a higher price.

“Here.”

Milford Avenue. Now that we were driving past homes I slowed down, waiting for Araziel to tell me which one our target was holed up in. Tremelay had already hit their registered homes, so whichever mage this was, he or she was staying with a friend.

Which made me even more uneasy about bursting into their house in the early morning hours, brandishing a sword and accompanied by a psychotic demon impersonating an angel.

These were nice houses, all with newer aluminum siding and detached garages with alley access visible behind each home. Araziel pointed at one and I pulled to the curb, the righteous fury that had driven me out on this mission faltering. It was four in the morning. The house was dark. I couldn’t go bursting in on these people, demanding to know where they’d hidden a mage. It was better for me to call Tremelay.

“Who is this one?” I asked the angel as I pulled my phone from my purse.

“Eleanor Jean Jackson. Born 1980 in Silver Spring, Maryland. This is her ex sister-in-law’s house.”

I hesitated. “Does she have kids? The sister-in-law, I mean, not Eleanor.”

He shook his head. “She makes Eleanor stay in the garage, because she doesn’t trust her. Bad things happened to her brother when the two broke up, and she always thought Eleanor had something to do with it. She never would have sheltered the mage, but she’s scared of Eleanor and was worried that if she refused she’d be hit by a bus, or crushed by a falling porch roof, or suffering from seeping boils over most of her body.”

“Stop.” My hands were sweating as I stared at the phone. Call Tremelay. Just call Tremelay.

What if the “angel” was mistaken? Or lying? I glanced sideways at him, gnawing my lip. Should I burst in there to grab some woman on a lying demon’s word, or just have Tremelay check it out in the morning?

“She was there at every murder,” the angel assured me, his voice cool and impersonal. “Eleanor drew the symbols, she chanted to direct the victim’s energy as they died.”

And she might have slipped away by morning. I opened the car door and climbed out, shutting it quietly and pulling my sword from the scabbard. “Is Eleanor alone in the garage? Any wards of protective magic that you can see?”

Araziel shrugged. “That’s not my thing. I just walk right on through whatever they’ve got. Nothing can hold me, nothing can hurt me.”

Must be nice. I dug a bag of herbs out of my pocket along with a charm bracelet. I’d only had time to charge three of the charms, but it would have to do. Three charms for three mages.

We snuck around the side of the house, through the back yard to the garage. I paused every few feet to chant and throw some herbs in the air, just to check for spells. My companion rolled his eyes each time. He’d been doing a floaty thing beside me, his hipster guy form moving out of synchronicity with the motion of his feet. I know he didn’t care if anyone saw him, if a neighbor dog started to bark or he set off a magical trap, but I did.

Reaching the garage, I did a slow circuit around the building, holding one of the charms on my bracelet as I chanted softly under my breath. The only thing that lit up was by the door. Of course. If I were going to set a ward, that’s where I’d put it, too.

Remembering Raven with Bliss’s warded grimoire, I pulled the butter knife out of my pocket and jammed it into the lock.

“
Fue
!” The door handle exploded outward like a tiny cannon ball. I stifled a yelp as I jumped to the side, then kicked the door open realizing that Eleanor would have been woken by the spell detonation and be ready to fight.

She was. A wind held me in place while a dozen knives flew toward my chest. I grimaced, my sword shaking as I struggled to raise it against gale-force winds.

“
Confodere
!” Ten of the knives bounced away to clatter to the cement garage floor, while two skimmed my shirt and imbedded in the wall behind me.

“Eleanor Jean Jackson, surrender to me or I will kill you.” It was a bit extreme for a modern Templar, but I meant it. I didn’t have time to deal with this crap. I had one other Fiore Noir mage to track down before I went after Dark Iron, and I didn’t have much left in terms of energy—physical or magical. If she insisted on flinging knives and doorknobs at me, I would be forced to run her through with my sword.

A woman wearing only underwear and a snug tank-top dashed around a storage box, a pistol in her hand. I dove to the side, knowing full well that bullets beat sword. Luckily the gun wasn’t pointed my way, it was pointed at fake-Araziel and the moment the woman laid eyes on my companion she froze, the gun falling from shaking hands to clatter on the floor.

I winced and jumped away, relieved when the thing didn’t go off.

“No! Don’t kill me. Don’t.”

She was pleading with the “angel,” not with me. I wasn’t all that thrilled about being upstaged, especially by an imposter, but if it kept me from getting shot, so be it.

“He won’t as long as you come with us to the police station and plead guilty to murder.”

She jerked her head toward me, her eyes enormous in the faint light of the garage. “You!”

Yes me.

“You have killed at least seven humans by death magic, using souls to power your spells. If you don’t turn yourself in right now and plead guilty to multiple counts of murder, I’ll run you through.”

I adjusted my grip on Trusty, but her eyes never even flickered to the sword. “It wasn’t my idea to kill them. We had to. We had no choice, and now with everyone locked up, all those people we sacrificed will have died in vain.”

“You
murdered
people. You stood by and watched while people screamed and pleaded for their lives, and you did it over and over again.”

Eleanor winced. “I told you, we had to. It was for a greater good. Sometimes you need the extra energy that soul magic provides. Sometimes the lives of a few must be sacrificed for the benefit of many.”

Not this again. The benefit of many? Whether the spell had been for material gain, knowledge, power, or even protection, it was never worth the death of those people.

“Make your choice. Die here or plead guilty to murder.”

Eleanor swallowed hard, shooting a quick glance at my companion who stood silent by the open doorway, scrutinizing his fingernails. “I’ll turn myself into the police. But you don’t know what you’re doing. You’ll be sorry.”

