The Ballad Nocturne (The Midnight Defenders Book 3) Page 13

  “How long does that take?”

  “Standard training is eight months to a year.”

  “I’m not waiting that long.”

  “There aren’t any other teachers,” I said.

  “So if there were…?”

  “There isn’t.”

  “Terry said he’ll train me. Doctor Cooper estimates with the way he heals, he should be back in shape in three weeks. Maybe two.”

  “Ape? No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he wasn’t trained by the Hand. He was in the fucking mafia.”

  She grunted and threw her hands up. “You’re just making excuses!”

  As she turned away, the door behind me opened, and DeNobb came in with the suitcase. “What took you so long?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Didn’t want to interrupt.”

  “Would’ve been nice if you had.” I pointed to the corner. “Set it there. We’re leaving.” I turned to Nadia. “Do you need anything before we go?”

  Nadia was standing at the bookshelf, tracing the titles on the book spines with her finger, her back to me.

  “Nadia. We’re heading out.”

  Silence.

  DeNobb’s hand found my shoulder. “Just give her time.”

  “Don’t fucking touch me,” I said, turning and walking out of the door.

  DeNobb followed, closing it behind him. “It’s okay with me if you train her,” he said. “She’s a badass. She knows a hell of a lot more than me, and she can move like nobody’s business.”

  “Who asked you?” I opened the driver’s door and started the car.

  He climbed in the passenger side. “Seriously, with her ability and the way you raised her, she could be incredible.”

  Nadia’s ability was to alter the inertia of objects by conjuring colored energy discs. Red energy made objects in motion come to an abrupt stop, while green energy discs made stationary objects suddenly move. This energy manifested as flat, round circles, similar to a compact disc, that materialized out of thin air. Unlike me, she wasn’t born with this ability, but after it developed, Ape and I spent endless hours at the gun range training her to throw them accurately up to 40 yards.

  The truth was, with the capacity she showed in that training, as a thirteen year old girl, there was no doubt in my mind that she would be a quick study in field work, also. What I told DeNobb was accurate: I’d seen too many people die in this business. It wasn’t that Nadia wasn’t ready. It was that I wasn’t. She was my girl. The only fucking one I had left. I wasn’t losing her, too.

  I looked at DeNobb. “If you say one more word about it, you’re fucking walking to town, understand.”

  He put his hands up. “It’s none of my business.”

  “Damn right.”

  I pulled out onto the road and headed into town.

  “So where we headed?” he asked.

  “I want to see if we can get a reading from the symbol I found outside Ezra’s shop. Then, if we’re lucky, maybe we can pop back in on St. Clair and get a version of his story that comes a little closer to the truth.”

  DeNobb nodded. “Can I ask a question?”

  I looked over at him, hesitant.

  “Ezra called the spirit world Fairy. I thought fairies were, you know, a thing.”

  “A thing?”

  “Like…Tinkerbell. A creature.”

  “No,” I said. “A Fairy is just a term for one of the Sidhe.” I tried to think of what Nadia said, about being patient. “That’s why I don’t call it Fairy.”

  “What do you call it then?”

  “Eldamar. It’s what Huxley always called it.”

  “Hold on. I’ve heard that before. Tolkien, right? That’s the land of the Elves.”

  I nodded. “Hux told me many times that Tolkien wasn’t just a writer, but a hunter, also.”

  “You’re kidding?! Tolkien was…like us?”

  “He wasn’t in the Hand, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t affiliated.”

  “That’s badass. And CS Lewis? Was he a hunter, too?”

  “Maybe. Ape will try to tell you Sinatra was, so why not?”

  He nodded. “Thanks for…explaining that.”

  I didn’t say anything. After a minute, he said, “So this plan of yours, is there room in there for a burger? I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.”

  “Ezra didn’t feed you?”

  “She offered, but you had me all paranoid. Didn’t want to eat poison.”

  I realized I hadn’t eaten anything, either. “Fine. There’s a bakery near the church.”

