Suicide Kings, page 16
Omar’s ghost isn’t far from the Forum. A mile maybe, a little ways out of the Toxic Zone. I concentrate on him and click the button. The needles point in the direction I remember and about the right distance.
I know where I’m going, but I want to find out how well this thing works. I drive around a bit watching the needle move and the distance change. If it’s not locked on him then it’s locked on something near him. After half an hour I decide to find out if I’m right.
He’s still there when I pull up. He’s got a lot of leeway for a Haunt. A lot of them are stuck in a room, or a house. Omar can go as far out as the street.
Recognition when he sees me get out of the car, and he’s in front of me in a flash. The distance needle drops to zero. I’m gonna call this one a win.
Omar’s starting to deteriorate. All Haunts will over time. Some take longer than others and I’ve never really understood why. He’s going fuzzy around the edges, awareness drifting. Most of the time you don’t notice it. Ghosts aren’t really all there to begin with.
“Eric,” he says. I haven’t seen him in a few years, so maybe my memory’s off, but I don’t remember Omar sounding quite so hollow.
“Omar,” I say. I pull out the razor and cut my arm, let a couple drops of blood fall to the cement. His attention immediately snaps to the blood and I let him have it. He’s a blur as he kneels to get it and less than a second later he’s back, looking a little sharper, a little more there.
“Thank you,” he says. Then his awareness drifts again. “Eric. When did you get here?”
“Just now,” I say. “Wanted to check on you.”
“Thank you,” he says. Then, “Eric. When did you get here?”
Ghosts aren’t people. They’re leftovers, snakeskins shed by a soul as it moves on. But some of them are hard not to see as people. Omar’s one of them. And seeing him go like this is like watching a friend with dementia slowly fade away.
“It was good talking to you,” I say. I close the tracker and slide it into my pocket. “I’ll see you around, Omar.”
“Goodbye,” he says. Then, as I’m opening the door and sliding into the car, “Eric. When did you get here?”
I’d like to say it doesn’t get to me. It’s bad enough when someone slides into oblivion, but watching it happen after they’re already dead feels just as cruel somehow. Like, didn’t they go through enough? But they’re not people.
No matter how many times I tell myself that, I can’t quite make myself believe it.
* * *
—
I get a lock on what I hope is Werther’s soul once I get on the road. If this tracks souls the same way as it does ghosts then he’s somewhere to the northeast. It might be pointing at the estate, but I think it’s a little too far to the east for that. I’m going to have to go there to know for sure.
I have less luck tracking down a possible mage/child eating monster near the Toxic Zone. I find a couple out of the way places that either might use as a lair. By the stink and spatter of dark, dried blood on the ground something was, but they’re long gone.
Gabriela calls me after I’ve done a third sweep of the area. Whatever the thing is that’s grabbing kids in the camps, I’m not going to find it out in the open.
“How go the intrigues at court?” I say.
“Jesus, these people,” she says.
“More showed up?”
“Yeah. Siobhan was the first. I like her. Don’t necessarily trust her, but I like her. Amanda says she has no claim on the inheritance. Different mother than the rest of them. Even if everyone else dies she gets nothing.”
“That’s fucked up. So, what, she lives off their table scraps and magnanimity?” I ask.
“She’s still a mage, and from what I hear from Amanda, a pretty powerful one. She’s carving her own way through life, and the rest of the family seems content to let her.”
“Does she know about Attila?”
“No. Amanda’s keeping that until tomorrow night. She’s telling everyone he’s unavailable, and playing the gracious host while avoiding answering questions. Right now, we’ve got Helga, Hans, and his son Tobias. No sign of Otto yet. Liam is supposed to be here later with his wife and his mistress, or something like that. Then there’s the lawyer.” Her voice turns to venom at that last one.
“You gonna kill him?” I say.
“Probably. Fucker’s poking around all over. Doesn’t seem to realize Amanda knows every move he’s making and deliberately rearranging the house so he gets lost. It’s actually kind of funny.”
