The Ballad Nocturne (The Midnight Defenders Book 3) Read online

  It was a fucking bigfoot.

  I felt the icy tendrils of panic and sweat along my back and up my neck as I realized how unprepared I was for this. All I had was a five-seven with – I ran the math in my head quickly, realized I had a fully-loaded standard round mag and I hadn’t fired any shots – twenty rounds. The ammo was cold iron with a silver core, custom made, but not armor piercing.

  In my twenty plus years of hunting, I’d never run across a bigfoot. Huxley’s first rule was, “Don’t hunt bigfoots.” He never elaborated on that point, but staring one down as I was, I felt the sheer power of the thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if its musculature was dense enough to be virtually bulletproof.

  There were rumors floating around the precincts of Seattle that I was psychic, based in large part on my ability. I wasn’t psychic, but I didn’t have to be to read the aura of this thing. It was ancient and powerful. I wasn’t sure what to do first, bow down to it or run for my bloody life. This thing was a king in its own right, majestic and fierce. Oh, and it was seriously cheesed off. Not something I’d readily fuck with, but there I was.

  I quickly weighed my options. I had none. It stood between me and the only door out of the place. The front would be locked. I could go for the broken window, but there was too much distance and the thing was almost guaranteed to be faster than me. So I did what it was that I normally do when facing down a rather large, rather angry creature of the Midnight. I opened fire.

  The thing was lightning quick.

  I squeezed off five rounds as fast as I could, and it took all of them square in the chest and was on top of me before I could squeeze off a sixth. It backhanded me, knocking my gun off to the left somewhere, and grabbed me by the throat, lifting me into the air. My feet, now free of the ground and dangling there, began kicking out violently on instinct as I tried to wriggle free. My hands fought against its fingers, trying to slip between its thick, iron digits and my rapidly constricting neck, but I couldn’t find an in, especially with the gloves adding thickness.

  I’m pretty sure that if it had wanted to kill me, it could have just squeezed me like a little kid with a dandelion, just popping my head off, but for some reason, it didn’t. It brought me up level with its eyes and stared deeply into mine. Its skin was cold, clammy, and its grip was firm, but not overtly crushing. It held my gaze for a minute, and I could feel its skin against the skin of my neck. As it watched me, something happened. It became aware. What had been cold, blank eyes transformed into something far more human as its pupils rolled lazily down to focus on me. After blinking several times, its brow furled. The thin lips parted slightly, and it looked at its hand which was gripping my larynx. Then something else happened, something that had only happened one other time prior, with a bonnacon. I communicated with it.

  Or rather, it communicated with me.

  Without moving its lips or making any kind of audible sound, I heard it very clearly say, “Who are you? Where have you brought me?”

  I was taken back. There I was, in the middle of a voodoo shop, being talked to by a bigfoot. There wasn’t time for it to register, no time to even begin to formulate a response before the silence was penetrated by a loud, almost-whistling sound.

  Immediately, the intelligence filtered out of its eyes. Supplanted by rage, the thing tossed me like a ragdoll. I hit the concrete floor and rolled, came up by my gun, and had it in hand. I expected it to come charging me, but instead, it threw its head back and roared. Then it ran straight through the plate glass of the store front, creating a new, much larger hole and flooding the entire room with the brightest, hottest sunlight I’d ever felt.

  I scrambled for the window, but by the time I’d gotten outside, it was virtually gone. About a half mile to the left, the road curved back into town and became swampy marsh. I could just see a dark spot disappearing into the thick foliage.

  12

  I called Ape in the car and cranked the air conditioning to full blast. It took him a while to answer, and when he did, I could hear London playing Rambo in the background. It was annoying, to be honest. He didn’t know what the sigil was, but said he’d check on it. I wasn’t holding my breath.

  I hung up the phone and drove the last few minutes in silence. When I pulled up outside of Ezra’s house, DeNobb was outside waiting for me. I took that as a good sign.

