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Chapter 28

By half-past seven, I was sitting in a recliner in the target house’s living room.

In Captain Paulson’s office, after he’d accepted the things I’d revealed to him, the three of us had agreed that it was best not to have other cops directly at the scene. Not only would it pose a greater chance of tipping our hand and giving the initiative to the enemy, it also didn’t add much value to justify the risk. I didn’t have enough ammunition for more cops, we didn’t have time for my source to make more, and regular bullets were unlikely to do much against magical defenses. Any tactical team members rushing in to confront the suspects would just become more victims.

Instead, Captain Paulson arranged to have backup available within a thirty-second drive, but to keep the area around the target house clear until they received an all-clear signal. He also enforced another public works evacuation, trying to minimize any collateral damage. Fortunately for our plan, enough families in the area apparently owned two cars that it still looked like plenty of people were home. It wouldn’t do for the enemy to realize the trap was set before they walked into it.

That left Connors and me taking on the enemy all by our lonesome. And Connors wasn’t equipped to confront them directly. As at Grays Ferry, she’d be armed with my ammunition for self-defense if necessary, but her job would be to observe and make one of two calls: either to our backup to secure the scene and treat injuries, or to Rachel Liu.

If she were making the latter call, it meant I was dead. I’d made her promise that this time, no matter what, she would not run in, gun drawn, to try to save me. I couldn’t afford two detectives on my conscience. Henri Lajoie was still in the ICU. I’d already accepted I was on my own, come what may.

Last time, we’d tried to catch the killers before they reached their target. That plan hadn’t worked, and two men had died. This time we were going to be more straightforward. Connors would remain outside, and I would ward her car so she’d be unnoticed and defended in my absence. Meanwhile I would be waiting inside, glamoured to look like the middle-aged Latino man who owned the home. I’d be both bait and trap in one.

I sat in the recliner in the living room with the Vepr across my lap. This being a row house, the living room had no windows—it was connected to the front door by a hallway and the back door was through the kitchen. The front and back doors were locked. I didn’t expect it to pose much of an obstacle, but at least it would mean I’d know which door they were coming in as they took the time to open it. I’d already confirmed that the layout I’d used for planning had been accurate, and I’d carefully checked the whole house to make sure nothing would surprise me if it became a mobile fight. I’d memorized where all the furniture was and moved things as necessary—it would be somewhat embarrassing to be killed because I tripped over an unexpected stool at a critical moment.

Whether they came through the front or back, they would have to enter the living room to deal with the homeowner before the sacrifice. I didn’t expect my illusion to last long against sorcerers and Faeries. But a few seconds is a lifetime in a fight, and it would give me the advantage—only fools and competitive athletes fight fair. I’d neutralize as many as I could before they had time to react, then withdraw to either the kitchen or the front hallway and reassess if there were any threats remaining. I had no desire to retreat upstairs to the bedrooms and back myself into a corner with no escape. And I’d have to be careful not to hurt the sacrificial victim they were likely to bring with them.

Unless they left me no choice, I wasn’t planning on killing all of them—I wanted to capture at least one if at all possible. Killing the foot soldiers would stop the immediate threat of the Tamesis, but we’d leave the real threat out there to regroup and try something else down the road. Someone was behind this whole plan, pulling the strings and giving the orders. Bran’s evidence pointed to Janus and the Olympians, as the Immortal had suggested, but I needed further confirmation before I could rely on Lugh to act.

The radio squawked next to me, bringing me back to the present. “I’ve got eyes on approaching suspects,” Connors said. Finally. I was anxious to get this show on the road. The anticipation was worse than the actual fight.

I reached for the radio to acknowledge, but before I could key the mic, Connors spoke again.

“Looks like they’re rolling heavy. I count six headed your way.”

Six was within expectations; I’d been prepared for seven or eight. To get to where I waited in the living room they’d have to filter through the front hallway or the kitchen door, so I’d be facing no more than two or three at a time. I’d have to spring the trap before the first few caught on to my glamour, meaning I wouldn’t get all of them with my first burst, but at least I wasn’t short on ammunition.

