Chapter 24
I woke with a groan, trying to gather my senses. The taste of copper pennies filled my mouth—I couldn’t tell whether I’d bitten my tongue when I fell, or if it was from Sam’s blood spattering on me when I shot her. Perhaps both. It didn’t matter.
There was a great deal of smoke and heat around me, and I felt water on my face. I opened my eyes and realized I was still on the landing. The building around me was on fire, and the automated fire extinguishers were doing their best. I heard two voices and looked up to see Sam’s comrades standing over me, arguing whether they should take me or not. In the background, I heard someone yelling my name.
I realized my gun was no longer in my hand—it must have been knocked out of my grip when I hit the wall. My head was throbbing, but I didn’t have time to worry about that. Sam had said they wanted to take me alive, that they needed me for something. I couldn’t let that happen.
I turned onto my right hip and kicked out with my left foot, catching the taller of the two in the side of his knee, bringing him crashing down next to me. Before he or his friend had a chance to react, I dove my left hand into my pocket and drew my dagger. Rolling on top of him, I plunged the bronze blade into his throat with a snarl. His eyes were wide with shock as arterial blood sprayed onto my face. His mouth opened, but he couldn’t scream with a cut throat.
I immediately pulled the knife free and turned toward his compatriot, who evidently decided discretion was the better part of valor and took off running upstairs.
I looked back at the man under me, watched the life fade from his eyes as his blood spurted from the wound, bubbling and gurgling as he tried to say something. The throat had been a deliberate choice: the carotid artery was a softer target than anything in the head, and cutting his windpipe minimized the chances he could use any magic against me in the remaining seconds of his life. You don’t necessarily need to be able to speak to release a spell, but it helps unless you have one prepared and focused in advance.
I used his shirt to wipe his blood off my blade, my hands trembling from the adrenaline, then unsteadily climbed to my feet. Looking around, I spotted the Glock on the stair just below the landing. I sheathed my knife back in its pocket and scooped up the gun. I confirmed the magazine was still seated and there was a round in the chamber, then looked up the stairs where my remaining enemy had fled. But before I could follow him, I realized Connors was still yelling my name.
“Quinn! What the hell was that?! You okay?!”
I couldn’t see her. She must be below the next landing down. Not seeing the dwarf upstairs, I made my way down toward her.
I paused and knelt at Sam’s body. She’d landed face up, twisting as she’d fallen, still turning left as she’d been at the instant I shot her. The bullet had entered her left temple and exited above her right eye. It was obscene—still beautiful from the eyebrows down, but a gaping hole where the right side of her forehead used to be.
I knew she had been my enemy, that she’d attacked me from behind, that she’d orchestrated the murder of innocents and had hurt Lajoie, maybe even killed him. That her purpose in life had been to destroy my family. I knew all that. And I knew I should hate her for it, but I couldn’t.
She’d made her choices. But given my own experiences with the Arcanum, I couldn’t think of her as my enemy, as evil. Not really. She was a misguided, angry woman, doing what she thought necessary to bring herself some closure. I’d killed her because I’d had to. And I’d been angry with her at the time, absolutely. But now, looking down on her lifeless form, I just felt sad.
I remembered that awkward date so many years ago. I remembered last night. The comforting touch of her hand. Her lingering kiss. Even if none of it had been real, just lies to gain my trust, it had been what I’d needed right then.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered as I bent down and closed her eyes.
“Quinn!” Connors’s urgent yelling snapped me back to the present.
“I’m coming,” I grunted.
I continued down the stairwell and found her just below the next landing. Lajoie was unconscious on the stairs, his upper torso on the landing itself and his legs down the steps. His left arm was gone from about halfway up the bicep. It wasn’t bleeding. It appeared to be badly burned, as if Sam’s heat spell had cauterized it with its passing. But even if it hadn’t, Connors was tightening the windlass on a tourniquet as high on the stump as she could get it.
“Is it clear?” she snapped as I reached Lajoie’s side.
I nodded, then realized she was focused on Lajoie and didn’t see. “Yes.”
“Good. Can you do anything about the fire?”
I was confused. “Fire?”
“Are you concussed? The goddamn building is burning down, and we happen to be inside!”
I looked around and noticed the flames. I’d forgotten them, somehow. The sprinklers had washed most of the dead man’s blood from my face, but they weren’t stopping the fire. It must have been magic, the aftereffects of the explosion they’d used to knock me out.
“Oh. So it would seem,” I mumbled.
“Can you do anything about it?!” she snapped, but I was already working on it.
It was more difficult to focus than normal—I didn’t know if I was concussed, but I was certainly injured and exhausted. I closed my eyes, shut out the world around me, and with some effort managed to tap into the node below. I muttered a couple words and called up a spell that drained the energy from the flames, returning it to the ley-line below. The fire died out within a few seconds.
“Thanks,” Connors said as I opened my eyes. “Now help me get him up here onto the landing,” she requested as she secured the tourniquet in place.
