The Dragon Conspiracy (14 page)

15

IAN
called Yasha for pickup, and we hightailed it to Eddie Laughlin’s place, hoping we weren’t too late.

Why the sudden concern for Sebastian du Beckett’s picker?

One, Denny had said that Eddie Laughlin had gone to ground. Two, we hadn’t heard a peep out of Eddie since he’d offered us a ride at the Met last night. In light of points one and two—and what’d just happened to Denny—Ian thought it’d be a good idea to check in on Eddie.

The gorgon seemed to be starting a series of sculptures entitled “Still Life with Art Dealers.” Technically Eddie was a picker, not a dealer, but when you’re a hungry young gorgon on a killing spree/feeding frenzy, you probably didn’t bother with a little detail like that.

Eddie Laughlin’s apartment building wasn’t in the worst part of town, but with a gorgon running amuck, having a heavily armed werewolf friend two days shy of a full moon made me feel a lot less jumpy about being there.

Unlike last night at the museum, I had a gun and it was a comforting weight under my jacket. It’d taken me a while to get used to carrying, but now I felt downright naked when I wasn’t. My official security blanket was two pounds of steel with silver bullets. It wasn’t warm or fuzzy, but it was a heck of a lot better at keeping nightmares away.

Ian didn’t buzz Eddie to be let in. He put the face of his watch against the door’s locking mechanism. Like nearly every building in Manhattan and the outer boroughs, you could only get in if a resident buzzed you in—or if your employer’s R&D department developed gadgets that Q would have been proud to give to 007.

The door obediently opened with a click, and we were in.

Until we knew what, if anything, was presently visiting Eddie, my partner preferred to keep our visit a surprise. At the same time, we didn’t want any surprises of our own. It was dark, and we were wearing what looked like sunglasses.

That extended to taking the stairs rather than the small elevator. Ian had taught me from the get-go that unless you needed to get to the top of the Empire State Building and had to have enough wind to talk King Kong off the ledge when you got there, you always took the stairs. Elevators were just coffins with bad Muzak. When you dealt with shapeshifters that could go from two legs to eight, and could scuttle down an elevator cable like a web, stairs were the safest way to get where you needed to be.

It was also the best way to get the drop on a gorgon possibly getting the drop on a colleague.

There was no window on the fire door opening onto the fourth floor. I knew the drill. I stood with my back against the wall next to Ian as he opened the door just enough to know if anything was on the other side waiting to bite our faces off or stare us into statuary. If my partner deemed our faces and the rest of us safe, we went in.

In an ideal world, the door opened on silent hinges; on a less than optimal day, they had a creak that’d wake the dead. Believe me, if you’re tracking something dead, you don’t want it awake when you find it. Luck was smiling on us; the fire door was quiet.

Ian took a set of lock picks out of his jacket pocket, and worked his magic on Eddie’s five locks. Even in this part of town, five seemed a mite excessive unless you had stuff you didn’t want stolen or stuff you’d stolen yourself.

Less than a minute later, we were inside.

No Eddie.

No gorgon.

There were avid collectors and there were hoarders.

Looking around Eddie’s place, I decided that avid collectors were basically hoarders, only with better focus. And, fortunately for us in Eddie’s case, taste.

Sebastian du Beckett’s Upper West Side brownstone looked like a museum in need of a curator.

Eddie Laughlin’s Lower East Side apartment looked like a museum reject bin in need of dusting—and with entirely too many items that needed explanation. Eddie hadn’t been turned to stone, but from the looks of his wall art, he might have taken a left turn toward the dark side. He wasn’t at home, but he’d left us plenty of presents that were a veritable treasure trove of incriminating evidence.

Floor plans of the Sackler Wing. Photos detailing security camera placement. But most damning of all—up-close photos of the sloped wall of windows the harpies had broken through to escape.

Ian’s jaw was doing that clench/unclench thing that said loud and clear that Eddie better be glad he wasn’t here.

