Lassiter, page 11
Not that any of that shit had helped any more than the mental chatter was. Her little lock of hair bullshit had failed as a locator.
Oh, and Love Is Blind 3 had really not helped. She’d made it through the first happy coupling-up and exploded her TV in a fit. Which had caused her to have to conjure another. Which had appeared on cue, obligingly turned itself on to cable instead of Netflix… and ultimately, thanks to a breaking news update, led her here to the mall.
Devina slowed down and regarded the busted front entrance of a Dick’s Sporting Goods store. Barricades, yellow police tape, and uniformed CPD officers had turned the crime scene into a tourist attraction, what few shoppers were coming and going stopping to stare.
Time to go to work.
Sauntering over, she caught the eyes of all of the cops, and given the way things were going for her, the fact that they clustered up against the tape to talk to her made her feel like maybe she wasn’t complete dogshit.
“Can we help—”
“—you, miss?”
“Can—”
“—we help you—”
“—miss?”
They talked over each other, each tossing out the same sentence as if it were a job requirement. Up close, they were interchangeable, all of them on the young side, like guarding stores that had already been burglarized was relegated to their relatively low level of competence and experience.
“I work here,” she said as she deliberately twirled her hair.
The Betty Boop, help-me-big-daddy bullshit was boring, but usually got the job done without her messing with men’s brains. Sifting through all their memories right now? No offense, but she didn’t need to see their wives and girlfriends giving them head while she flipped switches to get herself inside the goddamn store. And with so many of them? She’d have had to brainwash them as a group.
But hey, the male attention was definitely a balm.
“When I left last night,” she continued, “I forgot my phone in my locker. My manager told me to come down here and ask if one of you could escort me in to get it? I mean, I saw the news, I heard about the break-in.”
“We can’t let civilians in,” the one on the far left said as he jacked up his gun belt. “This is a crime scene.”
No, really? And here she thought it was a cock convention.
“Oh, lighten up, Jer,” someone said from the back.
As “Jer” got fluffy at the slap-down, an older cop with a been-there-done-that face and a six-beer-a-night gut pushed the young-buck others out of the way.
“C’mon, honey.” He lifted the tape. “I’ll take ya in.”
“Oh, thank you.”
Ducking down, Devina was sure to give Jer a batted eye while she breached the barrier that was flimsy in substance, ironclad in boundary. On the far side, she followed the older cop, content to model walk in his wake over to one of the side doors that was still intact.
Whoever had broken into the store had had a chip on their shoulder. They’d smashed the revolving glass entry both coming and going, shards on the ground outside on the left and shards on the inside of the store on the right.
It had to have been Lash, she thought. Assuming the reports about what had been taken were accurate.
And clearly, he was stealing instead of conjuring to conserve energy after his first induction.
“Lot of these new guys,” the cop said as they walked into a cathedral of merchandise and equipment, “just gotta—what do they call it? Flex? Jesus Christ, what a waste of time.”
“I’m really grateful.” She smiled at the officer. “You’re my hero.”
He didn’t seem affected one way or another by her charm, and she respected that: “Just tryin’ to help you get your phone. Let’s get to the back of the house.”
Once again falling in behind him, she looked around. In this part of the store, everything was orderly and non-ransacked, the exercise apparel hanging, slim and colorful, on round racks, the hints of what could be found deeper into the Dick’s showing on the fringes: camping and sports equipment, a canoe hanging from the rafters, stand-up displays of dehydrated food that could last for years.
“So what happened here,” she asked as she surged ahead so they were side by side. “Do you know who did this?”
“Can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Sorry.”
The officer didn’t sound sorry. So she didn’t feel apologetic as she barged into his mind—oh, who was she kidding, she wouldn’t have cared anyway…
Okay, talk about your backfires. When she accessed the part of his memories that had to do with the investigation, what she was shown was like scratching a poison ivy rash. You thought it was a good idea, but in the end, you did yourself more harm than good.
The cops had security footage of a tall, powerfully built—NAKED—blond man, with an equally naked, but not at all powerfully built, guy, pulling up to the front of the store at just after midnight, in a navy blue Toyota Camry that had a front bumper that was falling off and sparks flashing behind one of its blown-out tires. The pair had disembarked and walked over to the entrance, and the blond man had broken the glass on the right side of the revolving door just by putting up his palm.
The cops were real confused about that part. As well as the way the alarm had instantly been silenced as the pair had progressed into and through the store. After that, things had gotten much more conventional, at least as stealing went. The two “men” had clothed themselves in the hunting department, taken some duffle bags—and then made like shit was for free in the section where guns were sold.
The older cop had watched the security feed himself, so she took a moment, while he was standing there, frozen and staring up at her like his brains had funneled out his doughy ass, to replay the black-and-white video a couple of times. The sight of Lash moving around with that powerful body of his, even distilled as it was through the recollection of the cop, was enough to make her—
“Why you cryin’, hon?”
As the words registered, she shook her head and said roughly, “I’m sorry, what?”