I heard sirens outside and the sound of doors slamming as I grabbed his legs. She steadied his neck while I swung him around. Given my current state, it was somewhat of a struggle. The big man was heavy.
“Sam’s dead,” I grunted while I was moving him. “She was one of them. Hit me from behind and her two friends pinned me down from upstairs.”
“They dead, too?” she asked, her head still down, checking Lajoie for any other injuries.
“One is. The other ran upstairs after I killed his friend.”
She snapped her head up. “When I asked you if it was clear, and you said yes, I thought you meant you’d cleared upstairs.”
I shook my head. I was still a little dazed.
“Quinn. Listen to me.” I was listening. “No, look at me. Right now.” I met her eyes. “I think you have a concussion. But I need you to push through it right now. I’ve got Henri. There will be a couple dozen cops and paramedics swarming this stairwell in about ninety seconds. I need you to go upstairs. I need you to make sure that an evil sorcerer isn’t lying in ambush for them. Can you do that?”
I nodded.
“Can you do that? Say it out loud so I know you heard me.” She was cool and collected. This was her element. Her partner might be dying, and a magical explosion had just set the entire building on fire around her, and she was soaking wet from the sprinklers, but she was calm. Whatever else I may say about Connors, that was the moment I knew the Avartagh had been wrong about her. That her fears about herself were wrong. She wasn’t unworthy. She was born for this.
“I heard you. I’ll be alright. You take care of him.”
I made my way back up the stairs. Ignoring Sam’s body and that of the nameless man on the landing, I listened over the sound of boots running up from the ground floor. Nothing from upstairs. I slowly made my way up the next flight of stairs, then the next. I was tasting the air in front of me, carefully looking for any sign of an ambush, but it appeared that Sam’s surviving compatriot had escaped. I reached the fourth floor. Nothing. I opened the door to the residential corridor. Still nothing.
I holstered the Glock, then headed back down and checked the third-floor corridor the same way. We’d seen the two suspects enter the building carrying someone wrapped in a blanket. I’d hoped whoever it was—presumably their intended sacrifice—was still alive. But when I opened the door to the third floor, I immediately realized that we’d been outmaneuvered in more ways than one.
The blanketed bundle was on the floor in the front of me, and it was in fact a person, but not the intended sacrifice. When I pulled the top layer of the blanket off, I saw it was the corpse of an elderly African-American man, just another innocent bystander with a broken neck.
I made my way down the corridor. There was no actively malevolent feeling like what I’d sensed at the prior murder sites. No one had put effort into keeping it here. But in tasting the magical fields, I knew that dark magic had been done nearby. I followed the energy to an apartment door about halfway down the hallway. The fire hadn’t reached this far before I’d extinguished it. The door was ajar.
I stopped tasting the magic around me before entering—in my current state, I wasn’t sure I was up to dealing with another ambush spell like at the two previous crime scenes. Then, with a heavy heart, I reached out to push the door open the rest of the way. The smell hit me first. The iron and copper tang of blood. I couldn’t see much from the doorway, so I stepped in and made my way down the short hallway to the living room.
It was nearly identical to the previous scenes. The furniture pushed to the sides. The flayed body, dismembered and arranged in the middle of the carpeted floor, with the same terrified expression on his skinless face, eyes bulging and mouth screaming. The bloody glyphs on the walls had begun to streak under the streams of water from the fire sprinklers in the ceiling.
I noticed that the blood pooled on the floor was already well along in the drying process, suggesting this had been done at least the night prior. My estimate must have been off by a few hours. Or perhaps there was a larger window that would work for the purposes of the Tamesis, not as much precision necessary as I’d thought. Whichever it was, Sam would have known that. She’d probably alerted them after she left my shop, and they’d completed the rite while I was sleeping.
The old man in the blanket must have been the apartment’s resident, killed so they could use his home for their sacrificial rite, just like the family at the last crime scene. I didn’t know which unranked sorcerer I was looking at in the living room, but I’d failed more than just Henri Lajoie today.
I backed up until I was out of the apartment, leaving the door open behind me for the inevitable police responders who would arrive in a minute or two. Almost in a trance, I made my way back to the stairwell, where I could hear a great deal more activity than there had been before.
I descended the stairs, still in a haze, thinking about my many failures. Lajoie. The two dead men upstairs. Their killer who had gotten away. It was too much. I was distracted and unfocused, and almost didn’t notice the two police officers on the landing where I’d left Connors with Lajoie.
“Hey, pal! Freeze!” one called to me.
I stopped, noting with curiosity the guns pointed at me.
“Who are you?” he asked.
I shook my head to clear the cobwebs, but they weren’t going anywhere.
“Quinn,” I grunted. “Where’s Detective Connors?”
“Hands. Show us your hands.”
They still had the guns out, so I complied.
“Place your hands on the wall, please.”
I rolled my eyes but did as he asked. “Where’s Connors?” I repeated.
