Frostbite (Modern Knights Book 1) (3 page)

“What the hell was that?”

“Cherokee, maybe. It was Native American, but I can’t place it. And what are you asking me for? You’re the linguistic genius.”

“So you jump ship on the whole 'I’m just your shadow-side' thing when there’s blame to be placed, but when I come up with all the good ideas...”

“You know, I can find another gag.”

“Okay, yeah. It was native. But it was OLD native.”

“You’re thinking Mayan or Incan?”

“Think older. Think whatever it was they all spoke before they came over the ice bridge.”

“Did you catch any of it?”

“No, but I don’t need to translate to know what it was saying. It was threatening to eat our heart out, too.”

“That’s about what I thought. Death threats have a rhythm all their own.”

My internal monologue was shattered by the ringing phone.

BRRRINGG!

I stared at it, hand trembling.

BRRRINGG!

I reached, but I couldn’t quite grab it before...

BRRRINGG!

I snatched it up, determined to deal with the monster. “Look, I don’t know who...”

“Colin?” The speaker whispered, soft, distant, and breathless.

I was scared out of my mind, contemplating sorcerous counter-measures for an unknown assailant…but I still recognized that voice. “Dad?”

“Colin, Colin…I can’t see you, Colin.”

“Dad, it’s all right, I’m here.”

“Colin, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you before…I know you didn’t hurt that girl.”

“Sarai. Her name was Sarai, Dad.”

“Sarai.” The sound was faint, as if the receiver were drifting away from his mouth. “I’m sorry I didn’t handle it better. I knew…I knew you were a good boy, Colin. I’m sorry, sorry, sorrryyyy...”

I nodded, a single tear rolling down my cheek. “I’m sorry I didn’t make it back soon enough. I would’ve liked to see you one last time. I love you, Dad.”

I stood there with the phone pressed hard against my ear, hoping for an “I love you” that never came. The line, like my father, was dead.

First Interlude

T
he gas station convenience store could have been a twin to the one outside Lake Thunderbird, Oklahoma: snacks, hygiene, dry goods, automotive accessories, and refrigerated items. At that other store, something very bad had recently happened. At this one, something very bad was in the process of happening.

Jacob Darien held the revolver casually, comfortably, but it was pointed at the clerk all the same. His tone of voice suggested this was old hat for him. “Two strips of beef jerky, five lottery tickets, and all your money. You want anything, Dizzy?”

The scantily clad redhead draped over his left shoulder picked up at the mention of her pet name. “Umm…bubblegum. Can I get some bubblegum, Jakey-poo?”

He looked at her and the clerk thought hard about the shotgun under the counter. “Really? My name in front of our guest?”

“You used mine first, my consort,” Dizzy replied, only half chastised.

”I doubt they have a birth certificate on you.” Jacob’s tone softened, his accent changed. “Go forth and get thy gum, my child.”

She kissed him on the cheek and went prancing off down the candy aisle. “Thank you, Reverend. Jakey was getting a little boring.”

The clerk slowly lowered his hands to the register. “All right, all right, I don’t want any trouble. You can have the money.”

The robber’s face had relaxed, gotten older, the voice more fatherly now. “Bless you, my son. It is the will of the goddess that you doeth thus. Do as thou are told and all will go well with you.” He turned his head to the girl again. “My daughter, I shall require a Dr Pepper to quencheth my thirsteth.”

He turned back just when the clerk had gathered the confidence to go for the gun. “I’m a doctor, too. My degree is in sophistry, young man. An excellent field of study for any man of the cloth, don’t you think?”

The clerk shoved the money into a plastic sack, unable to think of how he should reply to that. “There you go.”

The robber known as Jakey-poo and Reverend glanced down at the bag. “I believeth my host specifically requested beef jerky and lottery tickets as well. I do not bear false witness in this, do I?”

“Right, right,” the clerk turned to the jerky jar. “I just…I’ve never been robbed before.”

He put two sticks of dried meat on the counter, then reached underneath as if going for the scratch tickets. His right hand wrapped around the stock of the gun when the man spoke again. “Where is the rest of it?”

The man’s voice had changed again. This time it held neither the casualness of the first nor the joviality of the second. Now he sounded like a cold-hearted British movie villain. The clerk’s nerves froze at his tone.

Dizzy yelled from the coolers. “Hey, Mr. Osborne, you’re not supposed to be out during a creative acquisition. Jakey-poo said so.”

“He’ll thank me later.” The man’s eyes never left the clerk. “This young man was just thinking about trying out his boss’s gun.”

The clerk whipped it out and leveled it at Jacob-Reverend-Osborne. “Maybe I am. Get the fuck out.”

“Pull the trigger and you’re a dead man,” the robber growled.

“Ooo,” Dizzy clapped, dropping three bottles of Dr. Pepper on the floor. “A real Wild West showdown.” One of the bottles began spraying brown foam in every direction.

The voice returned to its initial bored coolness as he tilted his head down to his shoulder. “I’ve got this, Osborne.” When he turned back to the clerk, there was no threat in his voice. “Put it down, Stephen. It’s not your money, it’s the store’s. They’ll never miss it. Insurance will repay them for every dime we take and then some. The only ones getting screwed over here are the insurance companies.”

“I’m telling you man, get the fuck out, and take your freaky girlfriend with you. I don’t want to call the cops, but I’m not...”

He lost his voice when Jacob gestured with his free hand. The clerk had been so fixated on the gun hand, he barely noticed the motion. The shotgun leapt from his hands and sailed across the front toward the magazine rack. The robber never touched it, but it had been torn from his fingers all the same.

The last thing he remembered before he passed out was the girl, giggling with ecstasy. “Eek, we’re showing off our magic. Yay, Jakey-poo…I mean, stranger I’ve never met before.” As she jumped up and down, the clerk made note not only of her firm breasts, but also of the pair of fiery wings sprouting out of her back and the tiny curved horns appearing on her forehead.

