Authors: A.J. Aalto
We heard a polite throat-clearing out by the fire. “So, I’ll just take next watch then, shall I?”
All three of us burst out laughing. I was still smirking when I finally slipped off into dreamland.
***
I only slept an hour or two at best when the sound of Declan snoring woke me. Batten was missing, and had been replaced by a shivering
dhampir.
I tracked Kill-Notch down by the fireside, where he was feeding sticks to the crackling flames. He was mostly dressed except for his jacket. His boots were unlaced.
“Make better time if we split up,” he explained, pulling his arm into his jacket.
My heart sank. “Oh?”
“Not that it’s not interesting traveling with you, Snickerdoodle.”
A lousy compliment to start with, it didn’t even feel genuine; though I couldn’t summon the Blue Sense to probe further, I really didn’t need to.
Interesting?
That’s what I am? Squid documentaries are interesting. A good Sudoku puzzle is interesting.
I said, “Thank you. It’s on my bucket list to be found interesting at least one time.”
He snorted while he laced his boots. “Mission accomplished.” He took longer with the last lace, fiddling. “I can’t go to Cairo. Take care of Dr. Edgar. You need to be careful there.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“The political climate—“
“I don’t need your help,” I lied. “Enjoy Kathmandu. Text me when you find the yeti, I guess.”
He seemed to take that as a dig, because his jaw rippled unhappily.
Good
.
I felt Declan stir in the tent behind me, the familiar, warm caramel-and-herbs feeling of the
dhamphir.
“Going to stay long enough to say bye to Declan?”
“You guys get the canopic jar. I’ll find Devarsi Patel and get started on the yeti business, find us a Sherpa. Catch up with me there.”
“In a hurry?
“Aren’t we?
Fair enough.
It didn’t soothe my nagging doubts, though. Something worse than being blown off started thrumming in the deep recesses of my brain. I ignored my stupid heart for a second and studied his well-honed cop face. As always, it revealed little… but not
nothing
. There was a funny tightness around his eyes this morning. Was it just the brightness of the morning sun on the snow? Was it the wind? Was it regret? I studied the way his jaw was moving. “You’re either forty-five seconds from violence, or you’re going to cry like a baby. Which is it?”
“Let’s go back to being just friends,” Batten said with a long-suffering sigh, and I hoped he was joking.
“We were friends?” I asked.
“Uh huh.”
I cocked my head. “Like, friends the way we were in Buffalo?”
“Like, friends the way we were before we met.”
“There’s a word for that. Strangers.”
Batten grunted. “Okay, let’s go back to being just strangers.”
“I thought you hated psychics before you met me.”
Batten nodded once, solidly. “I still hate psychics.” He gave me the side eye. “Maybe more than ever.”
“Devarsi Patel will never disclose the location of yeti breeding grounds to a well-known vampire hunter. Dig me or not, you still need me for that.”
Batten hung his head. “I need you for a lot of things,” he agreed, “but not this.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
“You’ve never met Patel. He’s…” I ransacked my brain for a sufficiently all-encompassing term, “quirky.”
“So you’ve said.”
I'd told him about Lenny Epp, too, but compared to The Chicken Whisperer, Dev was an order of magnitude weirder. Maybe two.
“You don’t get it,” I said. “Dev’s complicated. He’ll play the invalid and then rope you into strange situations. You have to be on your guard but ultra-honest with him. He’s been hunting the most elusive creatures on the planet for decades and he’s got super-senses.” Batten arched one eyebrow and I answered, “No, he’s not a DaySitter, or any kind of magic user. He’s just damn good at his job. He’s tricky.”
He stood, stretched his back, and hooked his go-bag over his shoulder. “Accustomed to dealing with nutcases,” he assured me, his glance accusing.
I folded my arms, but maintained my distance because that felt right. I didn’t like that it felt right, but something deep in my belly was telling me that a hug would be a bad idea right now. “Try not to get yourself killed. I kinda like your dick.”
He snort-laughed and shook his head, casting me what I thought was a gathering look, like he was downloading the sight of me into his memory. “Be careful, Snickerdoodle.”
I clenched my teeth to trap all the things I wanted to say to him, feeling a little sick. “In or out, Mark, you need to think about what you’re doing before you do it.”
