magic nestled in my gut.
“I know this is probably a bad time to ask, but will Lilith be able to detect this?” I rubbed my stomach, not quite comfortable with the warm, leaden lump buried inside it.
Listless, Baalth muttered a quiet no. “Though excised from me, it has yet to be absorbed. It will remain inside you until such time as you willfully accept it.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine, a somber reticence swirling in them. “Be warned, however, the experience is…overwhelming.”
As I’d been through a couple of soul transfers, I had a vague idea of what he meant. I’d also watched as Baalth absorbed Glorius’s grossly inflated power, its grandeur bringing even him to his knees. Though I doubted the feelings could ever compare to that, all things considered, the scale was still relative. It was gonna knock me on my ass.
I nodded to Baalth, thanking him.
He waved it off. “Despite our obligations being concluded, I presume you will continue in your hunt for the necromancer, to satisfy your keepers at DRAC?”
While I didn’t like the way he phrased it, he knew Abraham would keep me working toward his best interest because it was DRAC’s as well. He just wouldn’t have to pay me for it. I sighed and confirmed it. No sense lying to either of us.
“Veronica will go with you, of course, but Poe will accompany you as well.” He motioned them over, Veronica wiping incessantly at her mouth while Poe politely ignored her doing so.
I knew I’d have to put up with the ex-after the kiss, that was gonna be a real pleasant experience-but I hadn’t counted on Baalth’s mentalist tagging along. Capable of keeping in contact with both Veronica and Baalth, at all times, I wasn’t sure if having him there was gonna be a benefit or liability. I did know it wasn’t being done to make things easier for me. It never was. But it was okay. DRAC had its own telepaths.
“Fine,” I agreed. “I figure you’ll be easy enough to reach, should you be needed?” While a bit childish of me, I didn’t want Baalth to think he’d slipped something by.
He chuckled, looking almost like his usual self. “I’ve masked Poe so Lilith cannot detect his energies.” He gestured toward his other two goons, and in whirl of darkness, they disappeared. He looked back to me with eyes a blazing. “Should Lilith come to harm during your mission, I would be most appreciative.” With that, he too vanished in a cloud of inky black vapors, the subtle tang of brimstone tickling my nose.
Suddenly feeling the withering glare that prickled my spine, I looked to Veronica, her blue eyes icy. The vein at her temple danced to the beat of angry drums. She was pissed. Out of reflex, I tried to deflect.
“Hey, I’m not the one who made you do it.”
“You might as well have,” she spit back. “I don’t know why Baalth caters to you, but one of these days your preferential treatment is going to come to an end. When it does, I’m going to put my foot so far up your ass you’ll be able to taste my knee.”
Painful visual aside, she was handling it all better than I thought she would. Rather than risk aggravating her further, knowing damn well she’d make good on her promise, I chose the better part of valor and kept my big mouth shut.
I picked Chatterbox from out of the fog and lifted him up where he could see. His squirmy eyes were glazed, subdued, and they tracked on Veronica like a lovelorn puppy. He was quiet and pensive, nothing like himself. I didn’t like it. There’d be no metal serenades today.
Maybe when everything was said and done, I’d get my singing buddy back. Of course, considering what I had in mind to do next, I might not have to worry about that. I might be dead.
Rather than dwell on the grim likelihood of my future, I went to work. “You passed on my message exactly as I gave it to you?”
“Of course,” she huffed.
“Good. Then let’s get going.”
Veronica glared at me a moment, then shifted her gaze to Chatterbox. Her repulsion colored her face, seeping out like mercury in her voice. “Lead us to Reven.”
“Folllllloooooowww meeeeeeeee, meeeeee, eeeeee,” he answered immediately. Though incapable of independent movement, the whole lacking a body thing, he made it clear which way we needed to go. His slippery tongue jetted from his mouth and wiggled in the direction of the portal we’d used to enter Limbo.
At the sight of it, Veronica stormed off looking nauseous while I followed along lugging Chatterbox, Poe silently bringing up the rear. We looked a ragtag bunch: an angry ex-wife, a battered mentalist, and me, the white sheep of the black family. I could think of a handful of people I’d rather have at my side, but beggars can’t be choosers. In the end, I was likely marching off to my death.
Did it really matter which side killed me?
Chapter Twenty
We made it through the shimmering portal and returned to Earth without any problems, much to my surprise. It was as if the spirits knew there was some major shit going down on Terra Firma and they didn’t want anything to do with it. Can’t say I blame them. I didn’t want much to do with it myself.
It was the same uncomfortable quiet on the Earth side. Lilith hadn’t posted a guard or wasted her time watching the gateway, trusting her manipulated goons to kill me. She didn’t know me very well.
Had she been on better terms with her daughter, Veronica could have told her I was real good at screwing up the plans of mice and men, and a succubus or two, now and again. It was a specialty of mine.
Expecting me to be dead, there was probably steam coming out of her ears when I popped back onto the plane alive. Not only had I survived her latest trap, but it’d look to her like I offed the three powerful minions she stole from Baalth. She was not gonna be happy.
To that end, I spurred Veronica and Poe on, our unholy trinity following the waggling lead of Chatterbox’s blackened tongue. While I wanted Lilith to come after me, I didn’t want to face her in the alley. If she showed up too soon, she’d ruin everything. And that likely included me.
A stolen car and an aggravating, circuitous drive to the other side of town later, I could have kicked myself as I realized where Chatterbox was leading us. I should have thought about it long before this. It was the perfect hideout, invisible in plain sight.
When El Paseo was smaller-more dirt, less people-travel to the city was mainly military related, minimizing the need for expensive, public air transportation. Before the city’s population exploded, inheriting the need for an international airport, what didn’t come by railroad was flown in to a small, privately owned airfield situated just outside of town. As the city grew, the need gone, the airfield was shut down, the government canceling their contract. Stubborn and too blind to see the value of the land it sat on, the owner refused to sell and the city engulfed it, building up around the airfield, isolating it.
Nowadays, the land is deeded to the owner’s sons under the provision they hold on to it, untouched, until the military comes to its senses and renews the contract; a circumstance that will never happen.
As such, the land sits empty and ignored, an oasis of overgrown weeds and cracked tarmac, five miles square. Surrounded by a fifteen foot fence capped with redundant layers of razor wire, and rumored to be a preserve for the city’s wild Pit Bull population, the airfield is avoided by even the most ardent of trespassers. It’s a blackened abyss wedged in the center of El Paseo’s failing industrial district, cut off from the world around it. There’s no longer even a street that leads to its rusted, shackled gates, the way blocked off over fifty years earlier.
If there was a better hiding place for a necromancer and an army of zombies, I didn’t know it.
As we got closer, the sun setting in the hazy horizon, we ditched the car and headed through the jumble of weather-worn warehouses and half-abandoned factories. We circled around the perimeter to be sure, avoiding the more populated areas, but Chatterbox’s tongue was rigid with insistence that his master lay beyond the industrial plots.
Rather than take the time to search for an opening, Veronica slipped her sword through a hole in the fence and pressed down, the rune-covered blade slicing through the chain links like scissors through paper. After just a few seconds, she’d carved us a door without making a sound. I slipped through the makeshift entrance, following
