New Title 32 (16 page)

A thin, middle-aged woman clutching a rosary nudged Toni to the side and entered the room. She looked at the teenager with a mixture of sympathy and contempt. “You shouldn’t be doing this. Go back to your family. Let them protect you. When one of you agrees to this, you teach these boys what they’re doing is right. Diego, if your friends did this to little Nina, would you still call them friends?”

One of the men looked down, his face burning a deep scarlet. Without looking up, he tossed the condom he was holding back in the box. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.” He took the girl’s arm. “This is wrong, and we’re not going to do it.” He started leading her to the door, but three of the other guys blocked his path.

While the guys argued, Aerin pulled a Glock off her charm bracelet and set it on the table. Geneva checked her own sidearm, chambering a round and popping the magazine out to top it off with a loose round from her purse. She set her pistol down next to Aerin’s.

Without taking her eyes off the crystal ball, Aerin whispered a two-line spell three times, waving her hand over the pistols. Arcane runes blazed to life on the surface of each weapon and faded. Geneva holstered her pistol again. Aerin slid hers into a pocket inside her purse, ready to grab at a moment’s notice.

“Accuracy spell or silence?” I asked.

“
Silence
and
Confound Ballistics
,” Aerin said. “Each round gets a unique and non-repeating pattern of scratches and grooves, none of which match the barrel. I like to mess with the CSI people.”

Nadia leaned over toward me. “
Fireball
or
Painweb
are more fun to use, but spells leave too many anomalies. No one questions a bullet to the head.”

Back in the crystal ball, a clatter of boots and raised voices from another room interrupted the gang’s argument. Diego grabbed Toni and the girl, shoving them in a closet. The older woman followed, dragging the mattress in behind her. Maybe she thought it would provide some cover.

Three guys entered the room, so gaunt and haggard they could have blended in with pictures I’ve seen of people liberated from concentration camps. Their clothes seemed oversized, clinging to their scarecrow frames by knotted ropes and twists of fabric. “Give us the girl,” the middle one hissed.

All eight would-be rapists pulled out pistols, holding them in shaking hands and yelling threats interspersed with trash talk at the scarecrows. One of the guys who had argued with Diego stepped forward, cocking the hammer of his revolver. He pressed the muzzle into the middle scarecrow’s forehead.

The scarecrows laughed.

The revolver sounded wrong, almost muffled. The scarecrow’s head went back a scant few inches, enough for the muzzle blast to vent and for a flattened, mushroom-shaped bullet to roll off the skeleton’s face and fall to the floor. The scarecrow looked back, jaw gaping open in a feral grin. The gunshot hadn’t even messed up the grime covering his face.

Aerin held up her hand. “Let’s wait a moment,” she said. “Things just got a lot more interesting.”

Mister Revolver fell back.
“Cabrónes!
Waste ’em!”

They tried, I’ll give them that. It was a grand example of ‘when in doubt, empty the magazine.’ Too bad it didn’t work. Every round they fired fell to the floor, harmless as spitballs.

When the last gun clicked on an empty magazine, the scarecrows rushed forward, clawing at the gang members’ eyes and exhaling a thick, yellow-green cloud into their faces. The cloud flowed into their mouths and nostrils, choking them as though it were a solid mass. One by one, the gang members fell to the floor, clawing at their own faces and throats.

I looked at Aerin. “They might be rat bastards, but they don’t deserve to die like that. We have to do something.”

Aerin snorted. “Now you’re sounding like an adventurer.” She went back to her charm bracelet and removed a staff set with crescent-shaped blades at either end. The blades were as wide as my shoulders, with cutting edges on both sides. It looked like a double-ended guillotine.

Angus was wearing one of those leather wallets attached to his belt by a chain; he pulled on what should have been a decorative steel button, and the hilts of two hand-carved oak
bokken
popped out of a pocket that hadn’t existed a moment earlier. He looked at me and asked, “You need a weapon?”

“No.” I focused a moment and Kindness appeared in my hand. Her weight and the feel of her grip were enough to kindle a spark of battle-joy in my heart.

Rose slipped her arm around mine. She looked no different, but her armor was up, her fingernails could tear sheet metal, and she could bench-press our Range Rover. “I’m ready,” she said. “Should I fly us there?”

Aerin took a last look in the crystal ball. “Take too long,” she said. She touched one of her rings, and the world vanished.

