Frostbite (Modern Knights Book 1) (6 page)

Fast and frantic, an insane jumble of ranting;

Yog-Shoggoth Abishai Nostaru Nofar Immi-shoggoth.

Yog-Shoggoth Abishai Nostaru Nofar Immi-shoggoth.

Then, she is next to me, her face nuzzled up against mine. She kisses me, her lips seeking deep purchase in mine. Her taste is salty, metallic…bloody from where she bit her lip. She pulls back from me with a mischievous grin. “Blood of a virgin. Better be careful.”

“You know we could fix that. No mad priest could use you for a sacrifice if you weren’t a virgin.”

“Mmm. I suppose you’d chant over me as we made love.”

“Only if you wanted me to.”

She pulls back into her story-time position. “Finish the story. If I like the way it ends, maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“Let’s see, where was I …?”

Yog-Shoggoth Abishai Nostaru Nofar Immi-shoggoth.

Yog-Shoggoth Abishai Nostaru Nofar Immi-shoggoth.

Each syllable of that dark tongue echoed

Over water and stone and I knew then what must be done.

When I pause to turn the page, it is no longer Sarai on the couch with me, but Agent Devereaux. “We found my body, you know.” She pulls off her t-shirt to reveal the bloody cavity between her breasts. “Why? Why did you kill me?”

“Blood of a virgin. How could I have known?”

I hear Duchess’ voice whisper in my ear. “You’re clearly not human. You ate her. Every last drop.”

I dreamed that same dream with slight variations five times that night. In the worst of them, she made love to me while I stared at the hole where her heart should have been.

7

T
he chauffeur delivered me to an IHOP six blocks from the hotel. I got quite the assortment of looks in the parking lot. I wondered whether it was my jeans, t-shirt, and leather jacket contrasting with my transportation or the fact that it was a limo in front of a pancake restaurant. I suspected most of them craned their necks to see whose bodyguard I was. Duchess wasn’t with me, so the celebrity gawkers had to be disappointed.

I happily noted Dorothy’s presence in the parking lot, her silver hood shining under a fresh coat of wax. I took good care of her, but she looked fit for royalty after Duchess’ people got through with her. Whoever she worked for, he didn’t believe in doing things halfway. Assuming there was a new battery to go with the makeover, I would have to sincerely thank him.

“Unless he also wired a bomb to her ignition. Don’t forget he sent Duchess to kill us,”
my inner voice was kind to remind.

“Only if I was guilty. And he wanted to kill me himself. If you’re going to spew paranoid conspiracy theories, at least keep your facts straight.”

The restaurant was mostly empty. The senior citizen early birds had finished their meals, while the late morning brunchers were still packing their kids off to school. Kids were still going to school, right? It was mid-October, but I didn’t have a clue what day of the week it was. Windowless cells have that effect on a lot of their residents, but I wasn’t much of a calendar and appointment book guy before that. Thursday, I decided. It felt like a Thursday.

It wasn’t hard to pick out Duchess’ boss. For starters, he could have purchased ownership of the restaurant for substantially less than what he had spent on his black designer suit. It had been tailored to his unique frame, lending him an air of grace and sophistication, while still providing hints of the iron muscle underneath. A white Nero-collar shirt with silver buttons contained his large neck and bulging chest. His black hair was neatly trimmed, every wisp held in place by a veneer of hair spray. Beyond his well-coifed exterior, however, he radiated a commanding aura. I doubted any lesser mortal could be called “boss” by Duchess Deluce.

As I showed myself to his table, I tried to relax my vision to look through him. An old herb woman in Oregon had taught me how to see auras, a talent I didn’t practice nearly as often as I should have. I pretended I didn’t do it often because it was an invasion of privacy, but the truth was that it was too much like work. It was hard on the eyes to let loose of my focus, but it was even harder if what I saw forced me to take action. I can’t see someone depressed, in pain, or haunted by a spiritual parasite and not try to help. Deep down, I have the heart of a knight. Like most knights, I’d had the crap kicked out of me more often than I could count for sticking my nose where it didn’t belong. Both dragons and damsels can be equally resentful of outside interference, no matter how well intentioned.

