“Sounds like quite a mystery,” Arvel said as he chewed another in his endless mouthfuls of meat.
“It was. To make a long story short, through dogged detective work and more than a little luck, my partner and I tracked the killer down to a park near the lake. But just as we were about to catch him, the killer disappeared through a strange shimmer in the air.”
“A portal,” Arvel said.
I nodded. “Varvara’s. My partner Dale and I followed, and found ourselves in the basement of the Demon Queen’s lair. The killer was gone. It took a bit for us to acclimate to Nekropolis-”
Arvel laughed. “I imagine it did!”
“But once we had our bearings, we continued to search for the killer. At first, we thought the warlock had ties to Varvara, but we learned Talaith had been using the Demon Queen’s portal because hers had been damaged in a previous struggle with Lord Edrigu. When we learned the truth, we headed to Glamere, determined to bring the killer back to Earth to face justice.”
“And what happened?” Arvel’s black eyes were shining; he was hanging on to my every word as if were a child being told a favorite bedtime story.
So I continued.
NINE
I stood with my back flattened against a smooth wooden wall, 9mm held easily at my side in my right hand, a small device gripped tightly in my left. The corridor was lit by a series of gently glowing blobs of yellowish light hovering near the ceiling, and the shadows they cast seemed to slither across the floor as if possessing a life of their own. From what I’d seen of this insane city so far, I knew it was quite possible that the shadows really were alive, and I reminded myself to keep an eye on them. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of my neck and across one of the many small wounds covering my body. It stung, and I started to take in a hissing breath of air out of reflex, but I forced myself to take a deep, calming breath instead.
You swore an oath to serve and protect, Matt. And even if you are a bit out of your jurisdiction, that’s exactly what you’re going to do.
My partner stood next to me, gun held ready as he peered around the corner.
“How many?” I whispered.
Dale pulled his head back and turned to face me. “Two,” he said, speaking softly. “Both male, big and tough- looking. The corridor stretches a long way-a couple hundred feet, easy-and they’re standing guard in front of a large wooden at the end of it. No obvious weapons that I could see.”
“They don’t need to carry physical weapons,” I reminded him. “Not in this place.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Dale Ramsey was a lean African-American man in his early fifties. His short black hair was starting to grey at the temples, and the lower half of his face was covered with thick stubble. People thought he did that to look stylish, but I knew it was because he often forgot to shave, sometimes for days. He wore a sharp-looking blue suit and, despite his slightly scruffy physical appearance, his outfit was dry-cleaned and neatly pressed as always. Dale had been my partner in the homicide division for the last five years, though I’d known him even longer, all the way back to when I’d started on the Cleveland force as a patrol cop and he was working Vice.
Thin lines of blood trickled from tiny wounds peppering Dale’s forehead, and he bent his head forward and used his tie to wipe away the blood so it wouldn’t run into his eyes. He’d used his tie instead of the back of his hand because his hands-like mine-were covered with similar wounds and were bleeding too. Not a lot, certainly not enough to be life-threatening, but definitely inconvenient.
Dale looked at the new smear of blood on his tie and grimaced. He hated getting his clothes dirty. “Who uses a barrier of animated thorn bushes as security? I mean, really.”
“Just be glad we got through without being sliced to bits.”
“I think that little lizard you picked up the Sprawl helped some,” he said.
“Salamander. They’re amphibians.” At least, I thought the creature I’d used to clear a path through Talaith’s thorn barrier was an amphibian. The dealer who’d sold it to me had said the small bright-red animal was a salamander in the mythological sense, meaning that it blazed with intense magical fire when threatened. I didn’t care what species it was, just as long as it worked as advertised. When Dale and I approached the thorn barrier surrounding Woodhome, and I’d had to do was removed the little guy from my pocket, and toss him into the thorns. The instant one pricked him, he opened his tiny mouth and let loose a blast of flame that would’ve done Godzilla proud. The salamander’s fire-blast cut a swatch through the thorns, and Dale and I had to run like hell to reach the entrance to Woodhome before the barrier closed up again. We’d made it, but not without getting pricked, scratched, and slashed in the process. I didn’t know what had happened to the salamander, but I wasn’t worried. As the little guy had so amply demonstrated, he could take care of himself.
I was only sorry that the creature’s magical fire hadn’t been strong enough to set Woodhome itself ablaze. But from what I understood, Talaith wasn’t only a witch, she was a Dark Lord-one of the most powerful beings in Nekropolis. And that meant her stronghold was protected by some serious magic, and since it was basically a gigantic tree-really a living mass formed from dozens of huge ancient trees inter-twined-she’d been smart enough to fireproof it. But not, it seemed, smart enough to do the same to her thorn barrier. Or maybe she simply hadn’t wanted to waste the magic on her thorns. I didn’t know from magic, and I had no intention of learning. Dale and I had come to Woodhome for one reason: to track down the warlock who’d been killing people in Cleveland and bring him to justice. After that, Dale and I would head home and this place would be nothing more than a nightmare that both of us would work damned hard to forget.
Inside, the corridors and chambers of Woodhome looked as if they’d been grown instead of built. The ceiling, walls, and floors were smooth but somewhat uneven, and instead of running straight, the corridors had a tendency to curve right or left, up or down. There were no signs to help us tell which way to go, but I’d picked up a few other items in the Sprawl besides the salamander, and one of them was the object I held in my left hand.
“You sure this is it?” he asked.
In response I held up the compass. Beneath the glass was the tiny figure of a skeleton lying flat, right arm stretched over its head, index finger pointing toward the wall-or rather, toward the chamber on the other side of the wall.
“How are we supposed to know if that thing’s working right? Or if it is working, it’s functioning as advertised?”
I shrugged and tucked the compass into one of my jacket pockets. “It’s supposed to locate sources of powerful magic. And if what the seer in the Sprawl told us is true, what we’re looking for should be the most powerful device in this place. Besides, I can’t think of any other way to find this Overmind thing. Can you?”
Dale made a face as if he’d just taken a bite of what he thought was prime rib only to discover someone had snuck a turd onto his plate when he wasn’t looking. “I hate this place. I like to keep things simple: good guys, bad guys, witnesses, and evidence. I could do without all this hocus pocus.”
“You and me both, partner,” I said. “But when in Rome…”
“I’ve never been to Rome, but I’m confident it’s nothing like this shithole.” He sighed. We’d worked together for so long that I knew Dale’s quirks and mannerisms as well as my own. Better, in fact. That sigh was Dale expelling the last bits of tension from his body as he geared up for action. He raised his gun and fixed me with his soft brown eyes. “You ready?”
I reached into one of my pockets with my left hand and took out a small mirror.
“Let’s do it.”
Without another word, we turned the corner and started running down the corridor.
The guards were exactly as Dale had described-big and mean-looking, but then they were guards: that was how they were supposed to look. They were two of a kind, Literally, they were twins. Both wore their black hair pulled back in pony-tails, both sported Vandyke beards, and both wore black tunics, black pants, and high black boots. I’d only been in Nekropolis a couple days, but I’d already learned that in this city, black was the new black. The warlocks looked surprised at first to see us, but they only hesitated a few seconds before raising their hands and gesturing wildly as they prepared to throw some very nasty magic our way.