“Sorry I’m missing all the fun.”
“Don’t be. These people are insufferable. When Helga showed up, she assumed I was a servant and tried to get me to take her luggage.”
“And she’s still alive?”
“Yeah, but I had Bigsby toss her shit into a lake.”
That’s a surprise. “Bigsby’s back?”
“Amanda looked him over inside and out. He’s fine. Whatever that thing that attacked you was, it doesn’t seem to be inside him.”
“Which means either there was a trap set for him if he talked about the thread,” I say, “or somebody was watching me on the other side and hit him with a spell.”
“I don’t like either of those options,” Gabriela says. “I hope it wasn’t a trap. There’s never just one trap. I’ll talk to Amanda about it. How’s your day going?”
“Well, I bought a magic tchotchke I’m hoping will help me locate Attila’s soul. So far, signs point to guardedly hopeful. I’ll know more by the time we all meet tomorrow night.”
“About that,” she says. “Call me and let me know you’re coming. When you get here Bigsby will get you into your room without anyone seeing you. Can you be here by three?”
“That depends,” I say.
I’m on the fence about which is the bigger priority, the Werther Murder Party or the kid snatcher. Somebody else should be able to deal with the latter. The pastor says she knows some of the mages at USC. They should be powerful enough to track that thing down and take care of it. No need for me. Still.
“What happened?”
“Been hanging around a homeless camp of normals out near the Toxic Zone last few weeks. You know a vampire named Rosalie?” She pauses a second before answering.
“Rosalinda de la Guerra y Noriega,” she says. “Yeah. Been around a long time. Rancho days. She stayed at the hotel for a while. She there? She becoming a problem?”
“Nothing like that. If anything, she’s probably the least dangerous thing out here. I’ve been bringing supplies to the camp, and blood to Rosalie to help her keep a lower profile. The camp’s on a church parking lot.”
“I know the one you’re talking about. Mage runs it. Nancy . . . Grimm? A pastor, right?”
“Yeah. Just found out about the mage part today. Anyway, Rosalie tipped me off to a possible El Cucuy in the area. Kids are going missing. Some of them are being snatched openly. Talked to the pastor and she already knew about it. Little annoyed about that.”
“You don’t sound convinced,” she says.
“I think it might be a Baba Yaga.”
“Shit.” If this thing stalking kids is an El Cucuy, it’s bad. But if it’s a Baba Yaga, yeah, “Shit” is the right sentiment.
“I don’t know if the pastor’s the only mage in the area,” I say, “but if there’s an El Cucuy around I would have expected it to have made a play on her by now. I don’t know if any of the missing kids are mages, but it’s hitting a camp and moving on. Not over and over until it gets what it’s looking for.”
Russian folklore, right? Baba Yaga’s this old witch who flies around in a cauldron, lives in a hut that hops around on a giant chicken leg, eats children. The eating children bit is true, the rest not so much.
They’re rare, thank fuck. Really hard to get rid of. See, they soul hop. Shit gets too heavy, they leave one body they’ve chewed the soul out of and jump into another one. As escape hatches go, it’s pretty convenient. Some mage goes to take your head off and you just hop into somebody else.
It’s not all bad news. They die easy. Knife, bullet, drop a piano on them. They’re easy to spot, too. They’ll twist the host into the bent-over, gnarled form of an old woman. The longer it sticks around, the more it looks the part.
Back in the days when they got their name, seeing a hunched-over old babushka walking down a midnight road to the next village over might not raise suspicion. You might even get close enough to have a chat, or let your kid go over and take the sweet it holds out as an offering, and then you’d be fucked.
These days the lures have to match the times. They still do the old lady schtick. I’ve never heard of one changing its routine and I’m not sure it could. Ingrained hunting habits can be a bitch to turn around.