However, meeting a fae-blooded telepath reminded me that I was part of a much larger universe. If pressed, I called myself a wizard, but that was only out of convenience. I couldn’t throw a fireball or call lightning out of a cloudless sky, but I was capable of things that would make even the most cynical atheist pause. Most of my magic fell into one of three distinct categories: Foresight, Chance, or Emotion. Aura sight was part of the first and mostly involved convincing my conscious brain to shut up long enough for me to hear how my unconscious brain viewed the world. If Duchess’ boss was anything other than human…

But human was all he was. His aura blurred in around the edges, but looked much like any other essence. I briefly closed my eyes to get a better feel for the color by contrasting it against the back of my eyelids. Most auras have a rainbow assortment of colors with band thickness and distance from the body telling the story of the person’s current internal state. His revealed only a granite gray shell, the outside layer concealing all else. It was human, but it was disciplined human. He either meditated regularly or was using something akin to my eggshell shield spell. The choice of color, cold, hard, and unyielding, spoke volumes about the man.

“Mr. Fisher. Sit, please.” His voice fit both the outfit and the aura. I thought I heard a slight Boston accent on the r’s, more “ah” than “er”. I did as he asked, taking up residence in the booth across from him.

With a gloved hand, he produced an ivory white business card and slid it across to me. In silver letters, “Lucien Valente” had been embossed in the center of the card. No phone numbers, titles, or e-mail addresses cluttered it; only his name appeared. While I inspected it, he removed the glove before grabbing a piece of toast off his plate and holding it out to me. “Take, eat.”

“Do this in remembrance of me?” I added.

“Something like that. I know many of your kind regard guest right as important. It’s not…kosher to harm someone you’ve shared a meal with.”

I nodded. “Many Arab tribes believe it makes men family until the next sunrise. Refusing to eat is almost an act of war.” I accepted the bread and took a nibble. “I hope you don’t mind if I order my own plate for the rest.”

He smiled, but said nothing until after our waitress came and left. I ordered a coffee, a tall stack of pancakes, fried eggs, and hash browns. I was on his tab, I assumed, and I was never one to skimp on a free meal. It’s like the twelfth law of wizarding, I think.

“Colin Fisher.” He rolled my name around on his tongue. “Do you know who I am?”

“Lucien Valente?” I ventured.

He nodded.

“Never heard of you before…though I must say I’m impressed so far.”

“Are you familiar with Valente International?”

I racked my brain for a moment. “Big multinational conglomerate. Owns that coffee chain and the dollar discount stores.”

“Among other things. I like to keep my interests diversified. I also don’t care for advertising my success. Bill Gates, I’m not.”

I let out a low whistle. I had friends in environmental movements who liked to go on long rants about the evils of multinationals. The more I thought about it, the more I recalled Valente International been spoken of in a tone of voice generally reserved for topics such as Nazis or terrorists. “That Lucien Valente, huh?”

“Yes, Mr. Fisher.” He paused for a sip of his coffee. I noticed he drank it black, a trait I associated with strong character and honesty, probably because it matched my own preference. “Miss Deluce seems to think I should hire you on as my personal wizard. Was that her idea or yours?”

“Hers. I didn’t know who her boss was. And Duchess didn’t strike me as someone whose opinion could be pushed around or manipulated. If she says she thought of it, she must have.”

“No,” he conceded. “She is an exceptionally stubborn secretary.” I must have cocked an eyebrow in surprise, because he responded to my body language. “Yes, secretary, executive assistant, whatever the in-fashion term is. She provides external order to my life and activities, and acts in my stead when I am otherwise engaged. I believe the archaic term suits her better: she is my seneschal.”

We sat in silence after that. My breakfast arrived and I began to eat. I could tell Lucien was waiting for something, but I didn’t have a clue what. So I attended to what I did understand: blueberry syrup atop hot golden pancakes.

I was four or five bites in when Lucien started to laugh. “I give up, Mr. Fisher. I’ve had twelve other personal wizards before you. Most were con artists or one-trick ponies. Near worthless. But I think I like you.”