  He approached the car as I got out and said, “Jesus, Swyftt, you look like shit. What happened to you?”

  Ignoring him, I moved directly to the trunk and pulled out my suitcase. I loaded a few extra magazines and grabbed not only my other five-seven, but Grace as well, fastening her holster to my leg and strapping her in. I did so mostly in silence as DeNobb watched, both a little curious and a little awkward. I did manage to say, “I was attacked.”

  “Seriously? In a town like this? Was it the priest?”

  “He’s a preacher, mate. He’s Baptist. Baptists don’t have priests.” He didn’t say anything. I zipped the suitcase back up and closed the trunk. “But no, it wasn’t the preacher. I found Ezra’s old store, now abandoned, as advertised, except for one crucial thing. There was a bigfoot.”

  “Are…are you serious right now? Sometimes I can’t tell.”

  “As a heart attack. What did you find?”

  “Find? What do you mean?”

  “You’re standing out here like you’re waiting to tell me something. Did you snoop any?”

  “A little.”

  “And?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “So I’m out getting my arse beat by a bigfoot and you haven’t found anything. Did you look left, right, and centre?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not as good at this as you are. You didn’t even tell me what I should be looking for.”

  “St. Clair said that Ezra had a golem.”

  “A…golem? Like a for real…”

  “How bout we stop playing this stupid game where you second-guess every sodding thing I say. Let’s just pretend, if only for one afternoon, that you’re a big boy what’s wearing big boy panties and you aren’t bothered by the mention of every single thing you thought was a fable only a few weeks ago. Can we do that? That may make conversation for the rest of our outing a bit more bearable.”

  “Sure,” was all he said.

  “Good. Now that you’re not acting like a total nutter, let’s see if we can’t track down a golem, shall we?”

  “Do I need a gun?”

  “I would get a fucking gun. The thing that attacked me ran into the swamp. He could come back at any time.”

  “Okay, I’ll get it.”

  “I’ll look around. Clearly, something the size of a golem is not going to be inside the house.”

  “Right.” He disappeared to the trunk to rummage through his suitcase while I walked the perimeter of the yard, trying to ignore the soreness in my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but thought I’d know it when I found it.

  Apart from the house, there was really only one other building in the little clearing. Everything else was swampland and trees. While I checked the ground and studied the tree line, I moved toward the shed.

  The shed was a small building, looking to be about the size of Ezra’s living room, with the same paneled siding and shingles as the house itself. It wasn’t visible from the front of the house, tucked around back as it was.

  When I came around the house, I noticed the troughs that lined the rear of the house. There were rows of old metal tubs, all various sizes, nestled in the shady overhang of the roof, each filled with soil and growing large bouquets of every kind of mushroom, some with caps as large as my face. A few feet out from that, crumbling flower pots, old wooden crates, even a cheap plastic sled were all arranged into a makeshift raised-garden. There were various flowering plants growing, different herbs, some little leafy bushes bearing white or red berries.

  I just glanced casually at these, not thinking too much about it. She didn’t have easy access to a grocery store out here, so it wa
sn’t unthinkable to grow her own food. As I neared the shed, I recognized the green, lettuce-like bushes crowned with purple flowers at the corner. I didn’t recognize any of the other plants, but I knew this one. I helped Ape plant and grow our own at home. It was Mandrake.

  Mandrake root was heavily used in spellwork and potions. I knew this because Huxley knew this. Hux was a voodoo man, first and foremost, despite whatever else he’d dabbled in. It made sense that his mambo ex would also have need of the thing. Hell, she probably sold it in her shop.

  But that got me thinking.

  DeNobb found me standing amongst the make-shift garden. I was bent, examining some of the plants. I knew from the smell of a couple of them that they were regular garden herbs, mint and basil, thyme, oregano. But others, I couldn’t place. I wasn’t an herbologist. Ape might be able to identify a few. Huxley sure as shit could have told me what each and every one was.

