Stones Unturned (17 page)

"I'm not sure it's a total loss," the sorceress said. "Eve, you've got the scent now, correct?"

"Yeah," she said, and Conan Doyle noticed her attention had wandered. Eve turned and glanced back the direction they'd come. "I might be able to follow it. Worth a try, anyway." She turned toward them again. "But, listen, did any of you think the scent was —"

"Familiar?" Squire asked, looking up intently from the curb.

Eve nodded.

"Yeah," Squire agreed.

"Familiar in what way?" Conan Doyle asked.

"I'm not sure. Just . . . familiar," Eve replied. She glanced at Squire.

"Can't quite place it," the hobgoblin added. "Let me chew on it a bit."

Conan Doyle felt a chill race up his back and his skin prickled. At the edge of his awareness, he sensed something. He started to turn toward Ceridwen to see if she had felt it, too, but then he noticed her attention had already been diverted upward.

"Doyle, what is it?" Eve asked.

Up on the roof of the building beside them, a figure crouched, staring down at them. Eve and Squire began to react as though prepared for a fight, but Ceridwen shot them a withering glance and held up a hand to forestall any rash action.

A chill, unnatural breeze swept along the street and up the side of the building, rasping against the brick. The figure there rose and let the breeze snatch her from the edge of the roof, and she glided gently down to the street sixty feet below.

She alighted only feet from Ceridwen, a young woman of astonishing, delicate beauty, ruined by the filth of this world. Dark circles limned her eyes, and her black hair was wild and unkempt, and streaked with spun gold. Streaks of mascara ran down from the corners of her eyes as though she'd been crying, but Conan Doyle felt certain it had been painted on that way for effect.

Clad in baggy black pants with too many pockets and a belly-baring pink camisole frayed around the edges, she sported multiple piercings in each ear, her nose, her lip and brow, and her navel. Conan Doyle imagined there were others but tried not to think too much about them.

By any measure, she was the filthiest, rattiest fairy girl he'd ever seen. She looked more like an underage junky whore than one of the Fey. And she met them each, eye to eye, one at a time, with such an insouciant pout that he thought she needed a year with a stern governess even more than she needed a coat.

"Evening," the city fairy said, and she glanced playfully at Squire, then turned to examine Eve with a lustful glimmer in her eye. "My, aren't you yummy?"

Squire laughed and shook his head.

"Sorry, sweetie. You're not my type."

"Your loss," the filthy Fey girl replied, still the coquette.

Ceridwen stared at her in fury. She raised a hand, black fire crackling around her fingers.

Conan Doyle blinked. "Wait! Ceri, no!"

She stared at him. They all did. He hesitated. The fairy girl had not attacked them. Did none of them realize — Ceridwen, at least — that the girl must have some purpose for approaching them?

He turned on the filthy thing. When she moved, shifting her weight suggestively from one hip to the other, a low musical trill accompanied her, and the air around her seemed to shimmer. Filthy she might be, as urban as fairies ever became, but she still had the magic of the otherworld in her.

"Kneel!" Conan Doyle snapped, pointing at her.

The girl glanced at Eve. "See, babe. He knows how to treat a girl."

Eve smiled, and it seemed perhaps she was not immune to the fairy's questionable charms. "Maybe I could learn. But not tonight."

The city fairy shrugged. She turned to Conan Doyle. "Fuck off, old man. I don't kneel. Not for anyone. And if you unzip, I'll just bite it off."

Conan Doyle's nostrils flared in disgust. He took a step toward her. "You stand before Ceridwen, princess of the Fey, niece of King Finvarra. You will kneel if you wish to address her."

The fairy girl shook back her hair, the gold streaks glittering like stardust, and from seemingly nowhere she produced a package of cigarettes and a lighter. Slowly, she tapped out a butt and put it between her lips, then lit it, drawing smoke in. The tip burned to embers in the night. The pack and lighter were gone as mysteriously as they had appeared, and only the burning cigarette remained.

She took a deep drag, then let the smoke plume from her nostrils. At last, she looked at Ceridwen. Slowly, with obvious ceremony, she closed her eyes and bowed her head.