We’d had to leave Denny’s body in Central Park, but Ian had called Vivienne Sagadraco and told her what we’d learned from Denny—and the surprise Denny had gotten from the gorgon while strolling in the park. The boss would arrange to have Denny retrieved and taken to the lab where I guessed he’d be keeping Sebastian du Beckett company.

When what we’d found was evidence linking Eddie to the robbery rather than a gorgon turning Eddie into the human version of a garden gnome, Ian decided we should turn what’d been a search-and-rescue mission into a search-and-seizure operation.

The apartment wasn’t large, but there was a lot to go through. Ian and I didn’t trash the place, but we didn’t worry about being tidy or leaving fingerprints. The boss had given us the green light to do a little breaking and entering. Once we’d gotten to the apartment and seen what there was to see, Ian phoned home again, and the boss had added evidence collection to our list of permitted activities.

If Eddie came back while we were there, Ian had several very pointed questions to ask him; and if Eddie didn’t like that we’d let ourselves in and made ourselves at home, he could take it up with Vivienne Sagadraco, who’d authorized it. With Sebastian du Beckett dead, Eddie had already lost one employer today. If he wasn’t guilty of anything, I couldn’t see him pissing off the only other source of gainful employment he had left.

Our presence here was bound to surprise Eddie, but if he was taking a walk on the dark side, it’d be a bad idea to let Eddie surprise us.

Yasha’s job was to search the front of the apartment and keep his wonderwolf ears perked for any sign of incoming company. Like I’d said before, Yasha could hear a tick burp at fifty yards. Hearing a breathing human coming down the hall would be easy peasy. I was almost hoping that Eddie would come home so Ian could ask nicely for him to tell us what the hell he was up to. And if nicely didn’t work, Yasha could hoist him upside down by one ankle. That’d always had an encouraging tendency to work.

Ian had found Eddie’s laptop and I was going through papers on his organizational disaster of a desk, while occasionally peeking over Ian’s shoulder. I’m a multitasking snoop.

Presently on the screen was what looked like some kind of schematic.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Just the specs for the glass in the window wall of the Sackler Wing.”

So much for innocent. Eddie’s computer was doing a fine job of proving him guilty. “That little son of a bitch.”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re saying that
Eddie
is our criminal mastermind?”

“Hardly. More like a man on the inside of SPI.”

Yasha’s growl was rippling, drawn out, and perfectly conveyed his feelings.

Ian grunted. “Couldn’t agree more, buddy. You got anything?” he asked me.

The contents of the top of Eddie’s desk had yielded if not pay dirt, at least something worth sharing. “Looks like Eddie’s developed a sudden interest in Russia’s last royal family.”

“Sounds promising.”

“Maybe I just haven’t reached the promised layer yet. Yasha, some of these books are in Russian.” I picked up four old-looking books with cracked leather bindings, and handed them over. “Would you see if you can find any juicy parts? One has a lot of photos of handwritten pages.”

“Eddie can read Russian?” Ian asked.

“There’s a ton of yellow Post-its attached to the pages,” I said. “Comments are written in English. Unless Eddie has someone else making notes for him, it appears there’s quite a few things we didn’t know about him.”

I started speed-reading both the Post-its and the loose printouts of whatever I found that was in English. I ran across a couple of pages that’d been copied from handwritten Russian originals, and passed those off to Yasha.

We worked quickly and in silence for several minutes.

“I may have something,” Yasha said.

I went over to have a look.

“These are copies of letters from Rasputin to Alexandra. He tells her that he bought what she wanted, though it took all of the gold she gave him.” Yasha ran his finger down the page to the end. “Then here he promises to be back at court in three weeks and he will bring the two eggs with him—for young Alexei.”

“I don’t think he’s talking about either the fresh-laid variety or Fabergé,” I said.

“Agreed,” Ian said.

I scanned the page Yasha held, trying to will the Cyrillic letters to turn to something I could read myself. “I don’t suppose it says what color those eggs are?”

“Nyet.”