“Understood,” I replied. “Six approaching. How far out?”

“Three houses down. Maybe a minute until they’re at the door.”

“Do they have a victim with them?”

“One of them is carrying a duffel bag. Looks big enough to fit a person, but from the way he’s carrying it, it doesn’t seem heavy.”

“That could still be the victim. Magic can make weight easy to handle, same as I levitated Captain Paulson this afternoon. Thanks, Adrienne. I’ve got to greet our houseguests. I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Good hunting,” she answered, then the radio went silent.

I heard the lock on the front door click just before the door opened, followed by the sound of footsteps on the hardwood floor.

“You three go take care of the guy and get the living room ready,” one of my guests instructed someone else in a low male voice with a harsh accent. I guessed he was from Chicago originally. “You two keep an eye out for Quinn. I’ll get him prepared.”

I heard a zipper opening, presumably the speaker retrieving their intended sacrifice from the duffel bag, just before multiple feet started tromping in my direction.

From the recliner I had an easy view of both doorways into the room: the entrance from the front hall, and the arched passageway into the kitchen. While sitting in the open isn’t the ideal way to start a fight, my trap required fooling the enemy into thinking I was an innocent victim long enough for them to enter the room with me. Had it just been two or three of them, I could probably have risked knocking them unconscious without having to kill anyone. But with six, I decided it would be prudent to cut down the odds against me before trying to take any prisoners. The three whom the voice had just sent to the living room were about to have a very unpleasant lesson in the hazards of joining evil death cults.

I readied the Vepr in my lap, my hand on the pistol grip, finger registered on the frame above the trigger well. It wouldn’t very well do to accidentally shoot myself in the process of getting out of the chair when things started happening. My left arm was extended to the side of the chair, my hand hovering palm down, ready to activate the spell at the heart of the trap.

The first of the group came into my sight in the doorway. He was wearing a hoodie, and I couldn’t see his face in the shadow it cast. He was tall enough to be Aes Sidhe, though I still had no idea about what type of Faerie was helping them with the rituals. He paused for a brief second, scanning the room. Unless he were tasting the magic in the room, he wouldn’t notice my glamour immediately, and I’d appear to be a middle-aged Latino man asleep in his recliner. For a few critical seconds, that is; the spell wouldn’t hold up to close scrutiny once he was further into the room. But I didn’t need it to. I just needed him to take a few more steps.

He obliged. After a second’s hesitation, he strode forward into the room, clearing the entrance for his comrades. Two more came in behind him before he froze and looked in my direction.

“Wait a min—” I heard him start to say.

That was my cue. I tripped the spell and felt magical energy instantly spring around the feet of the three in the room with me, paralyzing them in place. The others back in the hallway apparently felt it, and I heard some confused remarks from that direction. I ignored it for the moment, as I needed to deal with the three I could see while I had the chance, and before they could react—the spell only trapped them in place, it didn’t immobilize them completely.

I stood and raised the Vepr to a firing position, dropping my concentration on the glamour to focus on the task at hand. I lined up the red dot of the automatic shotgun’s close-combat optic on the upper chest of the closest target and pressed the trigger. Three rounds fired in rapid succession before I released it, and his chest erupted in a shower of red blood. So much for Faeries in body armor. I didn’t pause to contemplate the fragility of flesh and bone under the effects of double-aught shotgun pellets at close range. I had other targets demanding my attention.

I turned to the next two just as they started to raise their hands to defend themselves. It doesn’t matter how magical you are, your brain still takes a half-second or more to process unexpected threats and tell your muscles to react appropriately. And these gentlemen had clearly not been expecting an ambush with an automatic shotgun. They were behind the power curve, only just now realizing they needed to react. Considering they’d been intent on murdering at least two people this evening, I didn’t feel the slightest bit of pity.

They were standing next to each other, practically touching at the shoulders, so I simply placed the red dot on the chest of the one on the left, pressed the trigger, and dragged the bucking barrel of the Vepr to the right.

