2 Death Rejoices (73 page)

“I see.” Harry motioned
stay
to Viktor with one hand. “What would you have me do?”

I watched Golden and de Cabrera helping one another up. “Malas is contained. These two are alive. Declan is…” I shook my head, not able to file my assistant on a list just yet. “Is Chapel okay?”

“He is gravely ill, and most uncomfortable, but he is showing some small improvement under my care.”

“Will you look after him, Harry?”

Harry's smile was glorious. “Until our good agent is once again his autexousious self, I shall lavish upon him my most devoted attentions.”

I nodded as though I understood. “Sure, auto-whatever. Sounds good. And don't forget to feed the bat.”

Harry was not fooled, but his focus was still divided between us and Malas. “Off you go, my precious pillbug.”

“Your nicknames are getting less and less cute, Harry,” I said.

We backed up the basement stairs, de Cabrera limping and leaning heavily on Golden for support, Declan waving his stake warningly, me once again holding the crucifix out. Viktor followed, his heavy tread like that of the Grim Reaper, unhurried and determined, but keeping a wary distance. Harry played referee, placing himself bodily between the phantasm and the Feds, watchful but non-threatening, ready to act if he was needed.

We hurried out the door and I didn't want to look back, but curiosity got the best of me; I glanced over my shoulder. The phantasm was gone.

I knew two things, then. First, if Batten was alive, he'd stake that revenant, and oh boy, I'd let him. And second, if I ever saw Malas Nazaire again at full power, he'd end me.

C
HAPTER
58

AFTER VIKTOR TOOK HARRY
by the collar like a mother dog with her puppy and translocated (a sight that made my science go
hunh-wah?
and my guts cramp with uneasiness), I texted Chapel about the killer vampire — not backspacing over the V-word — and Malas being stuck in his casket but partially out in phantasm form, and what our next destination was. Once out of the house, I dithered in the driveway, the crew on my heels.

“This is fate,” Declan said.

I grimaced. “Fate doesn't punch you in the face with a withered hand.”

“It did.”

“It shouldn't have,” I muttered. “I still have things to kill.”

“Fate
did
send a message.”

“What message? ‘Watch for telekinetically-chucked objects from your surprise undead daddy’? That's a strange message for fate to send.”

“The message, Dr. B.,” he said tightly, “is ‘know your enemy’.”

“We knew him,” I said. “Just not very well.”

“Okay, ‘know your enemy better, dumbass’.”

I pointed at him. “Now
that
right there sounds like a message fate would send me.” Golden tried to laugh, but doubled over in pain; I was guessing she'd cracked at least one rib. De Cabrera looked like he was trying to find some way to put a happy face on the whole thing, but a screwed-up knee tends to hinder one's enthusiasm. We trooped lamely to their truck, and Golden radioed for EMS while de Cabrera pulled the first aid kit from their trunk.

“I may not know my enemies,” I said, “but I know how my friends think.”

“Well, Malas Nazaire might be an asshole, but he's a trapped asshole, right?” de Cabrera asked, flexing his left leg gingerly and wincing.

I nodded. “He can't fully escape that casket on his own, only his phantasm can. Batten will know how to deal with him.”
I hope
.

“So, where are we going now?” Golden said, carefully stowing her gear in the backseat and propping her hip against the SUV.

“The only ‘we’ who are going anywhere are Irish and me. You two crash test dummies are gonna wait for an ambulance and get your shit patched up. We're going where neither Malas nor his phantasm could, even if he wanted to.” I marched back to the motorcycle. “No revenant would.”

Declan blinked rapidly in confusion. “A church?”

“Ghost town. With real disturbed ghosts. If he's worried about interference from revenants, that's where Spicer would be hiding his main base of operations.”

“You know a place like that?” de Cabrera asked, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.

I nodded. “And, more importantly, so does Batten. Since he's obviously not here, I'm guessing he went straight there. All right, Irish, buckle up. We're going to Ashcroft.” I headed back to where I'd left Harry's motorcycle.

*   *   *

Declan sat in silence behind me, offering no small talk through the helmet's speaker system. I was sure he was waiting for me to mention his mother, or Malas, or Prince Dreppenstedt. I wanted to shove all that on the mental back burner. There would be time to deal with all of it later.

Declan had other ideas. “Did you know about any of this, Dr. B?”