But “Don’t take candy from strangers” is so ingrained into our culture now, they need something with a little more pep. You know, fun, in a razor-toothed psycho clown sort of way. They might go around like street vendors selling bright-colored balloons, cotton candy, blinking LED bracelets. You can tell if one’s been in a body a long time by all the crap they’ve festooned themselves with. And—if you get too close—by all the children’s bones they have sewn subtly into their clothes.
Mages are naturally resistant to that soul-hopping thing. It just sort of slides off of us. Weaker mages can get hit, but they’ll fight back. They’ll still die, but they’ll make the Baba Yaga pay for it. A normal will pop like a water balloon.
There are a couple silver linings. Baba Yagas don’t eat children raw, and they won’t kill them until they can get them to their lair to cook them. Once they’ve got hold of a meal, they’re not likely to let go, taking the soul-hopping trick off the table. In theory, at least.
It all boils down to the best way to take one out is hit it after it’s grabbed a kid but before it’s killed them. That’s not a big window.
“You ever take one on?” I say.
“No.”
“I ran into one in El Paso. It was acting as a homeless woman selling knockoff Mexican toys on the street. Fake balloons on plastic straws sticking out like porcupine quills, a garland of blinking, multi-colored LEDs wrapped around its body, bags of rancid cotton candy hanging from a belt.”
“That worked?”
“Weirdly, yeah. Every couple of years a town would get hit and a few kids would go missing. Then it’d move on. Chased that fucker across half the state and once it was onto me the body-hopping started. I think it jumped to ten, twelve people inside of an hour.”
“Did you get it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know,” I say. “I killed something. Whether it was in the body at the time or not? Couldn’t say. Anyway, the pastor knows. Says she has friends who can help.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re the only one around who’s actually run into one before. If there’s ever been one in L.A. I haven’t heard about it. Do you think they can handle it?”
She’s thinking what I’m thinking. Priorities. Amanda’s nice and all, but the problems of one-percenter mage elites kind of take a back seat to having something like a Baba Yaga on the loose.
“I’m hoping I don’t have to,” I say. “I’m staying down here tonight.”
“At the camp?”
“No. I won’t be going back there.” That comes out harsher than I intended. “I’ll be in the area, though.”
“Call me if you think you need backup,” she says. “If they’re as bad as I’ve heard—” There’s a sound of genuine worry in her voice.
“I’ll be fine. Go give Amanda some tongue and scandalize her relatives.”
She laughs. “Not as fun as putting a hatchet in all their heads, but it’ll do,” she says. “Be careful.”
“This is me we’re talking about.”
“That’s why I’m saying it.”
“Fair point.”
“Hey, real quick,” she says. “I’m sorry about last night. I’m sorry about—Look, can we just fucking talk? Not now, obviously, but soon?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Soon. I mean it. It’ll happen.”
“Thank—”
I end the call before she can finish. I know I should talk to her about—well, shit, everything. Maybe I’ll get lucky and die again before I have to.
Chapter 14
The rain clouds growing over the city fat and dark have finally decided L.A. needs some flooded sewers and open up like a busted dam. The kind of rainfall that hits once every ten years or so. Within an hour the L.A. River’s going to be worthy of the name and the accident rate will triple.
Just as well I’m not planning on going back to the estate tonight. It’d be a good three hours easy. This Toyota I snagged hasn’t been washed in weeks. Dirty water cascades down the windshield barely touched by the wipers. Visibility has gone to almost nothing and late afternoon might as well be midnight.
Dammit. Now it’s even more pointless trying to track down a monster. It could run in front of the car with sirens and flashing lights and I probably wouldn’t even see it. I pull over and check where I am on my phone. Not far from the church. This is as good a place to hole up for a bit as any and wait this out.
My phone rings. Lani. I stab the answer button hard enough to jam my finger. Lani isn’t going to call unless there’s something really, really wrong.
“I’m about five minutes away,” I say before she can get a word out. I’m already on the road swerving past the other idiots driving tonight. “What’s happening?”