“So the Romanovs didn’t get the Dragon Eggs in one convenient carton,” I said. “They had to collect them, just like Viktor Kain. Think Rasputin might have gotten a line on a way to heal Alexei? He was the heir, he had hemophilia, and his parents were willing to move heaven and earth to find a cure, and they had more than enough money to do it.”

“Rasputin was rumored to be a wizard of black magic,” Yasha told us. “It was said to be how he had gained power over Nicholas and Alexandra. He claimed to be a healer.”

And being an evil wizard would explain those freaky crazy eyes I’d seen in that photo online.

“Maybe he had ‘gem mage’ on his resume, too,” I said. “Or considering that he couldn’t cure Alexei, maybe he just fancied himself one. Either way, he couldn’t deliver on his promise. What’s the date on that letter?”

“October 7, 1916.”

“About three weeks from Halloween,” I noted. “The timing’s right for him to try to use the diamonds to heal Alexei. Though Russians wouldn’t have known it as Halloween, but if Rasputin was a wizard with contacts in the elven or goblin realms, he’d have known when the barriers would be the thinnest and the diamonds would be the strongest.” I remembered something else. “And it was about two months before his bullet-riddled body was found tied up and weighted down in a frozen river. Russian aristocrats trying to save the monarchy supposedly did the deed, though it danged near took them all night to finally kill the guy. I wonder if that could’ve been fueled by a smidgen of royal disappointment at Rasputin failing to cure Alexei. It’s one of those things that make you go hmm.”

Ian was only half hearing me; he was staring out the room’s one window. Now, just because I was a history buff, I didn’t expect everyone else would be enthralled. My little factoids didn’t have any bearing on our problem. But still.

Then I realized Ian wasn’t staring out the window; he was looking at something on the windowsill.

What on earth?

Ian went to the window and I followed.

A pigeon statue?

On a side table by the window was another one. Eddie had been using it as a paperweight.

Ian opened the window.

On the fire escape was a birdcage. Not the kind for keeping pet birds; this one was for trapping birds.

There was a live pigeon inside next to some scraps of bread and a few peanuts.

“One trapped pigeon plus two stone pigeons.” I did the math and got a completely unexpected conclusion. “
Eddie?
It couldn’t be.”

“A monkey demon spit in his eye, my ass,” Ian snarled.

“Someone’s been practicing,” I said. “Or else, snacking on pigeons between meals.”

Eddie Laughlin was our gorgon.

16

“EDDIE
the Gorgon,” I said, trying it out. “Okay, I’m sorry, but that just sounds ridiculous.”

We’d freed the pigeon, and Ian had called Ms. Sagadraco yet again, this time to drop the bomb that one of her security consultants was a gorgon, and an indiscriminate killer of people and pigeons. When Ian finished his call, he’d run into the tiny kitchen and come out with a handful of those big, black trash bags. “Yasha, watch the front door.”

The big Russian gave a grim nod and an affirmative grunt as he pulled on gloves.

Gloves? Huh?

“What are you doing?” I asked my partner.

Ian cleared Eddie’s desk of papers with a single rake of his arm, dumping everything in a garbage bag. “Getting the evidence and getting out.” He tossed me a bag. “Get to it.”

I did. “We’re scared of Eddie? But we’re wearing glasses.”

“And one touch from Eddie on bare skin will get you just as stoned as a stare. I’d rather not go hand to hand with him right now.”

Oh yeah.

Oh shit. That was why Yasha had gloved up.

Then I remembered what Helena Thanos had said about the only way to kill a gorgon. “When you were ransacking the kitchen,” I asked Ian, “you didn’t happen to have seen a big-ass knife, did you?”

My partner answered my question with another question. “Yasha?”

The Russian reached behind his head and under the collar of his leather coat—and pulled out a freakin’ machete.

So much for whether Ian and Yasha knew how to dispatch a gorgon. I felt safer already.

I started shoveling. And while I shoveled, I thought out loud. “So Eddie killed Denny?”

“That’s what I’m going with.”