"I have no allegiance, princess. But there's weird shit going down in all the realms, these days. I don't fuckin' . . . I don't kneel."

She raised her head and stared at Ceridwen with purple eyes.

"This is a hard world the humans have made. You learn never to turn your back, never to give anyone the upper hand. You have my respect. That will have to be enough."

Conan Doyle held his breath. He glanced at Eve and Squire, amazed that for once they knew when to keep their mouths shut. He could see the vampire tensing, ready to lunge, to tear the fairy girl apart if the need arose.

"Your name?" Ceridwen said, her tone clipped.

"Tess. That's what I'm called, at least."

Slowly, Ceridwen nodded. "All right, Tess. We are well met, for now. Should the time arise that you are forced to proclaim allegiance, we may remember this night, the two of us. Now, then, what business do you have with us."

"A favor."

Squire grunted. "Right," he muttered. "She's gonna do you a favor after all that?"

Tess laughed, a light, musical sound, and winked at Eve as though the rest of them didn't exist.

"Actually, I'm here to do all of you a favor. Conan Doyle and his Menagerie. Yes, I know who you are. All the seelie and unseelie in the city know. How could we not?

"There's trouble on Beacon Street, this very moment. You've wasted long minutes being pompous and difficult. Something from another realm, not Faerie and not this world, something of dark magicks, something
demon
. . . has taken lives there just in these last few minutes. Whispers travel the street. I'd heard you were hunting. Thought you might like to know."

"Where on Beacon Street?" Conan Doyle asked.

Tess shrugged. "Just follow the screams."

Another breeze blew up, and she lifted her arms as it carried her away, along the street and up over the roof of the Irish bar. If the parking lot attendant noticed, he didn't say a word.

CHAPTER EIGHT

With a wave of his hand, Conan Doyle wished them all unseen.

Beacon Street remained tied in a knot, the traffic backup affecting all of downtown Boston.
I would surely detest being a commuter this evening
, Conan Doyle thought, walking with his entourage toward the scene of the crime.

"Stay in my general vicinity," he instructed, "the spell loses its potency the farther you wander away from me."

They approached the building, observing a sports utility vehicle, its rooftop obviously crushed by something falling on it, being hoisted up onto the back of a tow truck.

"I bet whatever did that," Squire said pointing to the vehicle, "came from there." He craned his neck to look up at the shattered third story window.

"Man, can't pull the wool over your eyes, can they?" Eve said, walking away from them toward a coroner's van parked on the other side of the street.

"You need to stay with . . ." Conan Doyle began, but realized his pleas were falling upon deaf ears. Instead, they all followed the vampiress.

"Do you smell it?" she asked, hopping up into the back of the vehicle, crouching slightly as she unzipped the body bag to take a look at the contents. "I'd say this was our skydiver."

Ceridwen brought a delicate hand to her face. "The remains stink of demonic magics," she said.

"Bingo." Eve wrinkled her nose in distaste.

Conan Doyle climbed into the back of the van with Eve, examining the body. "It was certainly the fall that resulted in this unfortunate woman's death," he observed. "But it was dark magic that took her there."

"I say we check out the dead broad's digs, before any evidence is removed," the hobgoblin said, hiking up his pants and adjusting the rim of his baseball cap.

"An excellent idea, Squire," Conan Doyle said, stepping from the van.

"And they said watching reruns of
CSI
was a waste of time," Squire muttered as they returned to the apartment building across the street.

Detectives and uniformed police officers were still milling about as they entered the building, went up the stairs, and into the apartment. A crime scene photographer was taking pictures of a headless corpse lying upon the kitchen floor.

"Wonder where the head is?" Squire mused aloud, bending down to look under the kitchen table and chairs as Doyle studied the spray of blood on the ceiling above them.

Ceridwen stood by a withered houseplant in the corner of the living room, her hands gently caressing the yellowed leaves back to full vigor. "There was a demon here," she said. "The proximity to the foul beast nearly killed her."

Conan Doyle squatted down on his haunches, examining an identification tag hanging from the belt loop of the corpse's trousers. "LeeAnne Fogg," he read. "She was a registered nurse." He rose, his knees popping uncomfortably. The wear and tear of the passing years was sneaking up on him yet again, and he made a mental note to partake of some of Faerie's recuperative elixirs once things had calmed a bit.