“The pastor,” she says. “There’s something wrong with her. She’s shaking and feverish and we don’t know what happened. She went for a walk a couple hours ago and came back like this.”
“Not a seizure?”
“Bob says it might be, but it’s the weirdest one he’s ever seen.” Bob. Who the fuck is Bob? I know this. EMT. He’s an EMT. Okay, that’s good.
“Is anything changing?” I miss another car by inches. Their blaring horn is barely audible over the hammering of the rain on the roof. “Like her hands, arms. Her face?”
“I—I don’t think so. Hang on.” She calls out to Bob and gets a muffled answer in return. “Bob says yes. Her arms are longer. She’s shaking really badly.”
Fuck. It’s a Baba Yaga. Pastor probably tried to find it and instead it found her. She must have hurt it badly enough that it needed to jump into another body, and hers was the only one available.
“I’m almost there,” I say. “Is she inside? In the church? One of the trailers?”
“We have her in the church. Bob’s trying to strap her into a chair—”
“No. Don’t restrain her,” I say. “In fact, get everybody the fuck away from her and out of the building, and don’t let her out. I don’t care if you have to park a truck in front of the doors. And for fuck sake, don’t let it see anyone through the windows.”
If it feels trapped, it’ll do the same thing to someone else that it did to the pastor, only it’ll be worse. A normal will die immediately and change. Then it’ll kill anyone it sees.
But the pastor’s putting up a fight. She’s ultimately going to lose, but if she can buy me a little time, I might be able to take the thing down.
Lani yells away from the phone what I just told her and Bob is having none of it. An argument is about to erupt and I need them out of there now.
I hear a yell in the background, a scream from Lani, then running footsteps and slamming doors. “What’s happening?”
“She bit Bob,” she says.
“Bitch chewed through half my finger!” Bob yells in the background. Maybe the pastor heard Lani and she’s giving me a hand. Or Bob’s just got really tasty-looking fingers.
I turn hard around a corner and see the church just ahead. I fishtail into the driveway, sending a wave of water across the lot.
Everyone’s standing outside the church, terrified. The doors are closed and someone’s driven their camper up the steps to block the doors. They open to the inside, but nobody’s getting through the camper. As long as the Baba Yaga can’t see anyone, it can’t hop into them.
“Everybody, get to cover and out of sight,” I yell. It’s hard to hear through the downpour, but I put some magic into my voice and it cuts through the noise. Everyone but Lani and Bob starts to scatter. The inhuman shrieks inside tell me the pastor’s almost out of the fight.
“Are there any other doors?” I ask.
“A couple,” Bob says. He’s holding his left hand to his chest, but looks ready to jump back in there if he has to. I like your moxie, Bob, but not your brains. “Couple of the RVs backed up against them.”
“All right, both of you get the hell out—” The screaming suddenly goes from angry-punk-band loud to skull-shattering loud, blowing out all the windows. Silence.
Shit. There are still some people out in the open, hiding behind a dumpster, behind a lamppost. Jesus. “Everyone, get into your trailers. Lock the doors. Close the windows. Don’t—”
The church doors burst out, the blast flipping the camper end over end to land on its roof in the middle of the yard. The Baba Yaga launches itself over the crowd. It hits the pavement and tries to run, but it’s struggling. Not enough that I can catch up to it, though. Before I can get near, it leaps through one of the RVs. Punches a hole like it’s a Bugs Bunny cartoon. There’s a crash, then another, and another, the RVs swaying with each impact.
It hits one and stops. There’s a high-pitched scream and I can’t tell if it’s coming from the RV or from Lani, who’s running like she’s on fire.
Matthew. Fuck.
“You,” I point at Bob. “Get everyone into the church. If you have guns grab them and cover the door.” I point at another guy, Ted? Todd? I don’t remember, but he’s built like a block of cement and that’s what I need.