“I always do,” he said, and gave me a big smile; a real Mark Batten smile, just for me. It tilted upward on one side and he shot me a wink that didn’t get anywhere close to hitting me in the lady bits the way it usually did. “Try not to fuck everything up.”
Ditto,
I thought.
FIGURING I’D EARNED A FREE
breakfast on the town of Grimston, if not a key to the city, I gave the vending machine another shake until I heard a thunk. The thunk was satisfying. I’d have liked to
thunk
Mark Batten right in the fucking schnoz.
After all that sex and snuggling, he just takes off?
“I can’t go to Cairo,” he’d said. No further explanation. Well, who needed him? Not me. Not us. Me and Bubba Nyarlathotep's canning jars didn't need Hotass McJerkface. No, sir. I'd just shove a Sphinx up his sphincter and tell him to pound sand. Maybe he'd had a traumatic childhood encounter with a camel. I bet that was it. And then he'd seen
Aladdin
at an impressionable age (drunk, in college) and had gone into gibbering flashbacks when the Genie had said, “Be careful, they spit.”
Muttering obscure imprecations about a certain hard-assed pain in my own, I fished around with a gloved hand and pulled out a diet Pepsi, which was a fair approximation of my typical breakfast in that it was a brown, caffeinated liquid, but it was miles removed from a hand-drawn demitasse cup of Harry's espresso. I crawled into the tent, sat cross-legged beside Declan, and soothed myself with watching him sleep for a while before cracking the tab and letting the carbonated hiss be his alarm clock.
The
dhampir
grumbled at me and spied out of one disturbingly green eye. “What time is it?”
“Batten’s gone. He walked off about an hour ago.”
“He left us?” Declan shot out of his sleeping bag, reaching for his old-timey pocket watch to check the time. “What about all the sex?”
“Like
that
was gonna last longer than ten minutes,” I huffed. “Guess he’s Mark Fuck-and-Run Batten.”
“Why did you let him leave?”
Let him
? Was I supposed to hog tie him? Okay, the idea had merit, but not while either of us were wearing any clothes.
“You don’t need him,” I said, lifting my Pepsi. “You’ve got me.”
“Belphegor’s ballsack!” he swore, his eyes wide.
I cough-spit, then dried my shirt front with my leather glove. “I’m better than Batten.”
“You’re worse.” He shoved his jeans under his emergency blanket to haul and wriggle into them in the relative privacy offered by his thin, silver bedding. “So much worse.”
“Okay, that’s true, but I’m cuter.”
“That won’t save our lives, Dr. B,” he assured me.
I shrugged with one shoulder. “You’d think that, wouldn’t you? But I get by.”
“Is this because you tried to save him?” Declan demanded, as though I’d know the answer. I didn’t think it was. I thought we’d made up. Then again, Batten hadn’t actually agreed to back down and let me help. I realized that he hadn’t actually backed down and let me take control. Not even a little. He had distracted me with dick.
Oh, that jerk
.
“Did he tell you not to save
me
?” Declan asked, and it was an excellent question.
“Nope. He made no specific mention of that at all. In fact, he said I should take care of you.”
“What sense does that make? I’m immortal, he’s not.”
We pondered this for a moment. “Well, he's an asshole, and you're not, so there's that. Did he get up your nose when you tried to protect him against the ferals?”
He pressed his lips together in thought before shaking his head. “So, what’s our plan?”
“Breakfast,” I said, taking another pull from the can. “Then we kick ass.”
“Whose ass?”
“Well, we need to find some ass first. That’s always been my problem.”
Declan’s lips twitched. Some of the stress drained out of his face. “You’re the worst,” he repeated, and then got out of his sleeping bag, tucking in his shirt. “What’s next on the list?”
“The Golden Sap of Huxtahotep,” I replied.
Declan said. “We need flights to Cairo.”
“I also need an Indiana Jones hat. And a whip.” I made
wha-cha
noises and a nifty wrist motion. “Definitely need a whip.”
“I need a vacation.”
“C’mon.” I patted his thigh. “Let’s go steal Dr. Huxtable’s can of peas.”
“Try again.”
“Hoochie Coochie’s Golden Grahams.”
“Almost.”
“Hubba Bubba's honey bucket.”