  16

  As I pulled into town, I remembered the dark man in the top hat and decided to drive around to see if I spotted him again. The town wasn’t very big, just a few streets populated by businesses, and when he proved not to be seen, I parked. We walked to the bakery, and as I opened the door, I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye.

  I turned just in time to see a tall figure wearing black coattails disappear around the corner. I looked at DeNobb and handed him Ape’s credit card. “Order me something. I’ll be right back.”

  He shrugged, took the card, and disappeared into the air conditioning while I followed after the man from earlier. I expected him to be long gone by the time I rounded the corner, which is why I nearly ran into him.

  He was just standing there on the pavement, turned and waiting for me, as though he knew I would follow. Being only a few feet from him as I was, he was taller than I had guessed, maybe six-foot-six. He was dressed exactly as before, in loose, dark pants, combat boots, and a long black trench coat and weathered top hat. He skin was so dark he looked almost burnt, and yet, scrawled all over his face and broad chest were strange sigils. It reminded me in no small part of how Huxley had looked. The lines on his face and hands were curvy, half circles and twisting vines, but the lines on his chest formed a picture of what looked like a cross on an alter with stars all around it. While I first took the lines to be tattooed on, I quickly realized that it was actually raised lines in his skin, giving him a textured approach that a blind man could feel.

  The man looked haggard, thin, his face almost skeletal. His teeth were a color that had at one-time been yellow but were now more of a yellowish-grey, and they chomped down on a lit cigar.

  “Fuck,” I said, startled. “Almost gave me a…”

  That’s when he reached up with a bony hand and removed the dark sunglasses.

  I’ve seen some crazy shite in my life and met some real nutters, but nobody had eyes like this bloke. Or maybe it was that he didn’t have eyes. Just cloudy white swirls where his bloody eyeballs should have been. Double fuck.

  Still, Huxley’s first rule was always appear confident.

  I swallowed my surprise (and maybe just a wee bit of fear) and said, “I saw you earlier. Do I… do we know each other?”

  It was like he had been looking directly over my head, as if he’d expected me to approach from a much greater distance and was still watching for me. He blinked, and with that motion, the white swirling mist became normal-looking eyeballs, which he pointed in my direction. He seemed to regard me for a few seconds. Then he put the sunglasses back on, took a drag from his cigar that lit the tip up like a furnace, and removed the cigar from his mouth. He held the smoke in, and I waited for him to blow it out, but he didn’t.

  Eventually, he spoke. His voice was cold and nasally, and, while it’s possible I imagined it, actually lowered the temperature around us. “I have not met you before, fuck-man.” He also spoke with a very thick Caribbean-flavored accent, not unlike Huxley’s own.

  “Come on. I think we have. It was a long time ago now. You were meeting with a mate of mine, Huxley.”

  His face had been fairly expressionless up ‘til now. At the mention of Hux’s name, his brow furled just a tad, and there was something like curiosity in his voice when he said, “Solomon Huxley?”

  I nodded.

  “You know him then? Is the fucker ne
arby?”

  “‘Fraid not. Hux died ten years back.”

  The man looked roughly concerned for a moment. He turned away, looking off at something I couldn’t see. It was almost like he was listening to something. I couldn’t hear anything. Just some distant traffic, the murmur of people further on down the street.

  “How is it that I sense his presence, then?” the man asked.

  I shrugged. “Search me, Mate.”

  He didn’t say anything for a time, just pointed his glasses in my general direction. “You lie like a filthy dog, fuck-man. Solomon Huxley is here. You don’t keep him from me. But…” His voice trailed off and he took another pull from the cigar. “You do speak truth of his passing. Yet, fuck-man, I come here now to this place because Huxley is here. I clearly sense that fucker now. It piss me off I cannot find him.”

  “I don’t really know… Wait. Second thought, maybe I do know what you mean.”

  He took a step toward me. “Come, fuck-man, tell me this.” He put his skeletal hand on my shoulder and stooped a little to look me in the eye. I was glad for the dark shades, for only seeing my eyes reflected back at me in those lenses. “Tell me where Huxley is.”

  “Are you saying you can sense his body? Did that just start this morning?”

