Our Lady Chaos, page 24
part #5 of Bloodletter Series
Red and blue lights reflected in the window glass of the homes toward the other end of Union, near where the road took another sharp, ninety-degree bow in the street. A sour taste flooded Munnur’s mouth. The house he owned as Martin Lawson stood around that bend.
The place where Red’s protégé had planned to deal with Kristy in his own crude way.
As he approached Saint Genisuis’ Sanctuary of the Holy Mother, a towering figure stepped out of the shadows and held up a hand. Red, Karl thought and pulled to the edge of the street.
The huge demon came to the car, seeming to float an inch or so above the snow and leaving no footprints. Right before he opened the Galaxy’s passenger door, he flung his three tentacles over his head and slammed his three horn-shaped talons together.
The big red demon wedged himself into the Galaxy and glared at Munnur through the honeycombed eyes of an insect. “You sure screwed the pooch on this one, Munnur.”
Karl drew his face away from the demon. “How so? Sean Walker is at home in bed.”
Red blew three simultaneous raspberries from his three mouths and waved a tentacle at the street ahead of them. “At least pull up so we can watch.”
Munnur did as Red instructed, pulling across the road to the curb after rounding the bend.
Two Oneka Falls Police Department cruisers sat parked at odd angles in front of the Benchly house, and all the lights in the home blazed into the night like a ship on a vast white sea of snow. “What the hell went wrong?” asked Munnur.
Red shifted his bulk, crowding and leaning toward Munnur. “What went wrong? What went wrong was me trusting you at all after the way you managed your affairs. What went wrong was you falling asleep.”
“I didn’t fall asleep!” sputtered Munnur. “And I promise you that Sean Walker is at home…” He let the sentence fade as a uniformed officer came out the front door of Kristy’s place. His hand rested on the bicep of a boy of about fifteen, dressed in all black. Blood trickled down the back of his neck.
“Do you see?” hissed Red. “My project, being led away. He’ll be in juvie for years, all because of you.”
“No,” said Munnur. “A thousand things could’ve gone wrong. Miriam Benchly might’ve heard a noise, maybe she was up reading. Hell, even—”
“Look again.”
Munnur glanced toward the house. On the porch stood the other patrolman, Miriam and Kristy Benchly, and…
Sean Walker. Munnur sat frozen for the space of ten breaths, then turned to Red. “But that’s impossible. I followed him home at dinner time. I staked the place out all night, and no one left!”
Red sneered and waved all three tentacles in a flurry of anger. “And yet, there he is!”
Munnur glowered at Sean. “Yes,” he said in a faint voice. As he watched the boy, Sean’s movements became furtive. He approached the other policeman and said something. The cop lifted his head and stared right at the Galaxy.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” breathed Red.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got this.”
Red looked his direction but said nothing. He also didn’t get out of the car and run away, so Munnur counted it as a win.
As the cop approached, he rested his hand on the butt of his sidearm and pulled his Maglite out of the ring on his belt.
He rolled down the driver’s window. “Evening,” he said. “I’m on the job.”
The policeman peered at him and shone his Maglite into the front seat. “Karl? Karl Munnur?”
Munnur smiled and offered a little nod. “That’s me. Can’t figure out who you are because of the flashlight.”
The cop turned the light on Red and grunted. “Deputy,” he said.
“My partner,” said Munnur. “Devin Deen.”
The cop switched off the Maglite. “Sorry about the light. I’m Ross Dolen.”
“Hey there, Ross,” said Munnur. “What’s going on?”
“B and E—a teenage punk who thinks he’s a badass. That other boy clocked him with a bat.” Ross’s gaze traversed the Galaxy.
“Surveillance vehicle,” said Munnur, keeping a smile plastered on his face.
“They spare no expense, eh?” Dolen’s lips twitched with a suppressed grin.
“Imagine it’s the same everywhere,” said Munnur. “How’d the call come in?”
The cop tilted his head to the side. “Nine-one-one. Say, Karl, we’ve got this APB out on you. Seems someone at the State Police wants to talk to you.”