The cop motioned around her face. “You’re cryin’. ”
Devina brushed her cheeks. “I’m not.”
“Here.” The guy leaned to the side and took out a cloth handkerchief that was starched and folded into a precise white square. “Can’t have a pretty face doin’ like that.”
She took what he held out, and as she stared at the thing on her palm, she imagined that his wife probably ironed them for him with curlers in her hair, a little TV on the counter in the laundry room keeping her company, a soap opera burbling like visual soup in the background.
Devina sniffled and blotted under her eyes carefully. “How long have you been married? ’Cuz I know you didn’t iron this yourself.”
“We made it thirty-six years. She died this past February, on the seventh.” He nodded at the handkerchief. “Don’t have many of those left that she washed and tended for me. I think that’s the last one, actually.”
The words were spoken in the same laconic tone as the man had told good ol’ Jer to pipe-down-sonny. But behind the syllables? There was a loss so deep that the guy was hollowed out on the inside.
She knew how that felt.
“I’m sorry,” Devina said.
He shrugged. “What are you going to do.”
The officer turned away, but she stopped him. “Is it true? That you’d rather be dead.”
He blinked like he had no idea what she was talking about. But that was a lie. His inner thoughts were bared before her, and she knew that underneath the daily duties he distracted himself with, he was yearning for a get-out-of-jail.
“Is it true,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I miss her that much. Kids are grown and busy. She was the one who kept them around. I sit at home alone at night… what is there for me, you know? It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I’m supposed to retire next month. We were going to travel. I was going to buy her an RV and we were going to… travel.”
The bleakness in him touched her in a way that seemed as shocking as her wasting any time at all on some human who was nothing in the grand scheme of things.
“And you believe she’s waiting for you,” Devina prompted.
As he glanced around, she looked at the silver shield that was on his chest. The name on it was “Massarini” and the number was 216.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she’s in heaven or maybe we’re all worm food. Either way, I’m good because I’m not feeling like this anymore, or else I’m with her. Better’n where I’m at.”
Funny, how sadness could age someone. Though his features did not change, the folds that ran from the sides of his nose to the edges of his mouth seemed to gouge farther into his face, and the wrinkles by his eyes and across his forehead likewise deepened. The color seemed to fade out as well, everything draining, draining, draining. Until he looked like he was eighty.
“You’ve been praying,” she told him. “You want out.”
“Yeah, I do. It’ll be a relief—goddamn, why am I talking to you like this? I don’t tell anybody this.” He laughed awkwardly, the forced smile not lasting. “I don’t talk to nobody.”
“Are you sure,” she said quietly. “That what you prayed for is what you want. There’s no going back.”
“Yeah.” His eyes returned to hers, and there was nothing in them. No emotion, not even sadness. “I am sure.”
Devina extended the handkerchief to him. “Here, take this back. You don’t want to lose it.”
As voices percolated down from the second floor where the ransacked gun department was being processed for prints, he reached forward—
Closing her hand around his own, Devina stared deeply into the man’s watery brown eyes and gave things a squeeze.
The officer gasped, his brows flaring, his shoulders jerking back. Then he retracted his arm and grabbed the front of his chest. Weaving on his feet, he stumbled a little, fell against a display of water bottles, lost his balance completely. As all kinds of Yeti bounced around him on the hard floor, he slumped into a crumble and fought for breath.
Devina held the handkerchief to her own heart for a moment. Then she bent down and tucked it into his clenched fist. “You’ll see Nancy. Give it about a minute.”
Turning away from him, she blinked her eyes and looked up so that no more tears fell. “Help,” she cried out calmly. “Help. Something’s wrong with him.”
As her voice echoed around, other law enforcement people came to the balcony above, and when they saw the cop sprawled on the floor with the traveler mugs, they started racing for the open staircase.
Leaving them to it, not that there was any resuscitating the widower from his widow-maker, Devina decided she didn’t need to see the break-in’s aftermath, not now that she’d witnessed the theft itself thanks to the old cop’s rock-solid memory of the security footage.
Out in the gray daylight, she squinted and took her phone from her ass pocket. Flashing it at the officers, she said, “Got it. Thank you.”
A couple of them pride-bustled in their unis, kicking their chins up like they had done shit. But at least good ol’ Jer did the duty and lifted the yellow stripe for her.
“Glad we could help,” he said, all Mr. Man.
“Nancy’s husband took care of me, not you.”
As she tilted under the tape, he looked at her ass like he could have motorboated her butt cheeks, if he’d wanted to—and just as she was about to make sure the bean burrito he’d had for breakfast carved a fire path out of his body and took half his colon with it… he gave her a little intel nugget that solved her now-what.
Or rather, his communicator did.
His little shoulder-mounted speaker went off with a squawk, and as he reached over to silence it, an update came in about another scene. One that was downtown in a rough neighborhood.
One that the CPD was dismissing as unconnected to this highly alarming and dangerous theft of shotguns and hunting clothes.
One that had a weird, eerie feel to it—and a bunch of black stains.