I had enough etiquette to swallow before replying. “Why’s that?”

“You’re not trying to impress me. No dire prophecies of doom or demonstrations of power. You don’t need to. That’s the sign of real power, isn’t it? When you don’t feel the need to show it off, it means you really have it.”

“I know a little,” I confessed. “Enough to know that I’m not the biggest fish in the sea. But my luck and love spells pack a mean punch.” My last luck spell, in fact, had accidentally killed its recipient. He won a quarter million dollars on the roulette wheel before karma straightened itself out in the form of a speeding bus. After that, I was very careful to limit my scope when I tinkered with probability. None of that seemed particularly interview-relevant, however. Scratch that. It probably was interview-relevant, but I suddenly wanted to get this job and thought that anecdote might sour the deal.

“Ooh, ooh, tell him about the couple on their honeymoon you put in the nuthouse. I love that story.”

“Hmm.” He proceeded. “What about curses? Do you know how to break them?”

“Depends on how it got there in the first place. It can be as simple as getting the person who placed it to unspeak the curse or as complex as paying reparations.” All of which I understood in theory. I was well read in virtually every field of magic. In practice, however, I had never seen a real curse in action. From what I had studied, that was part of how curses operated: they blended into the background, subtly tilting reality toward their destination.

“This one is not simple, but perhaps some form of reparations could be made. I’m afraid I don’t know who placed it on me.”

“I see.” I chewed it over, along with a mouthful of egg. “I’d have to study it, then. How do you know you’ve been cursed?”

He held up a hand. “We’ll get to that, if I hire you. Breaking it will be your first professional duty. Could you do it?”

I should have insisted on more details or revealed my inexperience in the curse-breaking arena. But the truth was I was enjoying eating in restaurants, sleeping in hotels, and not worrying about how to pay for it. I was a good vagabond, but I knew I couldn’t live that life forever. So I lied. “Of course I can.”

“Sure, you’ll lie to a murderous, powerful lord of capitalism, but not to the FBI about a little thing like murder.”

His steely blue eyes dug into me. After a minute, he leaned back in his seat. “I think you can. I really do.”

“Is this the part of the interview where I ask what your company does and what my responsibilities will be?”

“Valente International maintains form and balance in a world determined to plunge into chaos. It makes me money in the process, but I assure you it also serves humanitarian interests, the greater good. I’m what you might call the Devil You Know. I may be evil, but I keep much worse things at bay. I make sure there’s a food store and coffee shop every other block. I don’t like it when people disappear or families get slaughtered in their homes, because the dead and the abducted can’t spend money or work jobs. I want you to know that up front, Colin Fisher. I am evil, but I’m your evil. I uphold society and, in turn, society upholds me.”

“Your honesty is refreshing.” I tried not to shudder. “Drugs? The meth they found on the clerk, he was selling that for you?”

“A subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary, I assure you. In a perfect world, I would only peddle pot. Ice makes people dangerous, unpredictable. But he was an employee, regardless, and I take his murder as a personal insult.”

“So you’re like the mob?”

His smile was predatory. “No, I’m a businessman. But legalities don’t define the limits of my enterprise. Again, I’m the Devil You Know. If I didn’t handle it, others, less pleasant than me, would. Have you seen the news coming out of Juarez or Tijuana?”

“Point well taken,” I said. “But I’ve already got the FBI interested in me. I’m not sure crime would be the best career move for me.”

“I’m aware of the bureau’s interest in you. Your job tasks need not delve into the more illicit activities connected to me. My personal wizard answers only to me and handles three responsibilities. First, I need you to advise me regarding the supernatural. Second, I have agreements with the fae courts, a truce of sorts. You will act as my emissary in any such matters. Third, you will protect me from the magic of my enemies. There are plenty of people out there who think they can do the job better than I can, and I’m certain the serious contenders have personal wizards as well. In exchange for performing these services, you will have access to my Inner Circle, the resources of my various enterprises, and …” He slid an envelope across the table. “A healthy paycheck.”