Munnur forced a laugh. “Yeah, that. I got it all straightened out this evening. That APB will come down tomorrow.”
Dolen stared into his face for a moment, then issued a slow nod. “I’ll take you at your word, Karl.”
He left the rest unsaid, and if you’re lying to me, I’ll be knocking on your door in the morning, but Munnur heard it loud and clear. He winked at Ross Dolen and started the old Galaxy. “Well, Ross, we’ve got to get back to our post. We just saw the lights on our dinner break—”
“BurgerWorld?” asked the OFPD officer.
“You know it. Best burgers in the county. Anyway, we thought we’d check if you guys needed a hand, but it looks like you’ve got it covered.”
“Sure,” said Ross with a little salute. “We’re always happy to see the Kanowa County Sheriff’s Department on the prowl. Don’t pull a muscle sitting there watching people sleep.”
“Might need a massage,” grunted Red.
Munnur waved and pulled away from the curb. He turned around in the street and headed back the way they’d come. “Shit,” he murmured.
Red laughed. “That puts the last coffin nail in your identity. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” grumbled Munnur.
“I could never figure it out.”
“What?”
“The name.”
Munnur turned toward the other demon and grinned as wide as he could, showing off his shark-like teeth. “Karl Munnur. Short for hákarl munnur.”
Red rolled his honeycomb eyes. “And?”
Munnur shrugged. “It means ‘shark mouth’ in Icelandic.” He flashed his broad smile again. “Get it?”
Red blew out breath from each of his three triangular mouths. “Oh, boy.”
“Funny, right?”
The red demon turned to stare out the windshield. “Perhaps you can come up with something just as funny for your next identity. The troopers will be all over Munnur, so ditch the whole thing.”
Hmm. New York State Police. That could be a fun gig. All I need is a new visage and a cool name. I wonder how you say ‘mouth’ in French…
Chapter 2
2010
1
LaBouche sat across from Nicole Conrau’s husk. She shouldn’t be dead…that’s not how it worked with demons. She should either have disappeared as she traveled home, or life should have dribbled back into her body. But neither thing happened. Instead, her flesh gave up its heat to the surrounding air.
He felt numb as if someone had immersed him in gelatin. He stared at her, his mind adding twitches and small movements where none existed. Her blood faded to black as it cooled.
LaBouche had no doubts who bore responsibility for whatever had befallen Nicole. Brigitta, he thought. She must have sussed out the pregnancy somehow. Nicole must have let it slip. But what in the fuck did Brigitta do? How is Nicole dead?
As her body lost its heat, Nicole’s quicksilver skin clouded like oxidizing metal. Her scarlet tongue lolled between her golden tusks, which now looked more similar to old, desiccated bone than ripe wheat fields.
Brigitta has powers beyond those most of us can summon. Maybe it’s something— LaBouche shook his head. No. No, demonic power has limits, even if the rumors of her parentage were true. Whoever her mother was, Herlequin was her father—according to both her and Herlequin—and he was of the same ilk as me.
He stared into her eyes, once such a beautiful malachite color, now as gray and lifeless as old stone. Emotions warred within him—anger, grief, hopelessness—circling and circling each other, whirling like kids on a merry-go-round.
He recalled the conversation he’d had with Brigitta. The one about Sally McBride. What had she said? ‘It would be a mistake to underestimate her. She served her, you know.’ Then I started to ask if McBride was a jinn, and Brigitta shushed me. ‘Don’t say it,’ she said. ‘Don’t even think it.’
LaBouche cast his gaze around the once-white bathroom without seeing his surroundings. Nicole’s blood had dried to black in many places, but there were no footprints, no signs that anyone had been there with Nicole.
He snarled and swung his massive fists through the air as if affronted by its presence. He sprang to his feet and took two steps closer to Nicole. Gazing down on her, LaBouche could no longer lie to himself that she might return.
His grief threatened to overwhelm him, to mire him in despair and inaction, but his fury infused him with murderous energy. With one last glance at the corpse of the erstwhile mother of his child, LaBouche gave in to his outrage.
