Vendetta (Deadly Curiosities Book 2) (30 page)

Teag moved in fast while Ginger was down. He’s earned every one of his martial arts trophies, without using magic. Now, I heard him chanting under his breath, raising his power. Ginger tore loose from Bo’s grip, losing a chunk of flesh in the process, and was halfway on his feet before Teag hammered him with his staff. The crack of wood against bone echoed, followed a split second later by a flash of light. Ginger went down like he’d been Tasered, only Teag’s bolt of power carried a magical jolt.

Bo went low; Teag went high. Bo lunged and caught Ginger in the left calf, as Teag used his staff as a fulcrum and leaped, planting a boot with silver-tipped cleats right in the Nephilim’s chest. Ginger dropped like a rock, and Teag smashed the butt of his staff down through the pretty-boy’s face, following it up with another wallop of magic that made Ginger convulse once and then lie smoking and still.

Blondie was heading my way, while the dark-haired Nephilim hung back as if he was going to let his friends do the heavy lifting. He had coal-black hair and sharp features that made me think of a bird, so I mentally nicknamed him ‘Crow’. If he thought he was going to get out of this without rumpling his Armani jacket, he had another think coming.

Half way toward me, Blondie broke into a run. I had spent the afternoon practicing with Josiah’s dueling pistol, and I knew its range and expected its kick. I’d used normal bullets for practice, and saved the silver-tipped, holy-water-blessed shot for tonight.

Just a little closer.
The damndest thing about dueling pistols is that they were made for short-range fighting, not distance, and they only had one bullet. That meant I had to hold my one shot until Blondie was within forty paces, which was too damn close for comfort.

That’s when Crow charged.

I heard a roar behind me, and knew that Baldy had managed to regroup. Teag had his hands full. I had a split second to get off a shot at Blondie before he went for my throat. Alicia was between me and Crow, which meant I couldn’t fry him with my walking stick without getting Alicia, too. As fast as Nephilim moved, it looked like both of them were going to hit me at the same time.

A thick fog came out of nowhere, coalescing between me and Crow.
Not fog, spirits.
I caught glimpses of faces and shapes, hazy gray.
Josiah isn’t the only dueler who never left the alley.
Though the ghosts of dead duelers looked insubstantial to me, they had enough supernatural heft to slow down the dark-haired Nephilim, making him fight his way through the fog to get to us.
Bless you, Alicia,
I thought.

Alicia’s ghosts bought me the few seconds I needed. I took my shot at Blondie, and got him in the gut. The impact of the shot stopped his momentum, and put a big bloodstain on his abdomen. But I knew what really hurt was the silver and holy water combo, since his veins lit up through his skin from the inside-out and he went down screaming as his whole body started to smoke.

“Alicia – move!” I shouted. The alley ghosts were doing their best to slow the fourth Nephilim, but he was strong enough to fight his way through, tearing free from the spectral hands that snatched at his clothing and pulled at his arms and legs. Crow was almost on her, half transformed. I had seen what those claws could do. I dropped the gun and raised my walking stick, but I still couldn’t get a clean shot.

“Get out of the way!” I yelled. And she did, but not the way I expected. Alicia swung to her left, bringing up Josiah Winfield’s pistol as if the motion were the most natural thing in the world, and she fired right through the fog, plugging Crow at point blank range without blinking an eye.

“Die, you son of a bitch,” she growled as the shot blew the Nephilim’s head apart. Just for good measure, she clubbed the creature with the butt of the pistol as he fell, and kicked him square in the throat before his body hit the ground.

Either Alicia had been taking secret bad-ass lessons, or I was witnessing Josiah Winfield in action.

Four dead Nephilim lay on the cobblestones of Dueler’s Alley, their bodies already beginning to crumble. Alicia, or maybe I should say Josiah, turned to me and gave me a nod that said I had earned an answer to my question.

“You want to stop the Watchers, you’ve got to kill the Judge who’s bringing them through. Find the entry points, and seal them off,” Josiah said. “But you’ve got to stop them before the Judge brings five of them through. That’s all he needs to start the Harrowing, and when that begins, even the Archangels can’t shut it down before it runs its course.”

“How do we find the Judge?”

Alicia was losing her connection to Winfield. I could see the tension in her features, and her expressions were mostly her own again. For a heartbeat, it looked as if I could see two figures superimposed in the same spot, Alicia and Winfield.

“Find the biggest, baddest sorcerer nearby, and you’ll have your Judge,” Josiah replied. “Keep the guns. They’ll help.”

Alicia wobbled then, as Josiah’s spirit left her. She looked around at the smoking corpses and at Bo’s ghost, which sat next to me, then from me to Teag. “What did I miss?”

In the distance, I heard sirens. No one else might have seen the ghosts or the Nephilim, but the sound of gunshots carries. “I’ll tell you later,” I said. “Right now, let’s get out of here before Detective Monroe shows up.”

“O
F ALL THE
foolhardy, boneheaded moves!” Sorren didn’t usually get angry, and when he did, it was very rarely with us. Now, he was annoyed, and that’s when I remembered that it’s not wise to tick off an ancient vampire.

“I left you a message. You didn’t reply.” It was the same tactic I had used for years on my mother. Sorren gave me a withering look, which suggested that he wasn’t going to be easily dissuaded.

“You know that Nephilim are on the loose. You’ve been warned that the Reapers like to snack on magic even more than they like to eat ghosts. Watchers are here in Charleston. And you took Alicia with you!” Sorren was pacing the back room at Trifles and Folly. I had received a terse text message telling us to meet him at the store while we were taking Alicia to her house. Sorren had moved into the secret day crypt built into the foundation of the basement beneath Trifles and Folly.