The older-looking patrolman holstered his weapon and stepped toward me. “She’s downstairs with EMS,” he answered as he began to pat me down. “Said you were clearing the stairwell and we were to wait for you before going up any further.”
“I’m carrying a firearm,” I warned him before he found it on his own. “Front right waistline.”
“Detective Connors told us,” he said. “Said you also have a license for it. I’m going to have to confiscate it as evidence for the moment. Sorry.”
I grimaced. It wasn’t unexpected, but it was annoying nonetheless. My back hurt. My head was still fuzzy. I wanted this to be over.
“Do what you have to do,” I muttered as he pulled the Glock from its holster and handed it to his partner, who still had his own gun drawn. At least he’d lowered the muzzle. “There’s also a knife in my front left pocket. And my license is in my back right, in my wallet.”
He confiscated the knife just like the gun, finished the pat-down, then stepped back to examine my license to carry. I remained braced on the wall until he nodded at his partner and patted me on the shoulder.
“You’re good, pal.”
I straightened up as the younger officer holstered his sidearm. My back was really starting to throb as the adrenaline wore off. As I turned to face them, a lance of pain shot down my spine. I gasped and stumbled. The one who had frisked me caught me before I fell.
“Hey, you okay?”
I shook my head as I grimaced. “Got hit,” I hissed. “Hurts. A lot. But I’ll make it.”
“What the hell happened here?” his partner asked.
I looked around and saw what he meant. Sam’s body, the other corpse just barely visible laying on the next landing up. The bubbled paint, the scorched and blackened walls. I looked back at him.
“It’s a long story. On the third floor, fourth door on the right, you’ll find a murder scene, plus another body in the hallway. I tried not to touch anything but the door.”
Another pair of cops were coming up the stairs, and the younger officer called out to them.
“Hey, this guy needs medical attention. Can you take him down? We’ve gotta confirm the building is clear and secure the crime scenes.”
“Sure,” one of the newcomers answered. He looked at me. “Can you walk?”
“Slowly,” I nodded.
They escorted me as I painfully made my way down the remaining flights of stairs to the front door. I passed a dozen cops and firefighters in the process, as apparently every patrol car in this part of the city had responded to Connors’s call for backup, and the building’s fire alarm must have been connected to the closest engine house. A few pushed past us to follow the first two upstairs, others were on the radio. Everyone seemed to have a task.
We stepped outside, where it was more of the same. Lights on patrol cars and a single fire engine flashing, some officers setting up barricades while others kept onlookers at bay, a command and control cell of some sort in the middle coordinating everyone’s efforts. My escorts took me toward an ambulance, where Connors watched as Lajoie was loaded in the back by a couple paramedics.
“He got away,” I said quietly, my voice harsh.
She looked over at us. “Christ, Quinn. You alright?”
I shook my head. “Not really. Sam hit me hard from behind.” The growing pain was starting to make thinking difficult. More difficult than it already was. I needed a nap. And a drink.
She thanked the uniforms for bringing me down, then grabbed the paramedic as they were about to close the back of the ambulance. She pointed at me. “Hey, this guy’s going with you. He got hit, don’t know how bad it is. Possible concussion.”
He looked over at me and saw all the blood on my clothes. “Gunshot?”
I shook my head. “The blood isn’t mine. Burn. On my back.”
“Alright, let’s take a look.” He had me turn and take off my coat. From the sharp intake of breath I heard when he saw what was underneath, I could only assume my back was not looking particularly good at the moment.
“Okay, buddy, not gonna lie, that’s a bad burn. Between that and the wicked bump on your forehead I don’t even know how you’ve been walking around. We’ve got another bus en route, they’re a couple minutes out. They’ll be taking you to the hospital. But in the meantime, we need to keep you from going into shock. Can I get you to sit on the bench here?” he asked, gesturing to the back of the ambulance.
A few minutes later I was sitting down, my shirt cut off, my back covered in gauze, a blanket draped around me, an IV in my left arm, and 5 milligrams of morphine coursing through my veins. It wasn’t nearly enough to kill the pain, but at least it took the edge off. I’d have to wait for a doctor before I got anything better. I vaguely heard Connors arguing with someone nearby as I let the opioids work, something about a civilian consultant shooting and stabbing suspects.
By the time the second ambulance arrived and I was loaded up for transport to the hospital, the exhaustion had hit me. Physically I was tired, but mentally I was just done. Ready to pass into unconscious oblivion and be done with everything.
I’d failed. I’d let my guard down. I’d failed to keep Lajoie safe when he was under my protection. I could have protected him. If I’d been willing, if I’d had the stomach to do it. I could have stopped all three of them before Lajoie even got in Sam’s line of fire. And I hadn’t. Because I was afraid, and weak.
After Canada, I’d been ashamed of what I’d done. So ashamed that I’d crawled into a bottle and not come out for almost seventy years. So ashamed I couldn’t even face one of my closest friends for that entire time.
Now, however, I was ashamed because I couldn’t bring myself to do it again. Not even when people were counting on me. I was a coward.
I really needed a fucking drink.