Turning his back on the bathroom, LaBouche swept his gaze across the room that had become his sanctuary. In two strides, he crossed the room and swept his mobile phone off the nightstand. His stare strayed to the bed, to Nicole’s side of the bed, and stuck there for a time.
If it’s true… If McBride is a jinn, then she fooled all of us. Not just me, but Chaz, Red, all the alphas. He pinched his lips and frowned until he thought his skin might split. Herlequin must have known if Brigitta knew. Why would he keep her secret? Why would he allow a jinn in our midst? Why would he chance it?
LaBouche swept the room one last time, then spun and stomped toward the garage. He grabbed a five-gallon can of gasoline and came back to the bath. He didn’t look at Nicole’s corpse, didn’t linger near her, only splashed the fuel throughout the room and into the bedroom. LaBouche coated the bed, the carpet, and the draperies with gas, then he returned to the garage and found a box of safety matches.
As he struck the first, a question occurred to him. If McBride is a jinn, then what is Brigitta? Thunderstruck by the idea, the match burned down to his fingers and went out without his notice. His mind swam with possibilities, and none of them struck him as worthwhile. If jinn are among us, here with us, then how likely is it we’ve escaped the gaze of… He killed that line of thought but shuddered at the implication. And if Sally is a jinn that means one of the old superstitions is true: the jinn can create visages we can’t penetrate—the way the trickster does.
He glanced around him, feeling watched, pursued, hunted, for the first time. The human hunters didn’t scare him, but the jinn? They evinced a class of terror beyond his ability to ignore.
His gaze tracked to the open door of the bedroom he’d shared with Nicole for the past few years. The room in which they’d mated, produced offspring… His rage swelled within him. If the jinn walked among the denizens of Oneka Falls, no safe place existed, and his kind had escaped nothing by running from home.
His hands shook as he struck another match and threw it into the gasoline puddling on the bedroom floor. The fuel ignited with a whoosh and a thump, and LaBouche turned and ran.
He recalled Nicole’s beauty as he climbed into the Monaco-blue BMW. He replayed a memory of her laughing, head thrown back, malachite eyes dancing, vermilion tongue forking at the air, and his rage burned away all traces of his fear.
If the jinn are here, if McBride is one of them, then I will make them all pay.
He backed away from the burning building as flames began to lick out of the bedroom window, but he sat in the road, the BMW’s V8 burbling, and stared at the house, watching the paint peel from the siding, watching the shingles curl.
His phone vibrated in the console, drawing his attention from Nicole’s impromptu pyre. A text blazed on his lock screen. A text from Mason Harper.
A ferocious grin split LaBouche’s face as an idea burned in his mind.
Revenge, he thought and put the BMW into gear.
2
“Dammit!” cried Benny as they piled into Mike’s Cadillac CTS-V.
“What?” asked Scott.
“They’ve got him! Abaddon has Greg!”
For a split second, silence reigned, and everyone but Benny froze in the middle of whatever they were doing. Then, as if someone threw a switch, they all sprang back into action.
“Where are they?” asked Mike. The Caddy roared to life, and as soon as the last door thunked shut, Mike hammered the accelerator. “Tell me where to go!”
“They were in the parking lot at International Datawerkz.”
“And now?” asked Scott. He held a Remington 870 between his knees, the butt of the scattergun on the floor between his feet.
Benny closed his eyes for a moment. “In a van…headed…east…”
“Back toward New York,” muttered Toby. One of the new dart guns rested in his lap. SEMPRe had recruited gunsmiths to its ranks, and after a year of trial and error, they had produced a semiautomatic tranquilizer gun with extended range and better muzzle velocity.
Mike raced down the long driveway, the eight-cylinder engine roaring, and the tires spitting gravel.
“Clear right,” said Scott.
The Caddy slewed out onto the pavement, tires shrieking, but Mike held it steady and let it slide. “Where?” he snapped. “Where, Benny?”
“It’s a dark color…Ford, maybe…”
“Benny, where?”