  “What are you doing?” DeNobb asked.

  “She’s got a voodoo victory garden back here,” I said.

  “Have you gone in the shed yet?”

  I didn’t say anything. I was looking at the white berries on a little bush. The leaves didn’t have much of a scent.

  “It’s locked,” he said. “I checked it earlier.”

  DeNobb walked past me to the shed, tried turning the knob. He pushed on the door, but it didn’t budge. “A little help?”

  “Hold on. I’m coming.”

  I stood, turning to him, and noticed for the first time the vine that grew up almost every single tree that outlined Ezra’s property. The vines completely wrapped the trunks, which was only notable for the sheer volume of the plant. There were hundreds of trees. This vine, like Mandrake, I could identify on site. The green, heart-shaped leaves and purple trumpet-shaped flowers told me the plant was called High John the Conqueror. Hux called it John Conker.

  DeNobb was still pushing against the door when I joined him. “Move,” I said. I took hold of the knob, and it turned easy enough, but the door wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck.” I turned the knob and thrust my hip into the door.

  “Push with me,” I said.

  I counted to three and we pushed together. This time, the door creaked in. It wasn’t much, but after a couple more pushes, we were able to open it far enough to squeeze through.

  Given the garden outside, you’d have thought I would have been better prepared for what was inside the shed. At first glance, it looked like just some old lawn equipment covered in a tarp and a few empty pots, a shovel, a garden hoe. There were some trimming sheers. On one wall, under the sole window, was a workbench. Stacked all over the workbench, framing the window, as well as stacked alongside and beneath the work surface, were plastic storage tubs of all kinds. They had labels with the same kind of cryptic writing that I’d seen on the shelves at her store.

  I opened the first tub. It was filled with teeth. All sizes, both children and adults, from the look of it. Another tub was filled with dried roots, some shaped like little hands, others looking a lot like white carrots. Another tub was also filled with roots, but these roots all appeared fairly humanoid in shape and appearance: Mandrake root. I looked through several tubs, finding every kind of thing a mambo could need. There was a tub for every kind of stone or gem you could want, from onyx and jet to an assortment of pretty stones that I couldn’t identify. One box was filled with small bones, possibly from a human hand, maybe from some sort of animal. Beside that was a little plastic baggie filled with wishbones.

  One box, smaller than the rest and set all by itself directly under the window caught my eye. There were no scribbled words on the outside of this one, just an ornate letter H. Inside the box, which was only slightly larger than a pill box, contained three teeth and a locket of black hair.

  “Swyftt,” came DeNobb’s voice. He sounded uncertain, wary.

  I turned to see that he had removed the tarp from what I had assumed was lawn equipment, but obviously wasn’t. It was a large man. Well, as man as can be expected from something slapped together with mud and clay, tangles of sticks and pieces of saturated burlap woven together by thick twine to give it an almost clothed appearance.

  The face wasn’t even really a face. There were no eyes to speak of, just a brow line and indents where the eyes should be. The mouth was little more than a carved line, and the nose was missing altogether. The thing just sat there in a very childlike pose, both legs stretched out before it, hands resting casually on its knees. Something about it suggested that it was…unfinished. Like a marionette with no costume or paint. And no strings.

  I came closer, touching the mud and clay to find it had hardened, almost like stone.

  “Is that…”

  “Yeah,” I said. “This is Ezra’s golem.”

  13

  Ape

  After lunch, I gave London a tour of the house. I wasn’t initially thrilled with having him around, but after a while, I was glad for the company. He may not have been my first choice for a house guest, but unlike the dogs, he talked back, and unlike Chess, his responses weren’t all riddled with…well, riddles.

  The basement was the last stop on the tour, having started upstairs and worked our way down. Of course, we skipped the attic, which given the steeper staircase, I would have had a hard time navigating on my crutches. There wasn’t much in the basement, just the living suite that Jamie occupied. The weatherman was clearly neater than Jono ever considered being, as Chess didn’t always make it into the basement. DeNobb’s suite was a room, small kitchenette, and a full bathroom. There weren’t even any clothes on the floor.