It’s a common misconception that shotguns spray a cone of deadly pellets, killing anything in front of the barrel like a miniature Claymore mine. In fact, at short ranges the pellets don’t spread very far at all, maybe an inch or two at the distance I was shooting. But eight rounds flew toward the two of them in less than a second. At fifteen pellets per shell, I’d just sent 120 ball bearings their way at 1200 feet per second, and even on full auto my aim was fairly good—both collapsed as their torsos broke and shattered. Neither would be committing any more blood sacrifices any time soon.

Yet my work wasn’t done. My ambush had taken care of half of my enemies, but that left three more in the hallway who presumably wouldn’t be pleased with what I’d just done to their friends. And for my part, I still only needed one of them alive at the end of the fight.

I stepped to the side, out of the line of fire of anyone in the hallway, hitting the Vepr’s magazine release with my thumb and ripping out the empty magazine while I moved. I reached back, grabbed a spare magazine from its pouch behind my hip, inserted it into the mag well, and hit the lever releasing the bolt just as the next bad guy entered the room, shouting in rage and confusion.

He saw me, and we raced: his hand was outstretched with a ball of energy forming, moving to aim toward me as I was bringing the Vepr back into a firing position to drop him like his friends. I fired at him and he released his spell at me almost simultaneously.

I watched, almost in slow motion, as the silvery heat spell melted my shotgun pellets in mid-air and continued streaking toward me. I’d continued stepping sideways as I fired, so the blast of heat struck the end of my barrel and carried on to the wall behind me but missed my left hand by an inch. I felt the searing heat, and knew I’d have another severe burn to deal with later, but I was spared the damage of a direct hit.

Unfortunately, a quick glance showed me the Vepr was clearly out of the fight, its barrel melted to slag. I dropped it and immediately moved to draw Moses, still sidestepping to my left. The race was back on, my foe gathering another heat spell as my hand closed around the Delta Elite’s familiar grip. I drew it out of the holster and up into a good two-hand grip, pressing out to full extension, flipping off the thumb safety and pressing the trigger on the way.

The first shot broke just as I saw the sights line up on my target’s head, and this time I’d won the contest. His head jerked back under the impact of the ten-millimeter round right as he released his spell. The spasm sent his heat blast wide, missing me by several feet as my follow-up shots hit him in the nose and cheek before he fell to the floor.

Before anyone else could come into the room, I focused on my ring and threw up a shield between me and the hallway. With a moment of respite, I retreated to the kitchen and took quick stock. With the Vepr gone, I had six rounds of ten-mil left in Moses, another eight rounds in the spare magazine, and the J-frame with five rounds, plus one burned hand. Against two remaining enemies, including the short one who’d escaped the stairwell, so I had to assume he was also armed with that same heat spell the other had been using. That seemed to be these cultists’ favored weapon.

Yet neither of the two enemies left had attacked my shield or moved to enter the living room at all. That in itself wasn’t odd—if I’d just seen four of my friends get ambushed and killed, I wouldn’t be in a hurry to rush into the same spot it had happened, either. But I also didn’t hear them talking in the hallway, which was more ominous. It could mean a number of things: perhaps they’d split up, or maybe they were using sign language to hide their plans from me. Hell, they might even be telepathic. Whatever it was, I couldn’t just hide in the kitchen behind my shield and hope they came to me. I couldn’t afford to let them escape and regroup. If they weren’t going to come to me, I’d have to go to them.

Just as I was thinking about how little I wanted to do that, a voice called out, saving me the headache.

“That was a nasty trick, Quinn!” a deep male voice with a harsh Chicago accent shouted. Same voice who’d given the instructions when they first entered. “Not exactly a fair fight to lie in ambush like that!”

I shook my head at the ridiculousness of that statement.

“A fair fight like ganging up on lone sorcerers and murdering them? Or a fair fight like snapping innocent civilians’ necks because they happened to be in your way? Or perhaps you mean a fair fight like Sam hitting me from behind in the stairwell?”

The man laughed loudly. “Good point, Quinn! So how about we all stop with the sneaky bullshit and finally have that fair fight after all?”

I rolled my eyes. “There are two of you and only one of me, friend. Still not very fair odds.”