“Not a bit,” I said honestly. “I thought the
dhampir
was a myth. So does preternatural science, you know that. At least as a Leprechaun, you had Lucky Charms on your side.”

He was quiet some more, while in the back of my mind, something cruel was whispering:
does this make you Declan's supernatural family?
If my life got any weirder, I was going to move to Jamaica and live out the rest of my days as a beach bum. I wondered how I'd look with dreadlocks, and remembered that Batten had just come back deliciously tanned from a stint among the islands. I'd had worse ideas.

Declan interrupted that rum-flavored and sun-drenched line of thought by saying, “Her name was Remy. My mother. I was so certain that Guy Harrick had fathered me, that he was much older than he pretended.”

“And that's why you were so determined to interview Harry,” I said. “You thought he was your father.”

“I wish it were the truth, now.”

I didn't have any words of comfort for him, and couldn't even imagine what he was feeling. I offered him an encouraging sound through the headphones, in case he had more to say, but his silence fell again, and this time he was done talking. Inwardly, I was kind of glad I wasn't his immortal granddaughter or something. That'd be too weird. Especially after he'd traded his sea shanties for my sordid stories about sex with Batten.

Some time later, Declan suddenly said, “There!” and pointed off to the right. I slowed the Kawasaki at the turn into Ashcroft, spotting the Bugatti abandoned near a dirt road running up the side of a hill. There was a small lot for tourists to park in, but we rumbled past it, bouncing along, wobbling over hillocks and down sudden dips, to park beside the Bugatti a couple hundred yards further along. I was still creeped-out by his
dhampir
-ness, but had to admit, night vision was damn handy.

Batten hadn't paused to shine the rims and brush the dust off his beloved sports car this time. The piano-black lacquer was striped with road grime and a whole bunch of bugs who'd met a bad, if very brisk, end.

“Where would he go next?” Declan shaded his eyes, though it was full night and only the starlight pierced the gloom.

“He drove half way up this particular hill, then parked,” I noted, studying the Bugatti, peering in the tinted windows. “He didn't want to get too close: even with the turbos muffling the exhaust some, this sucker is loud. But whatever he was after is in this direction, I bet.”

“It's going to take a long time to search all these buildings,” he said. “Not to mention the surrounding forest. There's the mine over there, but it's all boarded up. There are undoubtedly other mines, too.”

“We don't have time for that. Maybe there's an easier way?”

I scanned the area. It was hard to see much of Ashcroft in the dark, but I'd been here before and the shadows looked slightly familiar; there was a well-maintained wooden boardwalk that guided tourists to the buildings that were still safe to explore, most without roofs; taverns lovingly cared for, a post office, and a mill. In the distance were hollowed, empty shacks, a lonely wagon, and some other structures that had fallen so far into disrepair that their function couldn't even be guessed. Obscure humps of mountains on the darkened horizon loomed like slumbering monsters.

We needed an easier way of tracking where they'd gone.
The pink web spell.
I snapped my fingers, which is hard to do with leather gloves on.

I dug the Cougar out of my go-bag. “Watch your eyes,” I said, before pistol-whipping the passenger side window of the Bugatti. Glass tinkled into the car as I made sure the edges were shard free before sticking my hand in and fishing out Batten's man-purse. I tossed the kit on the ground and threw it open to the night.

“Uh, Dr. B?” Declan grimaced. “The doors were unlocked.”

“Oh.” I cringed. “Whoops.”

“Agent Batten is going to kill you.”

“As long as I get to him before the zombies do, he can kick my ass all he likes. It's a good thing this is Batten's car. Harry would definitely kill me if this still belonged to him.” So, not only had he not taken the time to wipe down the car, he'd been in such a rush that he'd neglected to lock it and turn on the alarm? Either he was in a huge hurry or in some seriously deep shit.

“We should call him,” he suggested.

“What if he's hiding? It rings and blows his cover and we get him killed,” I said. “We're so close to saving him, let's not mess this up now. Besides, he's never gonna live it down if
I
rescue
him
.”

