Harbor who was very grateful we showed up last night.”
My jaw dropped. I’d completely forgotten Maria’s problem with the drug lord. “Did you get him?”
Rizzoli smiled and it had a satisfying dark edge. “Red-handed. He’ll be behind bars for a very long time. The judge agreed he was a flight risk. No bail.”
Awesome! “You rule, Rizzoli. So you got promoted to situation commander?”
Now his expression wasn’t so pleased. The muscles in his cheeks and forehead tightened. “Field promotion … to replace the two guys above me who are in pieces. Now I’m the lucky guy in the line of fire.”
Ouch. “Sorry. Anything I can do?”
“Yeah. There is.” He stepped out of the way as a hazmat-suited team came up behind him with a body bag. “You have the strangest group of contacts I’ve ever seen. Call them. See them. Find out why this is happening. I don’t want to know how to seal the rift. There are a thousand people behind me who can do that. I want to know why it’s here—in this place, at this time. There’s never been a problem before at this prison and the area got a seal of approval from the MPRC after a five-year white-paper study. I want to know that when we close the rift it won’t show up somewhere else next week.”
That was surprisingly forward thinking and I was flattered that he’d asked it of me. Of course, I might be one along with 999
Wait. When had I started calling him
Rizzoli nodded thoughtfully as the hazmat team used an ordinary-looking broom and dustpan to scoop up the bits of demon-infested guard and pour them carefully into a black zippered bag. “Stick around for a bit. Stay with the guys who are doing the holy-water tests. Anybody who doesn’t pass goes to you.”
“So you’re sanctioning me to … kill people?”
“No,” he said seriously. “I’m sanctioning you to keep the demons from getting out of this zone. If you know a better way to do that with every priest in Southern California already busy, I’m open to suggestions.”
I touched my pocket and felt the press of hard ceramic. “Well, if there aren’t more than five of them, I might have a solution.” I walked around the car and whispered in Rizzoli’s ear about the charm balls John had made. Damn it.
“I like it. Give them a try. We can put them in containment then and keep them from escaping until a priest is available.”
All of a sudden a hum rose into the air. It was an airy, light sound, very much like the children’s choir I’d heard on the call with Mr. Murphy. It caught everyone’s attention and we all turned as one. A blue light rose into the sky like a beacon until it dwarfed the fountain of lava that was spewing from the earth. The air felt immediately cooler and I could finally take a deep breath that didn’t scald my lungs. Everybody waited anxiously as the blue shield began to round over at the top. Some demons can fly, so it can’t just go straight up. It has to close and lock.
“C’mon, guys,” I willed the two mages I knew and the hundreds I didn’t to give it everything they had. Slowly the shield began to close. A few imps threw themselves against the barrier nearby and bounced off before melting. Sweet. Someone must have added holy words to the spell to beef it up.
Sound faded and everybody took a collective breath. Lights flashed silently and the unearthly howls became quieter and farther away until, with a flash of light that was nearly blinding, the prison was contained inside the barrier.
A chorus of cheers rose into the air, but I heard two screams of pain. A female officer a few feet away started swearing and dropped to the ground to thrash. Everybody stepped back and a hundred guns were drawn from holsters. I didn’t think twice. I grabbed one of the TBB charms and threw it hard. It hit her and exploded and she froze as solidly as if I’d thrown liquid nitrogen. Rizzoli held out his hand and I put two of the disks into it. He sprinted toward where the other screaming was coming from, and a moment later it stopped. I hadn’t expected that the demons would start screaming when cut off from their own kind. Handy knowledge.
“Where’d you get those? How much are they?” The cop was young and eager and was staring at his paralyzed former colleague with unabashed admiration.
“Find a mage named John Creede. He’s here, somewhere. He’ll hook you up.” I turned my head once he left and called, “Hey, Alex! C’mere.”
She looked at me, put up a hand to stop the person who was speaking to her, and walked over. “What’s up?”
“You might check with the priests to see if it’s normal for a demon to scream and thrash when cut off from the rest of the pack. It might be an easy way to at least track down the escapees who were possessed.”
She stuck out her bottom lip as she thought. “Might be a pain in the butt, but I can certainly call the nine- one-one dispatcher in the area to see if anyone’s called in about someone with symptoms like that. And maybe the hospitals.” She paused, then nodded. “Y’know, that might work.” She turned abruptly, muttering to herself, and went back to her team and started to talk rapidly.
I grabbed two cops and had them carry the frozen, possessed cop while we looked for a priest. Matty was the first one I came across, and I explained the situation and how the officer came to be bound. He was impressed with the charm as well and grabbed his bag. “I don’t know whether I can release the demon from a bound body. I’ve never tried. It would be safer if we could. Every seminary in the world would buy these things. But I’m afraid that the demon will be trapped and frozen just like the body.”
“Will it hurt her to try it?” She looked like a nice person, and more than one of the cops had looked really stricken when they’d had to pull their weapon on her.
Matty pulled his cloth from inside the bag and put on a larger silver cross. “Shouldn’t. But we need to be prepared in case it does. Who did the casting on this? Bruno’s tried for years but has never perfected one.” He looked up at me and okay, I flinched first and turned my gaze to the ground. He let out a sigh. “Well, you’d better go get him. I might need him to take off the binding during the ritual and put up a fast circle.” I started to walk away, then heard him clear his throat and call my name. “Celia!” I looked back; he was pointing in the other direction. “I’d suggest you go the other way. You’ll run into my brother first if you take that route.”
I took his suggestion and turned around. Just call me chicken girl. A week from now, I wouldn’t care. But there was still a little bit of glow snuggling in my stomach and I just didn’t want to have to explain it. I walked all the way around the blue perimeter, which took a while because the prison is actually damned big. But it gave me a chance to see the damage—and the rift—firsthand. I don’t know how to describe what it looked like. It was an area of blackened sky that wasn’t completely black. There were stars that were too low in the sky and a rainbow of shifting colors, like the aurora borealis. It looked the same from all directions, which was weird. Maybe a physicist could explain it, but I couldn’t. I was concentrating on it so much I nearly tripped over Creede. He was sitting on the sand sucking down a bottle of water. He looked utterly exhausted. “Wow. You look rough.”
He looked up and could barely smile. The light in his eyes was completely out—they were just regular hazel. If I didn’t know him and someone had told me he was a mage, I wouldn’t have believed them. “Thanks. I feel worse.” Another long pull from the water bottle emptied it. I had something that would help a little; I keep a few in my vest for just such emergencies. I handed him a Hershey bar. He smiled for real as he took the candy bar from me. “Water and chocolate. The dinner of champions.” He managed a chuckle.
I didn’t tell him I’d been packing nutrition shakes earlier; I’d finished the last one off not long ago. I figured this wasn’t a good time or place to suddenly start hunting for necks if I got too hungry.
I gave his calf a little kick. “Well, c’mon then, champion. I need you to take off one of the bindings. They worked great, but Matty doesn’t know if he can do the exorcism with the person bound.”
Creede collapsed onto his back, arms sprawled, and chewed. When he finally swallowed, he spoke: “Crap. I honestly don’t know if I’ve got it in me, Ceil. Really. I’m toast.” It was the first time he’d called me anything other than Celia or Graves and it came out sounding like “seal” rather than “cell.”
“Well, can anyone remove it, or just you? We’ve got a couple of people bound and ready to get unpossessed.”
Creede closed his eyes and I honestly thought he’d fallen asleep. But after long moments while I just stared