“Please,” he called. “You? Thomas Quinn? Who just took out four trained sorcerers in thirty seconds? Against two measly nobodies no one’s ever heard of? Surely you must be joking! Why are you even piddling around with this bullshit, the kind of power you’ve got?! You could burn us where we stand, no sweat, and you’re hiding in a kitchen with a popgun!”

“If you believe that,” I asked back, “why are you still here? You had to know after the stairwell that I’d catch up to you lot. And no one figured it might be an ambush?”

There was a pause, then an ominous chuckle.

“Figured? Hell, we counted on it! Sam told you we needed you, didn’t she?”

Shit. What were they up to?

I willed myself to relax, then reached out to taste the magic around me. I felt something massive building up in the hallway, just in time for me to reinforce my shield as they released it my way. I was still tasting when it hit, and the collision of the two spells was overwhelming to my magical senses.

I reeled under the impact—I felt like they’d just shot a cannon at my shield, and I was staring down the muzzle right as it flashed. I wasn’t blind, but I was disoriented as hell. And my shield was devastated. I stopped tasting and dropped the focus as the ring seared my finger with residual energy. I awkwardly ripped it off with the thumb of my right hand, which was still holding Moses.

I looked up to see one of the attackers charging at me, the big man with whom I assumed I’d just been exchanging barbs, screaming in fury as he leapt over the bodies of his comrades in the living room and rushed toward the kitchen. I didn’t have time to aim properly, and fell backwards to the floor, instinctively drawing my firing hand back against the side of my chest. As I hit the ground he was right on top of me, his arm drawn back ready to strike. I saw the glint of a blade in his hand. I pressed the trigger rapidly, getting off four shots before his body slammed into mine.

Many people think you can’t miss at that range. Point blank, it’s called. The sad truth is it happens all the time—people wildly jerk their trigger fingers under the stress of moment, or their guns aren’t pointed where they think, and the rounds go wide even though the target is only a couple feet away. But by locking my firing hand to the side of my chest, I ensured the muzzle was aimed generally in front of my torso, and that was good enough when my target was in the process of tackling me. All four rounds hit their mark.

Unfortunately, even a ten-mil is just a pistol round, and unless it hits the central nervous system, it’s unlikely to cause instant death. Or so my mind reminded me, in an oddly clinical and detached manner, as he still had plenty of strength to slip his blade inside the edge of my coat and stab it down into my left upper chest.

Someone was screaming. After a second or two, I realized it had to be me, as my attacker had lost his ability to do so after I’d instinctively pulled my clinch pick and jabbed it into the side and back of his neck several times.

I’d been injured many times before, as my scars attested: claws, burns, stabbings, bites, broken bones, and more. But it doesn’t matter how many times you repeat the experience; the sensation of a ten-inch steel blade impaling your chest cavity never gets any less painful.

I bit off the scream with a pained grimace and tried to move, to push the rapidly exsanguinating corpse off me, only to scream again. I was pinned to the kitchen’s laminated floor by the blade’s tip extending out my back. Moving just twisted the knife around. Between the pain, my disorientation and physical exhaustion, and the weight of the body lying on top of me, there was no way I was going anywhere. I lay there, gasping from the combination of pain and exertion, and possibly a pierced lung, and I heard heavy footsteps approaching.

At the angle I was pinned under my attacker’s body, I couldn’t see the last surviving cultist until he stepped into the kitchen around his comrade. It was the short one. With his hood down, I could see that he was some kind of sprite. Sprites were a variety of Low Fae, so perhaps he was the one responsible for the traces of Otherworldly magic I’d sensed at the crime scenes. It certainly made more sense than an Unseelie Aes Sidhe joining an Olympian cult, at least.

In his hand was a stout wooden club. He looked down at me for a second, his eyes cold, then without a word slammed the club into my head and the world went black.