“It was a perfectly logical move,” I countered. “We got good information. And we got out okay.”

“This time,” Sorren snapped. “You are only mortal, Cassidy, and both you and Teag are relatively new in learning to use your magic. Creatures like the Nephilim are ancient.” I suspected that Sorren was testier than usual about our safety because he had just lost several people close to him, and that his sense of guilt on this had nothing to do with the Watchers’ magic.

“The Nephilim die pretty easily for being that old.”

Sorren shook his head, and he may have rolled his eyes. “You haven’t actually destroyed them. They can’t be ‘killed’ like that. When you destroy their physical body, it drains them, so they go back to their realm to recover, but they can return – and they remember.”

Holy shit. “So Coffee Guy could come back – and he’ll remember that Daniel Hunter and I whipped his ass?”

Sorren nodded. “Exactly. Which is why, when I say that I have gained many enemies over the centuries, I mean exactly that. I have been fighting some of these creatures since the beginning of the Alliance.”

“Any fight you can walk away from is a good fight,” I said, not ready to back down.

I had the feeling that Sorren would have sighed if he had needed to breathe. “Good partners are difficult to come by,” he said, and there was a pained note in his voice. “I am painfully aware of how easily humans break.”

“Thank you,” I said, dropping my argument. “But we’ve got a job to do. Teag and I went into the alley loaded for bear. We’re no use to you if we aren’t doing everything we can do to stop the bad guys.”

Sorren looked away without saying anything. “There’s been another attack, on one of your other stores, hasn’t there?” I guessed.

I was willing to bet that he had the same kind of relationship with those stores’ owners as he did with my family, working with them generation after generation. We were the only family he had left.

“The store in Quebec was destroyed,” Sorren said, his voice gravelly. “Wards breached, everyone dead.” I saw grief and anger in his face. “I have worked with that family for more than two hundred years. And I have failed them.”

“That’s where you were?”

He nodded. “That, and trying to connect with all my locations, strengthen their defenses. Someone is striking at them to get to me, and I’m fucking tired of it.”

“Can we at least be certain whether or not Sariel is behind the attacks?” I asked. Teag had stayed quiet through the whole charged conversation, but I knew he was following every word.

Sorren shrugged, and ran both hands through his blond hair. I had never seen him like this, and it rattled me to realize that despite his age, experience and supernatural mojo, he didn’t have everything completely under control.

“It sounds like Sariel, but I thought he was well and truly destroyed. I would have bet my life on that.” He looked haggard. “I did bet the lives of people who depended on me on that belief. And now they’re dead.”

Teag laced his fingers together, stretched out his arms, and loudly cracked his knuckles. “Well then, boss, put me to work. Who do you want me to dig up – figuratively speaking?”

I grinned. “We’re already in this hip-deep, so it’s too late to turn around now. I know you asked Lucinda to bump up the wardings on the store and our houses – thanks for that, by the way. I got the feeling old Josiah might be willing to lend a hand, and we’ve got Daniel Hunter, plus our usual crew. Whether it’s Sariel or someone else behind this, we need to find him and kick his ass all the way back to the Great Beyond.”

“Speaking of Daniel Hunter, have you heard from him?” Sorren asked.

I made a face and shook my head. “No. I’ve left messages. I don’t know why he gave me his cell phone number if he had no intention of answering it.”

“Daniel has always done as he pleases,” Sorren said. “If we’re lucky, he’ll show up when he’s needed, on his own terms. He’s a perverse bastard, but he’s good at what he does.”

“If Watchers cause major guilt trips, then at least one of them is here already,” I said. “Josiah told us the Judge would need five.”

Sorren nodded. “One Watcher is bad enough. Five would be a catastrophe. Sariel – if that’s who’s behind this – has us chasing our tails. We’ve got to get out in front of him if we’re going to win. Because he’s not just gunning for me. If it’s Sariel, he knows how much I love this city, and he’ll take down all of Charleston to get to me. I can’t let that happen.”

“We won’t,” I promised. But I had no friggin’ idea how to make good on that vow.

A
NTHONY WAS WORKING
late again, and I didn’t have plans, so Teag and I opted for Nicky’s Bar, a favorite with Charleston locals, especially the younger King Street and Charleston City Market store-owners. We walked in and half the folks there waved or called out hello. That’s one of the things I like about Nicky’s. It wouldn’t turn away tourists if they showed up, but it doesn’t go out of the way to put itself on the map, either. It’s a local place, and we love it for that.

“I was able to reach Mrs. Morrissey today,” I said. “She’s home from the hospital and says she’s feeling much better. On the other hand, I was hoping they might postpone the Angel Oak fundraiser. I’d like to figure out how to get that Gerard Astor painting out of there before the Archive is full of people, or we could have a real problem on our hands.” I paused, because Teag didn’t seem to be listening. “Is everything okay?” He seemed quieter than usual, although with the attacks we both had a lot on our minds.

He sighed. “Anthony figured out that there had to be a link between the bomb at Trifles and Folly and the explosion at Sorren’s house. And there’s been no hiding the fact that I’ve come home the last few nights the worse for wear. That scares him, so he gets angry. We had a fight.”

Teag made a gesture as if it was no big deal, but he avoided looking at me, and I knew it was weighing on him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

He shook his head. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m proud of what we do. We make a big difference. He’s going to have to learn to live with it.”