As she headed off to see if Lash had had anything to do with whatever had happened there, she sent that burrito on its final mission.
At least she was smiling a little as she dematerialized.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
How magical this realm is.”
As Rahvyn spoke up, her eyes did another circle around the serene landscape, with its lush grass and brightly colored tulips, its elegant temples and arching trees. Indeed, the mystical plane Lassiter had brought her to was somewhat similar to where she had stashed the Book, safe and insulated from invasion, thanks to a forest ring that she instinctively knew was a metaphysical boundary.
“It is nice, isn’t it?”
Lassiter walked forward, and though he was big and tall, his footfalls left no marks in the springy bed of the lawn. Likewise, she had the sense that nothing grew out of alignment in the foliage, everything forever cresting the apex of its growth cycle, the odd, milky sky feeding whatever energy needs were required.
“Things weren’t always like this.” He stopped and looked toward a temple with an open-air facade and what appeared to be living spaces inside. “When the Scribe Virgin was active and the Chosen were here, everything was just white. And I gather the layout and architecture were changed a little, too, after Phury took over.”
She attempted to imagine a monochromatic wash over the verdant, the rainbow-bright, the vivid. “This is much better.”
“I agree. So does Phury.” Lassiter resumed his slow-go wander. “When he took over as the Primale, he freed the Chosen of their lives of service, and then redecorated the place. Boom! Crayola all over everything.”
“Truly, I cannot believe I am here,” she murmured. “The Scribe Virgin’s Sanctuary…”
Raised in a traditional family, she had been brought up to revere and pray unto the creator of the vampire race, that figure in black robes who, on occasion, someone would say they had seen, and no one would believe they had. She had known, too, of the Chosen, the sacred order of females who served the Scribe Virgin in worship and as recorders of the lives of the vampire race—every event, of every soul’s journey on earth.
And now she was here… with an angel who refused to acknowledge his own true power or role in it all. Lassiter merely ambled along at her side as they had explored a pool that shimmered with water so pure it was as liquid glass, and shrines with columned loggias, and the Treasury with its wealth of gems and precious items.
She would never forget pushing her hands into the hip-high baskets of sapphires, emeralds, and rubies.
“And now this is all yours?” Rahvyn asked as they approached the largest temple complex.
She mostly kept the awe out of her voice. Or perhaps… not.
“I don’t think anyone owns the Sanctuary.” He stopped at the foot of the grand entrance. “I think we all just pass through here for a while, mortal and immortal, sometimes for a short time, sometimes a long one, only the stories recorded in the volumes of lives left behind. And speaking of recording, here we are at the Temple of the Sequestered Scribes. Come on, I’ll show you the inside.”
As he walked up the steps to the formal, columned entry, it was with no particular regard—like the stones he placed his feet upon were just incremental pavers, the purpose of which was to secure an ascent to an entryway of no particular import. And then he opened the ornate door with no pomp, no flourish.
Just a portal into a building.
For a moment, all she could do was stare up at him—and she had the strangest revelation as she did.
Now she knew how the villagers had felt about her.
Back in her timeline, in the Old Country, she could remember people regarding her with wonder and a bit of fear. After word had gotten out in her little village that she had resuscitated a prized horse, and then located a missing young who had become lost in the wood, the males and females she had grown up around had started to hold her in some reverence. At first, it had made her anxious. Over time, it had begun to irritate her.
In truth, she had no greater understanding of the origins of her abilities or her purpose in possessing them than they had, and their elevation of her had made her own lack of foundational knowledge all the more resonant. Surely, if someone had been “gifted” as she was, the Scribe Virgin would have provided some tutelage into, if not the hows, at least the whys, of it all.
“Rahvyn?”
As the angel said her name, she took in the whole of him, from the fall of his blond-and-black hair, to the boxy, blue, loose top and pants he’d put on—“scrubs” as he’d referred to the set of clothing. He was beautiful, in a masculine manner… and different in a way she could sense clear as the physical presence of his.
“Sooner or later,” she heard herself say, “you are going to have to tell me what changed within you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Where is your halo.”
He blanched and reached up above his head. “I didn’t know it was gone.”
“But you are not surprised, are you.” When he did not respond, she knew she was correct. “You are going to have to tell me the why of it.”
There was a pause. “All right, but not today. We have time.”
“Do we? What of Eddie and Adrian. The former told me they have come for you.”
The angel’s iridescent eyes narrowed. “I’ll take care of all that. I promise.”
With a nod—because what else could she do other than trust him on both accounts—she ascended to join him at the decorative doorway. The fact that he assiduously stepped aside so there would be no contact of their bodies as she passed by stung a little.
But the room they entered was so astounding, she let the minor rejection go.
Under a soaring ceiling, set across an ancient stone floor, a series of desks were arranged in rows, and each of the stations was kitted out in identical fashion. Upon the hand-hewn tables rested a pot of sanguine ink, a feathered quill, and rolls of parchment tied with ribbons—as well as a crystal bowl that was so beautifully made, so finely blown, that the basin was as clear as the still water it contained.