* * *

I came to, blinking my eyes against the sudden bright light. I immediately noted four things. First, I was definitely no longer in the kitchen. From the wallpaper, I appeared to have been moved upstairs to the master bedroom. Second, all the furniture had been moved from the room. I wasn’t sure where the bed went or how my diminutive captor had removed it (magic, idiot, a small voice mocked from the back of my mind), but the room was empty other than myself. Third, I was stark naked. And fourth, I was staked to the hardwood floor, spread-eagled with what appeared to be an iron spike through each hand. I couldn’t see my feet, but I assumed he had used similar spikes for them as well.

I was in surprisingly little pain. I wasn’t sure if that was just temporary from the grogginess, or if I was starting to go into hypovolemic shock from the chest wound. But while I was a little chilly (I was naked, after all), my hands and chest were just throbbing dull pain, much like I’d been given a decent painkiller. I certainly wasn’t complaining, but it probably wasn’t a good sign for my immediate health prospects. Even if my captor didn’t kill me, I’d likely bleed out before any help arrived.

I didn’t see the sprite at first. For a long moment, I was alone with my own hazy and confusing thoughts. Between the concussion and the blood I felt still oozing from my chest cavity, my mind was operating at somewhat less than peak capacity. At least the knife remained in place, so it wasn’t a sucking chest wound, collapsing my lungs under steadily building pressure. It was just bleeding. It could be worse, I supposed. But in my groggy state, the sound of footsteps echoing around the empty room was disorienting, and I couldn’t triangulate where he was until he came into my field of view.

He no longer held the club. He’d replaced it with a small, silver, rather old-looking knife. From the shape of the blade, I knew immediately that it held only one purpose: flaying the skin from an animal. Or a person.

“You are awake,” he observed in an odd accent that I couldn’t quite place. He didn’t have the wickedly sardonic smile of a Hollywood evil villain about to explain his plan to the plucky hero. In fact, his face was expressionless. Almost bored. I’d expect at least some anger at the fact I’d killed five of his friends downstairs, but honestly, it didn’t appear as if he cared in the slightest about any of it. His dead comrades, me, the task at hand. He was mechanical and aloof. What was that about, I wondered?

I tried to answer, but all that came out was a hoarse croak.

“No, Mr. Quinn. Do not try to speak. There is no point. You have nothing to say to me. At least, nothing that matters. I was not awaiting your consciousness for a conversation. No, I just needed you awake because this process is far more powerful when you are in pain. And when you are afraid.” He stepped closer and held the blade up. “I am going to peel the skin from your flesh, Mr. Quinn. Normally my subjects are suspended from a hook for this, but you happen to have killed all my taller companions. No matter. I will cut away the front half; the back half I will then rip out from under you like a waiter pulling a tablecloth. It is going to hurt, Mr. Quinn. A lot. And you will be awake for the entire process. Because I am very, very good at what I do.”

He touched the cold metal to my cheek and I flinched away, gasping. My heart was racing, which wasn’t helping anything vis-à-vis impending hypovolemic shock.

“Are you afraid, Mr. Quinn?”

He didn’t wait for a reply, continuing on in that same emotionless, mechanical tone.

“You should be. You are going to die. You are going to die a very painful death. But you should take some comfort that it will be very quick. Much as I would like to take my time, the fact of the matter is that your pain and fear greatly magnifies the power of the ritual, and you cannot be terrified or in agonizing pain if you have already gone unconscious from the shock. And while magic can keep you conscious to a certain extent, at some point your body will just shut down no matter what spells I use. Magic cannot make a brain operate without blood, unfortunately. So I will keep you awake and feeling, but not for too long. My record is seventy-four seconds from initial incision. And you have already lost quite a bit of blood, so I shall have to hurry once I remove that dagger from your chest.”

I coughed and croaked.

“What was that, Mr. Quinn?” he asked.

I tried again. Speaking was difficult, and my brain was hazy and forgetting words, so I had to concentrate and focus on what I wanted to say.

“Do…you…always…talk…this…much…asshole?” I managed to gasp.

I’m not sure what I was trying to achieve by insulting him. But it felt right in the moment. Maybe it gave me some fleeting sense I was still in control of the situation, despite the circumstances.

His wooden expression didn’t even flicker.