Her threats just pissed me off further, and I’ll admit I was a bit rough searching her person for magical items. The woman was practically naked, but I still took the ring and the necklace she was wearing off as well as her belly ring. I’d never seen someone charm a body piercing, but there was always a first time. After I was sure she was clean I left her in Araziel’s care and went through the garage.

That’s where my keychain came in handy. One of the spells I’d engraved into a spare key I’d picked up at the hardware store was a finder. In no time at all I had two scrolls, an amulet, an athame, and her grimoire. I wasn’t foolish enough to open or pick any of them up, so I called Eleanor over and made her put each one into a large, plastic grocery store bag that I had stuck in my pocket.

The plastic bag was one of my favorite magical items. No, it wasn’t a bag of holding like in my Wednesday night Anderon game. It was a null bag. Templars learned early on to create null spaces. It was vital for survival when dealing with magical artifacts and ancient grimoires. As each item went into the bag, I heard a pop and knew that it had been rendered harmless. As long as it was in the bag, that is. In order to safely remove it, I’d need to create a null room. I’d been meaning to do that anyway. With the circle taking up most of my living room, the null room would have to be either in my bedroom or my bathroom. I was leaning toward my bathroom. Sometimes it was important to be able to cast a spell while in the bedroom.

I folded the bag over on itself so nothing spilled out and held it in one hand along with my sword. Taking the mage’s arm with my other hand I nodded to the door. “Let’s go.”

Araziel followed us out, oddly silent. I noticed there was a faint light on in the house, and the curtain twitched aside as we walked by, a pale face briefly visible at the window. Eleanor’s sister-in-law had to have heard the commotion. It said a lot that she obviously hadn’t called the police.

Eleanor sat in the backseat, as far away from the angel as possible. I had Araziel keep an eye on her while I drove. Then I escorted the mage into the police station, hoping that the look-away spell on my sword worked better on the desk clerk than it did on detective Tremelay.

It did. After leaving Eleanor there to confess and sending Tremelay a quick text, I headed back out to my car where the angel sat, still in the backseat.

“Let’s catch the other Fiore Noir mage, then go after this Dark Iron.” The angel/demon’s eyes gleamed with excitement.

This time the “angel” directed me to an all-night diner on Saratoga Street. Great. How the heck was I going to walk into a diner with a sword on my back and a demon by my side and “arrest” a mage?

“Who is this one?”

“Charles Kennedy Jones. Born November 4, 1955, in Dundalk, Maryland.”

What, no other details? I thought about how I planned to arrest a sixty-year-old man in a diner as I got out of the car and strapped Trusty to my back. “Araziel” followed me inside and pointed to the man at the counter sipping a cup of coffee and working a puzzle.

Holly’s Place was… well, it was a diner. Long and narrow, with vinyl covered seats and chrome-rimmed Formica tables. They’d done a nice job on the retro look. Even the sleepy-eyed waitress in the corner was appropriately attired with a lemon-yellow dress and white apron, her hair in a tight bun. She smiled wearily at me and went back to staring at the clock. I got the unspoken message—take a seat and she’d be over, otherwise I wasn’t going to even get a verbal greeting.

I slid onto the seat next to the mage.

“’Bout time you got here,” he grumbled, his eyes never leaving his puzzle. “I’ve been waiting for you. Actually I’ve been waiting for him, too.” He nodded toward my companion.

“Charles Kennedy Jones?” He was the only guy in here that fit the description, but it was good to be sure.

“Yep. Call me Chuck.”

The guy scribbled something in his puzzle book. I peered over his shoulder. Crossword, not Sudoku or word search. My mother did crossword puzzles, too. I waited a few moments and watched him erase an answer, writing something else. This was it? No declarations of innocence or accusations? No dramatic cursing of Templars and trying to attack me with flying knives?

“Um. I’m here to take you to the police station where you’ll plead guilty to murder.” I kept my voice low, shooting a quick glance over to the waitress to make sure she couldn’t hear. I wasn’t sure whether to threaten the guy with my sword or with “Araziel,” given that Chuck seemed pretty peaceful

“Okay. Don’t you want to talk first?”

It was a weird question for him to ask, but the whole encounter so far had been surreal. “Talk about what?”

He shrugged, smiling at me. It was a tired smile, pulling at the deep lines bracketing his mouth and crinkling the corners of his pale blue eyes. “About the mage you really want to catch? About what’s going to happen once the spell fades?”

Chuck… He had a threadbare wool coat on that look like he’d bought it used in the ’70s. It was shiny at the elbows and smelled of decades of tobacco. Besides the oddity of him wearing a wool coat in the middle of August, the man looked like a regular retired, blue-collar guy, like he’d spent his life moving freight at the docks or shuffling bills of lading at a warehouse. I knew the spells powered by murder and souls had been to contain something, to protect against something. Whatever it was, twenty-five people felt justified in murdering to keep it at bay.

“Dark Iron. I already know about him. An as to what you all were doing the ritual for, I’d guess that someone screwed up a spell, and you spent your energies and countless lives protecting yourselves from whatever you conjured? Which demon is it and where do you have him trapped?”

The smile broadened. I swear if the guy had been a few decades older, fifty pounds heavier, and bearded, I would have totally gotten the Santa Claus vibes from him.

“You Haul Du mages, so tied up with your demons. When you play with the devil, you assume everyone else does, too.”

No. There were all kinds of things they could have summoned that they needed to contain—an elemental, a gryphon, a banshee. Heck, maybe all three. Just because a mage turned their nose up at demons didn’t mean they weren’t likely to haul some otherworldly creature into this plane of existence, or even wake a sleeping monster.

“Ahh, it’s no matter.” He waved his hand like I was a pesky fly. “I knew we couldn’t keep them contained forever. It was just a matter of time.”