Roll For Initiative

Claws dug into my scalp, tore at my hair, gouged a furrow in my ear. Teeth clamped on my nose, yanking from side to side and bringing blood where skin lost out to the jagged debris of meth-mouth. His breath reeked of beer and pizza vomit.

I shoved the scarecrow back. He charged in again, right into my foot. I kicked. He bounced off the far wall. Kindness met him half way back to me, and his head took a left turn at Albuquerque.

The second scarecrow had a softball-sized hole all the way through his chest. His heart was resting on a pile of candy wrappers and cigarette butts, surrounded by fragments of spine. It was still beating. Rose was standing over him, arm smeared with blood up to her elbow.

As fast as we were, Angus had finished with his opponent while we were still reacting. Number three was leaning against the wall, both arms and both legs broken. One of Angus’s wooden swords had gone through the scarecrow’s shoulder and at least a foot into the wall. The thrust had missed all the vital organs and pinned him like a butterfly.

“You could have saved one for me!” Aerin actually pouted and stomped her foot. Muttering under her breath in Elvish, she leaned her guillotine-thing against the wall and went to work dispelling the toxic fog choking the eight gang members. Geneva slipped out into the hall, calling out as she cleared the rooms around us.

I sliced the shirt off one of the gang members and used it to wipe blood off Kindness. All three women in the closet were watching us with wide eyes and shaking hands. I sheathed Kindness and nodded toward the door. “Don’t be afraid,” I said. “We’re not going to hurt you. Go wait in one of the other rooms. We’ll make sure you get home safe.”

Toni Aguilar looked around the mattress and turned pale. She jerked back, pulling the teenage girl with her. “Don’t look don’t look don’t look! Righteous wrath is fair but foul, for evil deeds bring evil fate.”

I turned to see what she was looking at. The guy Rose killed had been wearing a metric buttload of gold jewelry, with solid gold teeth to match. Rose was pulling his teeth out with her fingers.

I shook my head and looked away. I guess no one warned him blinged-out grills attracted Dragons. I picked up the mattress and held it so I could block the ladies from seeing what Rose was doing as they made their way to the room across the hall.

Toni ran to the window and sniffed around the edges. “Not alone. Not alone. More rats, more snakes, more blood. Santa Maria, pray for us sinners, preserve us against the darkness and the blood that walks in the night. Save us from their return. Save us from their return.”

I looked out the window as well. Beyond the glow of a feeble street lamp, all I saw was night and dark. “Are you sure more of those things are coming?”

“I hear them. They gather at the water, staring into it as she sates her thirst on their offerings, whispering her name, saying prayers in the darkness for the madness to come.” She stopped and pressed a hand against the side of her head. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and lucid. “They’ll try to take us, but if they can’t, they’ll just call the police. I can’t let anyone sedate me again. The Blue Lady can’t help the children if I’m asleep. She needs my body.”

“I see. Just wait here. I’ll be right back.” I went across the hall and said, “Toni thinks reinforcements are on the way. We might want to go.”

“We may have a problem.” Angus was examining the scarecrow he’d nailed to the wall. He used the point of a folding knife to lift up a gold pendant hanging from a matching chain around the guy’s neck. It depicted a woman’s hand crushing a human heart. All the scarecrows had the same image tattooed on their shoulders.

Rose reached for the pendant and Angus knocked her hand away. He spotted a matching pendant in her loot pile and picked it out with the knife point.

“Don’t touch it,” Aerin said. “It’s a token of the Bloodmaiden. It could have wards or curses on it.”

Angus pulled the chain off over the scarecrow’s head. He tilted the guy’s head back enough to pour something down his throat. “Wake up,” he commanded. He slapped the scarecrow twice before the guy came around. Angus dangled the pendant in front of the scarecrow. “Answer my questions and I’ll kill you gently. Where did you get this?”

The scarecrow spit blood and profanity.

Angus dodged the bloody spittle without appearing to move. He shook his head and pulled a black metal rod the length of his forearm out of his wallet. “You should rethink that decision, son.” He jabbed the tip into the scarecrow’s chest and tapped one of the small gems studding the handle.

The scarecrow’s face lit up in utter joy. Ecstatic eyes and a beatific smile were not what I had expected the rod to produce. His body trembled in a frisson of pure bliss. “So…beautiful…” he whispered.

