Hellhound (A Deadtown Novel) (8 page)

MY WALK WITH KANE HAD DONE NOTHING TO CLEAR MY head. I kept wandering through the streets of Deadtown, aimlessly I thought, until I realized my feet were taking me toward Creature Comforts.

The streets grew more crowded the closer I got to the checkpoint, but I kept my head down and this time nobody bothered me. Maybe it was my Magnum. Or maybe it was the Goons on every corner. Whatever, I was glad to avoid trouble. Pam McFarren would be proud.

I whizzed through the checkpoint, feeling a little guilty it was so easy when all those zombies behind me couldn’t even pass into the Zone, not since yesterday’s riot. On the other hand, I thought, kicking away shards of a broken bottle, the mood was still ugly, and the Zone hadn’t yet recovered from yesterday’s damage. Axel had held his own, but he was only one troll. Next time, he might not be so lucky. I hated to agree with Commissioner Hampson, but maybe it was a good idea to keep zombies on their own side of the barrier until things simmered down.

As I’d noticed earlier, Creature Comforts was the only bar in the Zone that was open for business. Things would be hopping inside. The crowd might be rowdy. Knowing that Axel frowned on bringing weapons into the bar, I zipped my jacket all the way up to my chin. If I needed the gun, it would be there. But I didn’t expect to need it. Axel doesn’t allow any nonsense.

As I stepped inside, inhaling the familiar, comforting scent of old beer, stale smoke, and a slight whiff of human blood, I stopped in surprise. Aside from a couple of vampires holding court to three adoring junkies in the back booth, I was the only customer. Axel lounged on a stool at the end of the bar, his large hands around a glass of beer, watching the overhead TV. He acknowledged my entrance with a short nod, and then stood, picked up his beer, and walked behind the bar.

“Where is everybody?” I asked, taking a stool.

“Not here.” He rummaged around in a refrigerator, then held up a bottle, his eyebrows raised.

The beer he offered was my usual—a lite beer that tasted just a shade beerier than carbonated water. I’m not all that big on drinking. Tonight, the way that sleeping pill had messed with my head, I didn’t want to compound the problem with even a miniscule amount of alcohol. “No thanks,” I said. “How about a club soda with lime? Make that a couple of limes.”
Wow, Vicky, you really know how to live it up.

Axel gave me a look that suggested he was worried I’d go all crazy on him—not—and rattled some ice cubes into a glass. He gave me my drink, three lime wedges adorning the rim.

“You all right?” I asked. “After last night, I mean.”

“Fine.”

I looked around. The bar seemed fine, too. Same dim lights, sticky floor, crooked chairs, and vinyl-seated booths I knew and loved. Here, you could almost believe that all was right with the world.

Axel reached to lower the volume on the TV.

“Don’t bother,” I said. “If you’re watching it, I mean.”

I was in the mood to sit and stare into my drink, and Axel isn’t what you’d call a big talker, anyway. Well, not unless Mab is here to chat with him in whatever language Scandinavian trolls speak. Then you can’t shut the guy up. I wondered again if I’d heard Mab right, if she really was coming to Boston. The more I thought about it, the more I was sure I’d imagined it. That and her Lady of the Cerddorion comment. None of it made any sense.

Axel leaned against the counter behind the bar and returned his attention to the TV. He was watching one of those competitive cooking shows, where teams of chefs race to outdo each other to perform culinary miracles. Axel watched intently, not even blinking.

“Thinking of opening a restaurant?” I asked.

His eyes didn’t leave the screen as he shook his head. “Reminding myself why I’d be crazy to try.”

I could see what he meant. On the screen, flames shot upward from a pan as two chefs screamed at each other. One of them grabbed a plate of pasta and hurled it across the kitchen. The scene made Axel’s job of tossing out anemic vampire junkies and breaking up werewolf fights look positively placid.

I turned back to my drink, drawing a line with my finger through the condensation on the glass. The show was easy to tune out—I wasn’t really interested in people throwing fits about overcooked linguini. Instead, I squeezed a lime wedge and stirred the cloudy juice into my club soda. What was going on with the Morfran? How was it managing to possess a zombie like Tom Malone or Andy Skibinsky and control its host’s actions before consuming him?