“So that was Eddie out there watching us.”

“Stands to reason.” Ian scooped up the laptop and dug around under the desk until he found a messenger bag Eddie must have used as a case.

I didn’t need Ian to tell me that the only reason Eddie probably hadn’t gone for three outs in Central Park was that we were ready for a gorgon. We had glasses and guns—and a werewolf with a machete who was about two days shy of going furry. Silver bullets wouldn’t kill a gorgon, but it’d put a hurtin’ on him long enough for Yasha to do his thing.

Right now I almost wished Eddie would come home. A good, old-fashioned ass kicking could be delivered via boot, no hands needed. Because in addition to Denny—whom I didn’t think many, if any, people would miss—Eddie had killed Sebastian du Beckett, an old man who’d taken Ben Sadler under his wing and kept the boss happy with high-quality sparklies.

“Sebastian du Beckett would have just let Eddie in the house this morning,” I said. “The old guy trusted him. No wonder he was killed sitting behind his desk; he didn’t suspect a thing. Why would Eddie kill Sebastian du Beckett? He worked for the guy, liked him even.”

“Ms. Sagadraco said Bastian had a keen eye for new talent,” Ian replied. “What if Eddie checked in this morning and du Beckett knew on first sight that Eddie’s eye problems weren’t from monkey demon spit? He probably recognized gorgonism when he saw it. Eddie had to kill him to keep his secret.”

I stopped shoveling and stuffing. “Wait a minute. I’d never seen a gorgon before this morning.” I waved my fingers around my head. “Kenji said the whole snake-hair thing is a myth, but that’s what I saw going on with Helena Thanos’s aura. At the museum, I just saw a thick film over Eddie’s usual aura caused by the magic monkey spit. Eddie had to know there were people who’d realize he was a gorgon. Maybe he actually did goad a monkey demon to spit in his eye, just for the aura disguise, and to give him a real excuse to wear dark glasses. Eddie being our gorgon also means that Helena Thanos was right. Mr. du Beckett knew his killer, and it was a young gorgon. Eddie must have been turned recently.”

“He came back last Thursday from three weeks in Thailand on a buying trip for du Beckett.”

“And while he was there, he made a new friend.”

“More like really pissed them off. If he did get infected in Thailand, that Thai gorgon could have turned him to stone, but gave him gorgonism instead.”

I thought of Miss Helena and what she’d said about the curse being an eternal damnation and worse than Hell. “Whatever comes after ‘pissed off’ must have been what Eddie did.” Then I realized what he was doing now. “Eddie’s a new gorgon looking for a cure.”

“Uh-huh,” Ian said. “Once I get this laptop to Kenji, I imagine he’s going to find a lot of searches on cures for gorgonism.”

“Rasputin used the Dragon Eggs to try to heal Alexei,” I said. “It didn’t work. Eddie’s a gorgon looking for a cure. From all these papers and books lying around here, he must know the Dragon Eggs didn’t cure the tsar’s son. Why would Eddie think the diamonds would work for him?”

A proverbial ton of bricks fell on my head.

Holy crap.

“Alexei was human; Eddie’s a gorgon, but even before he got infected he wasn’t human. He’s an elf/goblin hybrid, a supernatural. Like the goblins who have been using the Queen of Dreams to heal for thousands of years. Since there’s no known cure for gorgonism, that diamond would be his only hope.”

“Eddie’s a smart guy,” Ian said, “and he’s got some connections, but a harpy-wrangling, criminal mastermind he’s not.” My partner thought of something, swore, and kicked one of the three full garbage bags over to the door where Yasha was tossing them into the hall. “And last night I told him where we were taking Ben Sadler.”

“
He
sent that harpy after us?”

Ian shook his head. “Not his job. His job was to be the inside man in SPI. He and his
real
boss had to have seen us leaving with Ben.”

“Eddie offered his car.”

“And when he couldn’t get Ben into his car, he asked where we were taking him, and like an idiot, I told him.”

“Hey, we all trusted Eddie.”