Then Angus turned it off.

The scarecrow whimpered, just the slightest sound of pain and loss. I was sure he would lunge at Angus, but he didn’t move. He said, “Reporter. Got fired. Don’t know her name. She gave the charm to me. It stops bullets. She wants stories. Bloody, awful stories. Bones. Bloody bones. Bloody Mary. That’s her. The crying woman. All I know…”

Angus nodded. He twisted the baton’s handle to the right and touched the scarecrow’s forehead with the tip. The blissed-out smile returned, and stayed there even after his heart burst.

A little piece of ice settled into my heart. “You didn’t need to do that. Rose or I could have gotten him to talk without torture.”

“Torture?” Angus snorted. “You have no—” He stopped and cocked his head to the side for a moment. “Two cars out front. One, maybe two in the alley. Time we were leaving. Everyone into the room across the hall.”

Aerin stood up from where she’d been working on the last gang member. “I lost two, but the rest will be fine. That gunk in their lungs was some nasty crap.” She wiggled her fingers and the bloodstains on our clothes and skin vanished. Another wiggle scoured the walls and floor clean. With all the trace evidence destroyed, we teleported out just as the first tear gas grenade came through the window.

We reappeared in the parking lot of an all-night restaurant in Henderson. Aerin hit the teenager and the older lady with a memory spell (
Retcon
, I guessed) and sent them inside with a roll of well-used twenties. That left only Toni Aguilar to deal with.

To her credit, she was coping with the violence, death, magic, and teleportation better than I had expected. She checked out one or two landmarks to work out where we were, went through her pockets for cash, and started walking up the road toward Vegas.

Aerin called out, “Danya sent us to check on you and she’ll sulk at me if we leave you out here alone. Is there someplace we can take you? Someplace safe?”

Toni stopped and looked back at us. For a moment, her skin turned a glossy, African black and her clothes became a blue wrap-around skirt. That gave way to a porcelain-skinned woman with blue hair, a blue toga, and gold-flecked dragonfly wings. Her image flashed and flickered, replaced by a venerable Chinese woman in a midnight-blue silk robe. The woman started to say something, but struck her own cheek hard enough to switch back to Toni. This time, she didn’t change again.

“Tell Danya I’m always safe,” Toni said. “I’ll see you at the convention.” She turned and ran across the street to a bus stop. Maybe perfect timing was one of her superpowers; no sooner had she made it to the shelter when a bus headed for downtown Vegas pulled over to let her on. She waved out the window at us as she took a seat.

“Maybe it’s just me,” Angus said, “but it feels like something big is going on.” He produced a steel vial and dumped it out, and the pendants he’d taken off the scarecrows fell onto the ground.

Aerin recited a Nordic-sounding prayer and a spectral war hammer dropped from the sky to smash down on the pendants. All three shattered and dissolved into scarlet slime. The slime hissed and bubbled into nothing, giving off burnt-orange vapors that burned the eyes. Aerin finished with a quiet prayer to bless and purify the area, driving away any lingering unholy energies.

“Definitely something big,” Aerin said. “I’m just not sure who’s behind it. The Bloodmaiden shouldn’t even have a significant presence here, and all the local deities are doing so far is driving that poor girl insane. They’re going to kill her if they don’t get their shit together.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Aerin waved at the empty bus stop. “That girl, Toni. She’s an Emissary.” She noticed my expression and added, “Hey, we recognize each other, okay?”

I held my hands up. “Is that why she was changing shape?”

“She wasn’t changing shape,” Aerin replied. “She was channeling the avatars of the deities who are trying to empower her. I don’t know who the fairy was, but the other two were Iemanjá and Kwan Yin. She’s also getting a lot of power from the Virgin Mary, but…” Her eyes went blank, staring at something impossibly far away. “Mary is a silent partner. Something horrible has happened in her name. Those she tries to help are terrified of her…Children. Tens of thousands in this country. They…” Her eyes focused again, now dark and angry. “The Bloodmaiden convinced these children that
she’s
the Virgin Mary. I don’t know how or why, but that’s what precipitated all of this. Toni is a very devout Catholic, so she’s resisting the other Goddesses, but if she accepts the Virgin Mary’s avatar, she terrifies the children she’s trying to help. No wonder she’s so messed up.”