Jacob hopped the counter, took five tickets off the Lucky 7’s roll, then walked back around, stopping to pick up the shotgun. He cracked it open like a pro. “No ammo.” He tossed the gun toward Dizzy.

She caught it and moved up to kiss him. “Could come in handy anyway. Maybe goddess is telling us we need more firepower.”

“More?” Jacob cocked an eyebrow at her. “Baby, you’re already traveling with the three most powerful wizards on the planet and that’s just what I’m packing in this body. What do you think we’re here to do, start Armageddon?”

A dark voice answered Jacob from the depths of his subconscious.

“Pretty much. Shouldn’t be too much longer before we can get the party started.”

PART TWO

PROBLEM WITH AUTHORITY

“The mark of truth is that it’s so obscenely complex when you get up close with it that it would drive you mad to stare at it for longer than ten seconds. Occam’s razor isn’t for understanding the world; it’s for slitting your wrists and gouging out your eyes before such understanding turns you into a raving lunatic.”

- Jadim Cartarssi, Amateur Philosopher and Part-time Raving Lunatic

1

I hate to admit it, but that wasn’t my first time in police custody. I’d never been formally charged with anything more serious than Public Nuisance, but I have been questioned on everything from Jaywalking to Murder for Hire. It went with the territory of using my car as my address of record. It wasn’t politically correct to say it out loud, but when something really nasty happened, standard police procedure still involved rounding up all the gypsies, tramps, and thieves.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t just a shiftless vagrant. I was
the
shiftless vagrant who found the body. One might think that reporting a crime to the proper authorities would have granted me a small measure of trust (and/or immunity from prosecution). It hadn’t. The only good news was that they hadn’t officially arrested me for anything yet. I think they were hoping I would be decent enough to confess and save them the trouble of investigating any further.

The first officer on the scene was off-duty at the time, a county deputy who happened to be drinking at the bar across the street. The alcohol made him friendly enough…until he saw the body. From the retching sounds, I’m guessing that his liquid courage was congealed in a puddle next to the deceased. After that, it was all sideways glances at me from a safe distance across the room.

Two uniforms from the nearest town arrived next. One of them took down my version of events, while the other spoke to the deputy, well out of earshot. I’m not sure what the townies made of it other than deciding that the whole incident was not a town matter. More calls were made and, within the hour, the gas station was host to a statewide law enforcement convention. I maintained my post by the counter the whole time, hoping the assembled criminalists might forget they had a convenient scapegoat on hand. Unfortunately for me, they remembered.

It was well after midnight before I was escorted to a holding cell. A holding cell is for “witnesses” who were going to be “questioned” and who were, in legal theory at least, not under arrest. I held no delusions about my freedom. If I tried to leave, they would arrest me for the murder just to keep me there, whether they really believed I did it or not. My best bet was to play along and hope either they figured out I didn’t do it or I ran out the clock. Most states have rules regarding how long a suspect could be held without formal arrest, usually somewhere between 24 and 72 hours. I had no idea what the shot clock was in Oklahoma, but I was fairly certain there was one and it was slowly ticking in my favor.

They woke me up a little bit before five in the morning. I didn’t even bother to ask about breakfast. Like I said, it’s not my first time in police custody. True to form, they used the expected tricks: hard and fast while I was still waking up, a cold interrogation room, a wobbly chair, hunger, and a good cop/bad cop routine that was old when Abbot met Costello. The not-so-subtly implied message was that I could trade my confession for three meals a day and all the sleep I cared to get. Three different detectives took turns going over everything that happened at the store and my whereabouts, activities, attitudes, and habits over the last several months. I left out only the strange business with the phone call and personal information that I considered to be none of their business. Around noon, they gave up and sent me back to the holding cell.

I’m not proud to admit it, but when a guard brought me a plastic lunch tray, I ate its contents. I didn’t have a clue what it was, but I forced it down. It was the color of refried beans, the texture of paste, and it smelled vaguely of sweat, shame, and mold. Man does not live by Snickers bar alone, though in a perfect world, he would be able to.

I lost track of time at that point. I dozed off and without window or clock, I was at a loss to know whether I’d slept fifteen minutes or fifteen hours, though it felt more like the former. My mind sloughed through recent events, processing it all for meaning. The human subconscious is an amazing tool and I trusted mine to eventually overlay order and purpose on my latest misadventures. I was no longer worried about making it to Denver quickly or what I would say to my father when I finally saw him again. My dad was dead and we’d already exchanged our parting apologies. It was better the way it happened. Face to face, we would have choked, unable to say those dreaded un-masculine words: I’m sorry. As I said earlier, though, death changes people.

2

I
sat in a very different interrogation room compared to the Gulag predecessor they had me in this morning. This room was larger, cleaner, and more comfortable. There was no evidence of the base theatrics employed earlier. It might have made some people feel good, but the sudden switch made me nervous. If they didn’t feel the need to hammer a confession out of me, they either had the killer (which was good) and needed me as a witness,
or
they had enough evidence to convict me if the case went to trial (which was very, very not good). The two video cameras in the room, both trained on my assigned seat, suggested the latter.

The door opened and a new detective came in. At least, I took her to be a detective, though she certainly didn’t look the part. I guessed her to be five-four, with a pleasantly rounded shape that was easy on the eyes. Her straight brown hair provided an attractive frame for a face that appeared too young for such gruesome affairs as frozen men with missing hearts. She dressed like a detective, though: crisp, black pantsuit with a dark blue blouse. Her smile made a good effort at setting my heart aflutter, but my surroundings and recent experiences put a damper on the effect. There was something familiar about her, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.