“But I was the one to do everything but stick a bow on the kid’s head. Ben attacking those harpies must have been a lifetime of Christmas presents rolled into one. They’d found their gem mage; now all they had to do was snatch him.”

“And Eddie told someone on his earpiece that he’d be right there,” I said. “What you wanna bet he wasn’t talking to any of our people?”

“Or no one at all. Just an excuse to leave fast once we wouldn’t put Ben in his car.”

“To run back into the Sackler Wing to report to the guy who’s been pulling
all
of our strings.” This still wasn’t making any sense. “The goblin diamond cures goblins, elves, all supernaturals. The elf diamond negates magic. I could see a lack of magic as being a bad thing, but curing?”

Ian stopped. “Curing who?”

“Uh . . . supernaturals.”

“And curing them from what?” He asked it like he already knew the answer.

The lightbulb in my head came on, and I looked at my partner in dawning horror.

“From the diseases that made us what we are.” It was Yasha. He was standing by the door, a full garbage bag held by suddenly loose fingers. He dropped it to the floor. “To be cured would make me what I used to be many years ago, a human man.” He looked at us—disbelief and fear in his eyes. “A ninety-six-year-old human man.”

Oh. Oh no. No, no.

Yasha didn’t need to say anything else. We knew.

He’d be cured of being a werewolf, but the shock of it would probably kill a ninety-six-year-old human.

“Moreau,” Yasha said, his voice a quiet rumble. “And all others.”

As with werewolves, vampirism was a disease, spread through blood. Alain Moreau would be cured of being a vampire; but as a human, he was centuries old. He’d be instantly reduced to bones.

I plopped down on Eddie’s couch. My legs didn’t really want to hold me up right now.

Miss Helena? She’d be dust.

“Ms. Sagadraco,” I whispered. “A disease didn’t make her a dragon, but she uses magic to hide what she is. The elf diamond negates magic. If that happened, she wouldn’t be able to hide. Everyone would know she’s a dragon.”

Ian nodded. “If Ben is forced to activate those diamonds at midnight, every supernatural within their range will lose their ability to use magical glamours to hide what they are.” He put the final piece in place, and we could see it all. “Viktor Kain brought the Dragon Eggs to New York. Vivienne Sagadraco’s territory, SPI headquarters, home to the world’s largest concentration of supernaturals and undead. Viktor Kain wants to destroy everything the boss ever built, and force her into hiding—or to be hunted down.”

It wouldn’t take the military long to find a dragon as large as Vivienne Sagadraco. As soon as a blue dragon the length of three city buses was seen flying over New York or anywhere else, I guarantee the military would get involved. I remembered back to the night I’d first seen the boss go dragon. It’d happened inside headquarters; she had to fight a male grendel and dozens of his hatchlings. Vivienne Sagadraco’s head had nearly reached the top of the fourth story. Later that night, she and her sister Tiamat had battled in the skies over Times Square. They’d each had a device to make them invisible to humans. If all magic was negated, even that wouldn’t save her. My
King Kong
analogy came back to me. Biplanes with machines guns buzzing around him like hornets. Substitute Ms. Sagadraco for King Kong . . .

The modern U.S. military used fighter jets with not only guns, but rockets, missiles, and bombs. With technology that could find terrorists in caves, they’d have no problem locating a dragon anywhere in the world.

“When Ben touched those diamonds, every supernatural in Manhattan and two other boroughs felt it,” I said. “It could ‘heal’ all those undead and expose every supernatural in that area.”

“Or further. Ben only touched the harpy that held the diamonds.”

“And whoever Eddie’s working for promised to cure him, meaning they plan to use the Dragon Eggs for the exact same thing. So why hasn’t Viktor Kain flown home with his scaly tail between his legs?”

“He still has time to leave.”

“How are we going to find those diamonds?”

Yasha had all three bags clenched in his huge hands, his eyes glittering gold with determination. “First we must warn our people, then we find the diamonds, and the
real
monster who would murder us all.”