  The rest of the basement was just storage and a wine cellar. Oh, and a dungeon. I think that creeped me out more than anything, which is why I rarely went into the basement myself. Even when I was little. Some kids were afraid of their basement because the furnace was big and noisy or it was dark and smelled dank. I was terrified because mine potentially detained and tortured criminals.

  Maybe calling it a dungeon was overselling it. It was a jail cell. One cell behind a heavy, metal door with three sets of chains and manacles secured firmly to the brick. It was Medieval and disgusted me on principal alone. Naturally, London loved it.

  I stayed just beyond the door, but he entered happily, his eyes lighting up like Christmas morning. He released a string of happy profanity and just stood there. “No one ever told me you had a fucking dungeon, brother.”

  “Like so much else, it came with the house, and its true purpose is well hidden.”

  He moved directly to the back wall and picked up one of the cuffs. “Shit. It’s fucking heavy as balls.”

  “Jono always joked that one of my ancestors was likely a slave owner, and the cell was used for slaves on those rare occasions they got out of hand.” Then I added, “Hopefully rare.”

  “Fucking right. That’ll teach them...” He traced the chain up to the mounted bracket that held it to the wall. “This shit ain’t right, brother. This fucking chain is silver.”

  Curiosity got the best of me, and I took a step closer, peering around the opening. “Are you sure?”

  He cast a glance over at the other two sets, one per wall. He moved to the next. “This is iron.” He drew a sharp breath. “Cold iron.” He swore again.

  “Which is very poetic.”

  “Fuck that shit, brother. It’s not all Shakespeare. I’m being serious.”

  “Okay. You may need to explain, then?”

  “It means the iron was cold forged, not hot forged.”

  “That still doesn’t help me.”

  “Cold forging produces a stronger, purer final shape than hot forging, ya feel me, but it’s hard as fuck to do, especially on iron, because iron is too strong. Cold forging requires a lot of big, heavy machines, and iron can be hardened in other ways, so they don’t fucking cold forge it.”

  “If it’s so hard to do, why do it? Why go through all that trouble?”

  “Because somebody really wanted a fucking cold iron chain
.” He just stared at me for a minute. “I thought you said your family weren’t hunters?”

  “As far as I know, they weren’t. Why?”

  “Because this is a fucking fairy trap.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure.” He motioned for me to come closer, and despite the fact that I had a deep-seated childhood fear of this cell, I reluctantly drew nearer. “We know iron burns those fairy bitches, right? Cold iron is worse. A powerful enough fairy can fucking break through iron. They’ll sure as fuck have some burn scars afterwards, but they can do it. Cold iron can’t be broken. Not even by a fucking queen bitch.” He moved on to the third chain. “This is cold, too.”

  I didn’t like being inside of the cell any longer than I needed to. As I walked beyond the door, I said, “Well, that’s very enlightening. Do you want to see the garage now?”

  He stared at the chains for another minute and then looked back at me with a grin. “Fucking A, brother. Let’s check that shit out. You gonna let me test drive one?”

  As we walked up the stairs and out the back door, we headed to the garage. While most of my cars were expensive, imported European cars, he took special interest in the 1965 Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe. The car was designed to take down Ferrari in GT road races, and at nearly seven-point-five million dollars, it was one of the jewels in my collection. We fired her up, and I let London sit in the driver’s seat and rev the engine, but I was adamant about keeping it in the garage.

  After that, he wanted to see the gun range. London detoured by his truck while I hobbled over to the barn and pulled around in Crestmohr’s Rhino, which was the all-terrain big brother of a golf cart. I knew there was no way I’d be getting around the property on my crutches. London loaded several long cases and a briefcase from the bed of his truck and set them in the back of the Rhino, and we were off.