Pryce was behind this—he had to be. He was the one who’d sent a huge quantity of the Morfran to Boston last winter. When the spirit had attacked the zombies at the Paranormal Appreciation Day concert, I’d acted as quickly as I could, using Hellforged to trap it in the old slate gravestones of the Granary Burying Ground. I’d mopped up most of it, but some had gotten away. Maybe that little bit of escaped Morfran had found those zombies and driven them to kill. But why would the Morfran change its behavior?

An uneasy feeling clenched my stomach.

I’d told Daniel that sorcery was a possible cause. Pryce’s father, Myrddin Wyllt, had been a wizard, well versed in the sorcerer’s black arts. When Myrddin died, Pryce absorbed his father’s life force and knowledge. In the Darklands, I’d seen Myrddin’s spirit emerge from Pryce’s body to cast a spell. Could Pryce be using Myrddin’s sorcery to bind the Morfran to zombies?

There was one way to find out. I had a spy in the demon plane.

A spy I hated to summon, because it always gave me twice as much trouble as information. My very own personal guilt demon, an Eidolon with the unlikely name of Butterfly.

The uneasy feeling in my gut grew. I let it. Worry, anxiety, any kind of malaise—all these things are like catnip to an Eidolon. When a wave of nausea rose from the pit of my stomach to my throat, I knew
now
was the time. I jumped off my stool and rushed across the room, past the vampires and their acolytes, to the back hallway. I passed the door marked
BOOS
and shoved open one marked
GHOULS
. The bathroom was empty—good. Stomach churning, I leaned on a sink and commanded, “Butterfly! I summon thee here from Uffern!” Uffern is what demons call their own plane.

The sick feeling tightened into a ball. I braced. A black butterfly with razor-sharp wings tore from my body, shooting out from the region of my solar plexus.
Damn
, that hurt. It bounced off the wall and whacked the side of my head. Then it flew up near the ceiling and hovered there.

“Whaddaya want?” it asked in an irritable voice.

I reached with shaking hands to turn on the faucet. By the time I’d splashed some cold water on my face, I felt better. As I reached for a paper towel, the black butterfly landed on my shoulder.

“And what’d you conjure me in the ladies’ room for? I ain’t a lady. I ain’t
comfortable
in here.”

“Too bad.” I wiped my face with a handful of paper towels, then leaned forward to look in the mirror. Dark purple circles ringed my eyes. Clinging to my shoulder was a large black insect, with a six-inch wingspan and the hideous face of a demon—beady eyes, a tusked snout, a mouthful of pointy teeth. “I need some information, Butterfly.”

The demon cringed at the nickname. To an Eidolon the most important thing—besides gorging on its victim’s feelings of guilt and anxiety—is its own dignity. If you don’t take a guilt demon seriously, if you mock it and call it names, it loses some of its power over you.

Or at least, that’s the theory.

I’d first conjured this particular Eidolon several weeks ago. Then, as now, I’d needed information about happenings in the demon plane. Unfortunately, in calling it to me I’d drawn a bit too deeply on my feelings of regret and remorse, and ended up with a teensy little demon infestation. Butterfly was keeping a toehold in my gut, always ready to snack on my baser feelings. In a way, I couldn’t blame the demon. The way my life had been going lately, my gut-level emotions were an Eidolon’s dream of an all-you-can-eat buffet.

“Oh,
you
need information, huh? That would be the same ‘you’ who calls me names, tries to starve me to death, and threatens to kill me with one of your dozens of nasty-looking bronze weapons. Why should I lift a wing to help you?”

“I don’t know. ’Cause you like my pretty face?”

Butterfly’s braying laugh sprayed demon spit in my ear.

Gross.
I swatted the demon from my shoulder and grabbed more paper towels. As I wet them and scrubbed out my ear, Butterfly flew up to the fluorescent light fixture, bumping against it a few times. My turn to laugh. “Must be hell for a demon to manifest in the form of a creature that’s attracted to light.”

“I manage.” Butterfly tore itself away from the light and landed on the edge of a sink. Its black, serrated wings quivered. “I like this form. Good mobility.” Usually Eidolons manifest as a giant maggot, with a demon head and a second toothy mouth hidden in its belly. The Eidolon sits on its victim, the demon head taunting while the belly-mouth munches away on the shame, remorse, and despair that arise. The worse the victim feels, the better the Eidolon eats. “That dumb nickname you gave me lets me take this shape. So I don’t even mind when you call me B . . . Buh . . . you know.”