  He gave one slow, deliberate nod of his head. The corner of his lip curled eagerly, allowing little plumes of smoke to escape over his dead teeth. His breath was fetid, like garbage, and I fought not to gag.

  I didn’t know who this bloke was, but I knew one thing. He wasn’t human. Furthermore, he didn’t talk like one of the Sidhe, which meant he was a being of greater power. Given how unsettled he left me, possibly a Fallen angel. I thought back to St. Clair’s crack about the knight of Hell. Was I now staring him in the face?

  Be it angel or Sidhe, he wouldn’t give anything away for free. Shit was a game with them. Bartering. A trickster could be tricked into giving up what it knew, but this bloke didn’t strike me as a trickster. He was something else entirely. Something…fucking terrifying. Since he wouldn’t give me anything for free, I sure as shit wasn’t giving up what I knew for any less.

  “I’ll tell you,” I said. “For your name.”

  He smiled. “I like you, fuck-man. You play this game. It is good. Fucking good.” He laughed. It didn’t sound happy. It chilled the marrow in my bones. “I know I am not the first you have dealt with.” His hand moved from my shoulder to my arm, the same arm that, only a few months back, had received a mark from Aegir. I agreed to help him take out some gargoyles and got a new tattoo out of it. “I could smell the fucking sea god on you before you approached.”

  “What does he smell like, then?”

  He ignored me. “Your deal with Aegir will not interfere should you make a separate deal with me.”

  “Does that mean we have a deal?”

  He nodded. “I accept.”

  “You first, then.”

  “I am called Samedi. That is the name Solomon Huxley knew me by.”

  “So you were mates, then?”

  He stared at me, quietly. He gave no indication of anything else.

  “Samedi,” I repeated. “Like…Baron Samedi?”

  He nodded again, just once.

  “Fuck.” I wasn’t an astute voodoo practitioner like Huxley, but I was familiar with certain ideals and practices. Like the loa. They were almost gods, but not quite. I think voodoo believed in one central deity, and the loa all served him. They were minor gods. Maybe angels. But the loa interacted with humans, and like with the fucking Greeks and, well…every other civilization, the gods presided over specific areas, each having their own function. Baron Samedi was the loa of the dead. Grave yards, the underworld.

  “Your turn, fuck-man,” he said with a grin. “Or I will tear out your spleen with my teeth.”

  That wasn’t a threat I got every day, and I certainly didn’t doubt he would make good on that. I forced a smile, forced myself to remain standing there, almost nose-to-nose with him. I forced myself to breath out of the corner of my mouth so I wouldn’t be sick.

  “Easy there, mate. I’m just processing this information. Not every day you meet a bloke such as yourself, who’s bloody owed such great respect, just strolling along the street.” I was hoping to appeal to his ego, calm him down a little. The loa, like all other gods with little g’s, were just ego-driven angels, wanting their share of man’s affections and praise. “His old lady had a doll, mate. Your kind of doll. Pinpricks and the like. Made of burlap.”

  He didn’t say anything at first, but he did take his hand away, and he did stand back up, which allowed me to take a deep breath. “A poppet?”

  “Why are you looking for him?” I asked.

  “That fucker Huxley owes me and went to his end before I could claim my due, fuck-man, but you don’t worry about that none.” He took a drag from the cigar, which was now little bigger than my thumb. Again, he didn’t exhale, but he seemed calmer somehow. When he spoke again, he said, “You must bring me the poppet, fuck-man.”

  “I can do that, mate. Sure. Easy peasy. But first, you do me a solid.”

  Without warning, he removed his glasses and those swirling white pools he called eyes danced around. I didn’t want to look, but I felt compelled to keep watching. I couldn’t even blink. Not even when I felt the sudden cold behind my own eyes.

  After a second, he put the glasses back on and the cold in my head disappeared. He shook his head and said simply, “No.”

  “The fuck do you mean, No? You’re the loa of the fucking dead.”