“They’ve turned south…headed toward Highway 20 or one of the interstates.”
Mike took the next left and accelerated down the narrow two-lane road.
“Any demons with them?” asked Toby.
“I don’t…” Benny pursed his lips, a grimace of disgust on his face. “They’ve handcuffed Greg to a metal bed in the back of the van…right up against a corpse. Harper is teasing him about being squeamish… There’s…there’s someone else with them. He seems familiar, but…”
“Great, great, but are there any demons?”
Benny shook his head. “Not with them. At least, I don’t think so.”
“Shannon, hide us!” snapped Toby. “If we can catch up to them, hang back until I can get set up, Mike.”
Mike threw a glance at Scott. “Tires?”
Scott nodded. “If I can get a shot that won’t kill everyone.”
“Get us there, Mike! Get us there now!” Benny slumped in the back seat. “Hurry!”
Mike’s gaze jerked to the rearview mirror. “What do you think I’m doing?”
3
His phone rang, and again, Chris Stanton ignored it. He was deep into a Gordian knot of trade routing, but he was close, and he knew it. He’d been ignoring the cell all night.
Stanton unraveled another layer of misdirection and grinned. He thought he had the location where the trade had originated. His fingers rattled across the keyboard. Behind him, something popped and warm air wafted past his face. He hunched closer to the screen, keying more instructions to his spider bot.
A golden glow appeared on his primary monitor, and Chris grunted with annoyance. “Close that damn door!” he snapped, sure that Sammy had come—against his expressed wish to be left alone—to see if he was hungry yet. “I’ll eat when I fucking want to, woman!”
He peered at the screen, but the glare didn’t go away. Ire rose in him like a whale coming to surface for breath. “Do we need to have the talk again, Sammy?” He tore his gaze from the screen and spun in his chair.
His mouth dropped open as if he had more to say, but he said nothing and only stared at the woman made of fire standing between him and the closed door.
“Chris,” she hissed.
“Abby, is that you?”
“You shouldn’t ignore me.”
“No, of course not! I—”
“I want you to buy some real estate. An entire neighborhood.”
“Real estate is risky, Abby. And where? Nothing down near Genosgwa is worth anything, except on one of the lakes. No, let me put together a package—”
Abby streaked across the room and held a burning finger—but no, that wasn’t right…there was no finger, only flames—a quarter of an inch from his nose. The heat baked his face, and tears sprang to his eyes.
“You’ve enjoyed my acquaintance, correct?”
Chris leaned away from the fiery finger, but the woman made of fire leaned closer. “Yes, Abby. You know I have! Brigitta called and—”
“Shut up!” Abby snapped. “I know what my sister has—”
“Sister?”
“—asked of you. She wouldn’t approach you without speaking to me first. You will do as I ask, Chris, or our acquaintance is at an end, and the repercussions of that…”
Chris didn’t need her to elaborate. For a moment, he wondered if he’d gone insane… He understood Abby was more than the woman she pretended to be, but… He didn’t even know the word for what she appeared to be.
“Ifrit,” Abby breathed. “A demon of fire.”
“Yes.” Chris turned his gaze away. “What properties did you want me to acquire for the foundation?”
Abby straightened, and the heat lessened at once. “That’s better.”
4
“Won’t this crate go any faster?”
“Relax, Denny,” said Mason Harper. “No one even knows we have him.”
Dennis Cratchkin pressed his lips into a thin, bloodless line. “I’ve got a funny feeling, Harper.”
Mason lifted a hand from the van’s steering wheel and flopped it side to side. “Funny feeling? Are you kidding me?”
“Red taught me to listen to my instincts, and my instincts shout that we’re not out of the woods yet.”
Mason rolled his eyes. “Hear that, Greggy? Denny thinks your friends are coming for you.”
Greg lay in the back, chained to the metal bunk that ran along one side of the van’s box. He shared the narrow mattress with the moldering corpse of a twenty-something-year-old woman. A shop rag filled his mouth, tasting of gasoline and ancient oil, held in place by a band of black duct tape.