"Hey!" Eve called, motioning for them to follow her.

The police officers in the room moved from their path, gently pushed aside by the Conan Doyle's sorcery, still unaware of their presence. He, Squire, and Ceridwen followed Eve down a short corridor and into a room now frigid with cold from the broken window. Conan Doyle noticed that a blanket had been placed over the open window, likely to protect any physical evidence from being blown away. Two lab techs finished up whatever it was they were doing, the sudden desire to leave incited by Conan Doyle's spell.

"Here's the point of departure," Eve said standing in front of the billowing blanket, but Conan Doyle's gaze was fixed upon the large bed positioned in the center of the room. Piles of ash lay on the sheets in the shape of a human body, the bedclothes untouched, though it had taken incredible heat to immolate the victim.

"So what do you think?" Squire asked, eating from a bag of corn chips. "Spontaneous human combustion, or what?"

Conan Doyle shook his head as he reached out, allowing his fingertips to sink into the ashen remains. Closing his eyes, he concentrated, reading the traces of dark magicks left behind.

"I'd like a sample of this," he said, turning to Ceridwen.

"Wait," Squire said, shaking out the last of the corn chips from the bag and dropping them into his mouth. "You can put them in here," he explained, wiping his greasy fingers on the front of his clothes.

"Where'd you get those?" Eve asked.

"I found'em in the kitchen — got a problem with that?" he asked defensively.

"Scavenger," she snarled.

Squire brandished his stubby middle finger then turned to offer Conan Doyle the corn chip bag.

He politely refused, again turning to Ceridwen. "If you would be so kind, my dear."

The elemental sorceress waved her hand, her movements like the first gestures of a graceful dance. A bubble of air solidified in the path of her hand, and she directed it down to the burned remains where it engulfed a few ounces the ash, lifting it into the air to float before his face.

"Thank you, love," he said, taking the solidified bubble and placing it in his jacket pocket.

"So what's your handle on this, boss?" Squire asked. "From what I seen here, this ain't your run-of-the-mill demonic manifestation. This prick's got balls — big ones."

Eve strolled around the room, her predator's eye looking for anything that could be of use. "We were talking before about rules. There are rules against demons this powerful being able to cross over."

"You're correct," Conan Doyle said. "The dimensions are not meant to be porous."

Ceridwen wrapped her arms about herself as if cold, but Conan Doyle understood it was much more than that.

"The fabric of things seems to be unraveling since the Nimble Man and the release of Sanguedolce," Fey sorceress said. "Perhaps the demons have begun to think that the human world doesn't have its protectors any longer."

"A disturbing thought," Conan Doyle said as he moved toward the door. "If you're correct, then we will have to remind the denizens of the dark realms that protectors still exist. And I suggest we use our current demonic invader as an example."

"I like the way you think, boss," Squire said. "Time to open up a big ol' can of whupass. 'Course, I'll mostly just be opening the can. I prefer to let the rest of you do the whupassing . . . ass-whupping. Whatever."

"Candy ass," Eve said. "What a coward."

Squire grinned. "I'm a delicate flower."

Ceridwen furrowed her brow, her perfect, cold beauty almost alien in the shadowed hallway. "Squire, I will never claim to understand you. I have seen you in combat. You can be quite formidable when you choose."

The hobgoblin shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a lover, not a fighter. I'd much rather watch Eve getting all dirty and bloody, fighting in clingy outfits, than do it myself. If I could do that, and have beer and pizza at the same time . . . that'd be Heaven."

Conan Doyle sighed and tuned them out, unable to listen even a moment longer. He knew that when circumstances turned dire, there were no better allies in the world, no greater hope for humanity than his Menagerie. But sometimes that idea frightened him.

They descended the stairs to the lobby, exiting the building in the November cold.

"What now?" Eve asked, pulling the collar of her stylish cranberry colored leather jacket up against her neck.

Conan Doyle removed his gloves from his coat pocket and slipped them over his hands. "Ceridwen and I will return home to further analyze this sample of remains. Something tells me there is more to be learned here."