  His skeletal hand reached out and touched my face, and while the hand was cold, the rest of my body became suddenly very warm, feverish. Except around my neck. I remembered the little iron chain I wore there and pulled it from beneath my shirt collar. The ring that hung on the chain was a simple design, made of silver and bearing a six-sided star. The Ring of Solomon.

  Along with Anna’s pool, I also inherited the Biblical king’s ring from the Bogey. The king had used it to bind and control demons. Brom had used it to control Seattle’s homeless population, bending them to his will.

  Because iron burned spirits, I touched the chain to his wrist, and he let go immediately, but not before a little sizzle. I didn’t wait for him to get pissed off, didn’t wait for some stupid speech about insolence and how dare I. He stepped back with the shock of the iron, and I stepped forward, brandishing the ring, holding it up for him to see. He saw it. And he recognized it. I could tell by the way his entire body went suddenly rigid. He just stared at me as I said, “A few months ago, I tried to use this on Aegir. I didn’t know the incantation then, but I’ve since learned it. It wasn’t easy to come by, but when your mate can’t do much because he’s stuck in a bed, he’ll eventually find the information he’s looking for.”

  Not three seconds after I started chanting the ancient Hebrew, Samedi began to laugh. The fear and apprehension that he had initially displayed at spying the ring melted quickly away.

  Maybe laughter isn’t the right word. Cackling would be more accurate. Samedi threw his head back and lost it like a nutter. He howled in a fit for a solid thirty seconds. Then he righted himself, formed his mouth into a sort of angry line, and swatted my hand to the side. The action was so unexpected that I only held on to one end of the chain, and the ring slipped off the other end and struck the wall.

  As Solomon’s Ring collided with the wall, it shattered. Like grandma’s favorite old vase. The pieces fell to the ground, and Samedi continued to laugh. Although this time, it was more of a chuckle.

  “I am not a trickster, fuck-man, that you can fool with your trinkets and baubles.”

  “Bauble, my arse! That was the bloody Ring of Solomon!”

  “Then maybe it was a trickster that sold it to you, if you believe it to be the king’s own instead of a fucking knock-off. I hope you got a discount, fuck-man.” He produced a new cigar, bit the tip off, and lit it, taking a few solid puffs. Once it was lit, he chuckled ag
ain. “Did you really mean to control me with that ring?”

  I stared at the pieces of ring on the ground, both confused and angry. How could it not have been the right ring? It was what Brom had used to control all of those people…

  “You won’t help me,” I said, not looking at him. “So yeah, I thought maybe I could persuade you to.”

  “I will not help you because I cannot, you fucking stupid human. All these years and you still only dabble in the spirit realm. That is far more dangerous than you can fucking imagine. At least Huxley knew the risks before paying the prices needed.”

  “You’re the loa of the dead,” I told him.

  “You speak truth. That does not mean I can bring her back from the dead, fuck-man. That is not the order of things. I heal the sick on their deathbed, yes, but she has crossed the threshold. It is too late for her. Your Anna is beyond the Veil.”

  Hearing her name from his cold, rotting lips was a pain that I can’t fully describe. The closest I can say is it was like a knife stabbed into my chest, but was both hot and cold at the same time. It was the worst form of violation I could imagine.

  “Then why do I see her?!” I shouted, looking at him.

  He nodded his head, saying nothing.

  I reached for my phone, trying to pull up my app, but couldn’t connect. I growled at it, smacking the screen, but it was no use. “There’s a pool. A sort of…wishing well. Beneath the bloody Space Needle in Seattle.”

  Samedi looked in my direction, and the black lenses of his glasses revealed the image of Anna I had seen so many times in her pool over the past months. He smiled something cold and sinister, and then he nodded. “I will give you the answers you seek, fuck-man, in exchange for Huxley’s poppet.”

  “I don’t have it on me.”

  “You take me to it, then.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got some shite I’m working on, but I’ll bring it to you.”

  “Agreed.” He took a long pull of his cigar. “Are you familiar with Ley Lines?”

  “A little,” I said. It was a concept first introduced to me a long time ago, but not a topic I thought about regularly. “But humor me.”