Colonel Jack Batten's vampire hunting kit was mostly empty, its burgundy velvet interior worn to grey where it had been repeatedly rubbed over the years. All the rowan wood stakes were gone from
their elastic lashes. Three of the four glass Brut cologne bottles were missing. Batten must have geared-up with a utility belt before going on foot to search, rather than hauling the whole kit. For a heartbeat or two, I allowed myself the guilty pleasure of imagining Batten girding himself for battle, cinching his gear tight. The old, yellow-paged bible belonging to Colonel Jack was still there, as was the silver cross; they would do an atheist like Batten no good without the belief to back them up.

I plucked the last bottle of watered-down Brut and shook it: full. The bright, tangerine leather passenger seat of the Bugatti was home to a pile of paper bags from fast food joints, one of them a well-known chili stand in nearby Aspen. I snatched the paper bag, opened it up and gave a satisfied nod; inside was an empty Styrofoam bowl stained red and orange with the remnants of Batten's last shoveled-down meal, their Devil's Tail Chili. Also, two crumpled napkins with mouth smears in hot-sauce red, a wet nap, and a plastic spork.

“Okay, okay.” I straightened. “I can work with this.”

“You can?” Declan asked. “Not that I doubt you.”

“Doubt all you like,” I replied. “I never believed in you, either.”

“Lies,” he said, and we shared an anxious, friendly glance. “Might wanna take off the crucifix first.”

I readily obliged, tossing it to his waiting hand.

This part, at least, I can do. As for the rest…
I wrenched open the cap on the Brut bottle and poured Batten's sweet-spicy holy water into the empty chili bowl. The smell of him made my heart ache a little, a saccharine mixture of dread and hope. Stirring with the spork until the water picked up the color of the leftover hot sauce, I snapped the handle off the spork and laid the part of it that had been in Batten's mouth onto the surface, where it bobbed and sloshed in lazy circles while the water slopped around.

I considered my surroundings and found a flat spot to set the bowl down.

“
Holy water, plastic spork / Help me find this fucking dork
. /
As I will it, shall it be / Bright the hunter's steps I see.”

The spork began to spin in a lazy circle, and at first I thought that's all it was going to do. Then it spiraled up into the air, pointing further up the hill. Declan made a soft noise of approval. The water in the
bowl began to bubble and roil, droplets spat up as though flicked on a hot frying pan, jumping in the air and then hanging there. Other droplets shot further, and began to form a dancing line of filmy-red tears in the air. In less than five minutes, we had a clear path, though it was difficult to see in the darkness, even when the stars came out.

Declan hoisted his doctor's bag. “Nice work, Dr. B.”

“Thank you, Dr. E.”

“Never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it.”

“Being that I'm your boss, you should probably can it with the wise-guy remarks,” I informed him, tossing him a half smile that he returned. “Shall we?”

“Have we got everything?”

I reached down into the car and popped the hood, then went to the front of the car to root around in what Batten kept there. Emergency blanket and first aid kit made sense to me; the shovel did not, but seeing it gave me an idea. I hooked my go-bag over my shoulder and grabbed it.

I wished I could sense Batten's well-being with either of my psychic Talents, looking back at the road fretfully for signs of Chapel, or even the other agents if they'd been sent on their way by the paramedics. “We can't wait. Someone will find us. Let's go.”

In addition to the hovering water droplets, we followed broken branches and muddy boot prints; Batten hadn't been the least bit concerned about covering his tracks. Kill-Notch had had a different focus. Destroy Anne? Arrest Spicer the necromancer? Kill zombies? All of the above? By himself? It was madness. Suicide.

But I remembered the knotted scars on the crook of his groin, remembered the catch in his voice when he talked about taking Jack Batten's team in to get that ancient revenant, and I knew he'd never endanger us if he thought he could do the job solo.

Puffing up the hill behind me, his doctor's bag clanging against his thigh, Declan and his brand new hiking boots were christened by red dust.
He breathes
, I noted, shoving all the resulting questions about the
dhampir
’s physiology to the back of my mind. Not the time for that. We were well beyond the tourist area, now, and the droplets hung in the moonlight like fat teardrops from a melancholy sky. The trail Batten had followed through the high grass wasn't immediately
visible, though when we passed an outcropping of rock, it wasn't well-hidden either. A low, humming chug came from a decent-sized generator, looking out of place in the quiet, post-silver-boom landscape. A toppled outhouse leaned forlornly against a still-sturdy fence that went nowhere and seemed to serve no purpose until I could picture horses tethered to it. Cut into the side of the mountain was a squat hollow.