“Sure. The name you can’t bring yourself to say.” I was getting fed up with this conversation. “Cooperate, or I’ll come up with a different name for you, like Horse Poop.”

“Try it. I’ll manifest in a big, steaming pile in the middle of your bed. On your pillow, maybe.” The demon chuckled at the thought. Conjuring this demon was a mistake. I thought of the gun under my jacket, and my demon mark twinged. One bronze bullet, and I’d finally be rid of this pest. My hand on the pistol grip, I wondered how miffed Axel would be about one little bullet hole in the ladies’ room wall. And possibly another in the ceiling. Maybe two. Butterfly was fast.

A tap sounded on the door, which cracked open an inch. I let go of my gun and pulled my jacket shut. “You all right?” Concern threaded Axel’s gruff voice.

“I’m fine.”

“I thought I heard voices.”

“That was me. I’m, um . . . practicing a speech. For the unity rally.” It was the only reason I could think of that I’d be standing in front of a bathroom mirror, talking to myself. Butterfly put two legs over its mouth, trying to hold in the laughter. It staggered on its other four legs and fell over sideways. “Really, Axel, I’m okay.” I raised my voice to cover the sound of demonic laughter. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the door closed.

Butterfly lay on its back, howling with laughter, its legs kicking the air. “That’s the lamest excuse I ever heard. Hey, do you think that later on you could feel, you know,
dumb
about it? Idiotic, even? Those feelings are delicious.”

Anger welled, and I thought again of my gun. “Forget I conjured you. And stay out of my emotions. I’ll kill you, I swear.”

Ever seen a butterfly look skeptical? That was the look the Eidolon gave me. My anger skyrocketed, and my demon mark flared into a bonfire. I wanted to make Butterfly hurt, bad. Okay, the gun would get me banned from Creature Comforts, but I didn’t have to shoot the Eidolon. I could swat it with my shoe and smear demon guts across the sink. Squashing the demon wouldn’t be fatal, but it might teach the damn thing some manners. I reached down and pulled off my shoe.

Butterfly felt the change in my mood. It launched from the sink and flew around my head, then alighted on the farthest stall door. “You know, you really need to look into an anger-management class or something,” it said. “You’re not safe to be around.”

“Then quit infesting me. Whether I call you or not,
just leave me alone
!” I shouted. I punched the door open and stomped out into the hallway. I hurled myself back onto my barstool. It wasn’t until I slapped my shoe on the bar that I realized I hadn’t put it back on.

Axel stared, one eyebrow raised. I opened my mouth to explain, but I couldn’t think of a single reason why my supposed speech about unity would end with me taking off my shoe and screaming, “Leave me alone.” So instead I drained my club soda and asked for another.

He picked up my glass and, giving me a funny look, sniffed it. I took the opportunity to study my fingernails. The one on my right index finger was looking a little ragged; had I been chewing it lately?

Axel put the empty glass in the sink and took a clean one from the shelf. He filled it with ice and club soda and sniffed it again, then cut a couple of lime wedges.

On the television above the bar, the closing credits for the chef competition show were rolling. The picture cut to a shot of the police commissioner, Fred Hampson, all dressed up in a dark blue suit and staring into the camera. He had a narrow face, with deep bags pulling down his eyes and a thin mouth made thinner by his grim expression.

“This is a public safety announcement,” he said. “Until further notice, a curfew is in effect for Designated Area One. Starting immediately, all previously deceased residents must be off the streets and in their homes from two hours before sunrise until two hours after sunset. Extra patrols will be dispatched to the area to ensure compliance.

“In addition, the code for Designated Area One is now yellow. I repeat: Code Yellow. All previously deceased humans are restricted to DA-1. Other paranormals may pass through the checkpoints with proper identification. At this time, twenty-seven of the previously deceased remain at large.”

A list of names, organized alphabetically, scrolled up the screen.
Wendy Abingdon. Mario Bello. Oliver Burnes.
As the list went by I didn’t see any names I knew.

Hampson’s face reappeared. “If you encounter any of these fugitives, you must inform the authorities immediately. Call 911 or the Paranormal Reporting Hotline.” A phone number flashed across the bottom of the screen. “Anyone with knowledge of the whereabouts of a fugitive who fails to make a report may be subject to arrest. Thank you for your cooperation.” Again, the list of names scrolled up the screen.

“What a prick.”