“Not normally, no. But like I said, Mr. Quinn, I need you afraid. And I have found that merely describing what is about to happen to you is a quite effective method of achieving that effect. So how about it, Sorcerer? Are you afraid?”

I really wasn’t. At least, not of his threats. I didn’t particularly want to die, but I’d made my peace with that a long time ago. Nor was I terribly frightened of any impending agony, given my vast experience with the matter. I certainly wasn’t looking forward to the prospect, but I could face pain without fear.

No, if I were afraid of anything, I was afraid of the consequences of his success. That if he succeeded in sacrificing me, it would lock in the ley-line node here and leave only one sacrifice between him and the final rites of the Tamesis. I was afraid that Rachel and the rest of the Arcanum wouldn’t be able to respond in time to stop him, because of my own pigheaded stupidity in refusing to ask for their help in the first place.

On the flight back from Egypt, I’d struggled with the question of what price I’d be willing to pay to save the world. Whether the world was worth saving at all.

In that moment, facing the imminent prospect of the world’s destruction by this psychopathic Faerie and his cultist friends, I was forced to recognize how incredibly fucking stupid and selfish I’d been.

There were almost seven billion souls at stake. What the fuck did it matter if saving them cost the last shreds of my own?

No more games. No guns or knives or clever tricks. I had exactly one remaining chance to stop this. I’d failed Connors and Lajoie before. I would not do so again. I would likely die, but their city, their world, would survive. I was dead anyway. Accepting that was surprisingly liberating.

I didn’t bother responding to my tormentor. I closed my eyes and focused on my breathing, trying to clear my brain against the gathering fuzziness around the edges of my thoughts.

I needed to reach that place. The one deep, deep down, that the Immortal had shown me so many years before. The pulsing, burning heart of the Earth itself. Not the molten core. Nothing physical at all. The planet’s soul, if it had one. The wellspring of magic, the maelstrom of pure energy I now realized was fueled by the Great Cycle between the two worlds. The place I’d reveled in on the Fields of Fire.

But I couldn’t find it. Normally it was always there, whispering in the back of my mind, begging me to let it go, let it burn. Ever since the Fields of Fire, I hadn’t had a moment of peace, with that nagging little voice in the back of my mind and its unceasing demands I give it heed. My drinking was as much to quell that incessant whispering as to quiet the screams of my memories.

But at the moment I finally needed it, it had gone silent. Maybe I’d lost too much blood, couldn’t concentrate hard enough. I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t find the fire. I had nothing left.

I opened my eyes again and looked the sprite. His eyes were as blank as his face. Patiently waiting for my fear. I did the only thing I could do.

“Fuck you,” I whispered with the last of my energy.

He shrugged. “You will be afraid soon enough. Once the pain starts.” He raised the skinning knife in his right hand and bent to take the dagger out of my chest with his left.

His hand grasped the hilt and a searing pain lanced through my torso and down my spine as he started to pull it out. Then I heard a deafening bang and my ears started ringing. The pain eased as the knife stopped moving. I vaguely heard another two bangs, but they were much quieter than the first, almost background noise behind the tinnitus. When I felt the floor shake as if a heavy weight had dropped right next to me, I was momentarily confused and turned my head to see what it was.

The Faerie had collapsed, his face a mangled mess. I saw blood starting to pool out below him, and my confused brain struggled to make sense of what had just happened. The loud bangs had been gunshots. Someone had shot him while he was distracted, focusing on removing the dagger so he could begin his task.

I was still confused. I lay there wondering who could have shot him for a second before I heard footsteps and shouting. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, but someone was very excited. Or angry. Definitely one of those two, given the yelling. I wanted to close my eyes, but curiosity kept them open as I waited to see who was coming towards me.

My vision was blurry, especially around the edges. I tried to focus and see who had just leaned over my face. They were shouting something. Queen, maybe? I didn’t know why they’d be shouting about a queen at a time like this, but that was the best my brain could do at the moment. She looked familiar, like I’d seen her somewhere. But before I could figure it out, I drifted into sleep, leaving the pain and confusion behind.


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