We abandoned Batten’s tent, because fuck that guy, and after walking back to town, we finally were able to hire a car – okay, mostly it was Declan doing the people skills stuff, especially with his pouring on the local boy accent – and returned to something closer to civilization so we could get to the airport. The fastest itinerary from Belfast to Cairo would take about eight hours gate to gate with a short layover, so we booked ourselves on the flight out that afternoon and estimated we’d land in Egypt around two in the morning.
***
“So, I’ve been doin’ a bit of research, Dr. B., on that drink the clurichaun gave you,” Declan said, once we’d settled into our seats.
“What, the rat bile?”
“Would you say you tasted any ground ivy or prunes?”
“It was crispy on the nose, robust and dirty, with a bouquet of rusty cans and rodent effluence,” I said in my snootiest wine enthusiast voice. “Short legs, but it finishes well. Like me.” I showed him a broad wink.
“That leg thing, the fairy spell,” he said. “
The Witch Ever Dances
. We’ve got to watch that. It could come back in times of stress until the ale makes its way out of your system.”
“It should be gone by now,” I said. “My legs don’t feel restless anymore. How long is it supposed to last?”
“Results vary,” he said, scanning the articles with a swipe of his finger on his phone.
“My dear assistant,” I said, toying with the thin blanket the stewardess brought me, trying to cover myself all over. “You could say that same thing about
all
magic.”
“It’s just something we should keep in mind.” His unnaturally green eyes showed concern. “I’m not saying it could be permanent, I’m just saying it could still be lingering.”
“Great, a faerie-induced case of Riverdance Leg Syndrome.” I sighed and got out my Moleskine to look over my notes, drawing sketches. The gold seed pod was securely in my go-bag. One down, two to go. Next up was the Golden Sap of Huxtahotep. The instructions indicated that there would be a specific “misfit” canopic jar to get. I didn’t know how we’d know which one was the right one, but I did have an advantage in Giza: my old chemistry partner, Pia Bakaras. I'd texted her the details of our flight, and her reply assured me that she was “on it” and would be waiting for us at the airport with a car.
Pia, I knew, was uncomfortable with my lifestyle and my interactions with Asmodeus; it was hard to defend the Devil's homeboy in the face of her faith. Pia’s and my paths after university had gone in vastly different directions, and on my last visit to Egypt, she had once lured me – with the promise of a cold Pepsi and “a neat surprise” – to the shrine standing where the angel Raphael had banished and bound Asmodeus after chasing him from Sarah’s bed. The shrine featured four pillars with chains and two broken wings, cast in the floor, said to be the demon’s real ones, turned to stone. Since I’d never seen Asmodeus with wings, I couldn’t speak to the accuracy of that part. It was said that Asmodeus had not fought His bindings in Egypt, but spent centuries there transforming into a snake and back into His seraphim form to amaze and mesmerize unsuspecting virgins, and lulling them with an undulating dance that would cause them to forget what He truly was and give up their virginity to Him, only revealing His demonic form at the moment of conquest.
Knowing Asmodeus as I did, I could
eeeeeeasily
imagine this part of the myth to be, as Harry would say, spot on. I admit it, I have a thing for sexy assholes.
I had stood at the shrine for a long time, and Pia had left my side, content to wander in the cool desert night, glancing over at me now and then, but never asking me what I thought of it. She knew my position. She knew about Harry, and the revenants, and my work with law enforcement, and she knew about Asmodeus. She probably knew more about Asmodeus than anyone on Earth outside the DaySitter community. I’d be willing to bet she had a few nuggets of knowledge that I didn’t, particularly when it came to the Old Testament and the Talmud. According to Harry, Asmodeus eventually grew bored of His chains and His sexy dancing in the desert and stepped from His bindings. He decided He needed company, and chose the First Turned from those who had bound him.
Den.
The being who would create the
Falskaar Vouras
and become Death’s Adversary, he who could stay the hands of time and grant immortality. It was there that the revenant line began, at that very shrine; Pia did not approve, but I had felt a secret thrill to be standing where the demon king had decided to take one man into the shadows of the undying with him.
As much as she disapproved of my lifestyle, she was still willing to help. I turned to my business considerations, which consisted entirely of thrilling variations on the subjects of email, email, and email. So many people wanting my help already. I was
not
going to be bored in this profession. How to pick a first case? I was tempted to practice on Susan from Tacoma and her silly sock nonsense just to see how things went. There was also still the quote-unquote problem of the company name.