Tooth and Nail Read online

Page 15


  “All right,” I said into the phone. “I’ll do it.”

  “What were you thinking?” Early roared. “You’ll be killed!”

  It was the first thing Early had said since we left Adler’s house. In a way, it was a relief to finally see him explode. The tension had been getting to me. It had been like waiting for a bomb to go off.

  He’d waited until we’d stepped through the door of my cabin before speaking. My cabin sat at the back of Early’s property, behind his old two-story Victorian. I’d hoped he might head home and leave me in peace, but I had no such luck.

  Not looking at Early, I walked through the living room and unlocked the door that led to my workshop. I put myself between Early and the door so he wouldn’t see my hands shaking as I fumbled the key into the lock. I entered with Early following a step behind.

  “Well?” he shouted. “Is that what you want? Do you want to die?”

  I tugged the light cord. The orange bulb dangling overhead flickered to life, illuminating shelves and benches stocked with vials, bottles, old tomes, and assorted arcana.

  “Maybe I’ll win,” I said. “You ever think about that?”

  Early gave a mirthless laugh. The sound grated against me. Trying to remain calm, I snatched bottles off the shelves and dropped into a stool in front of the potion I’d started preparing earlier in the day.

  “Nice to know how much faith you have in me,” I said.

  “Holdfast is a brute. He will tear you to pieces.”

  “I’ve dealt with brutes before. I have tricks up my sleeve.”

  “What tricks? He’s an ogre! You’re not going to drop him with a curse. Look at One-tusk. He survived a dose of Lover’s Embrace.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  With a pair of tongs, I carefully took the potion off the low heat I’d set it over earlier in the day. The contents had thickened to a black, tar-like consistency.

  The tracking potion I was developing to hunt down the vodyanoy was a bit more complex than what I usually created.

  All I had to work with was his favorite tea cup, which would hold a strong emotional bond to the creature. I was relying heavily on the silver rim of the cup—silver absorbed emotional energy, so I’d been doing my best to draw that energy out and put it to use. Still, the connection was less potent than something like hair or blood.

  There were other complications, too. Running water played havoc with any tracking spell—and the vodyanoy would be almost certain to travel by river rather than overland. To try to counter the disruptive effect of the running water, I’d taken a sample of the river and filtered it through a membrane formed from a vampireling’s kidney. That membrane then went into the potion along with the swabs and scrapings I’d taken from the tea cup. The membrane would—hopefully—act as a negative for the river. It was kind of like the way noise-canceling headphones use an interference pattern to cancel out external sound.

  That was the idea, anyway. I’d read about the technique before, but I’d never used it myself. Even with the anti-river component of the potion, I expected to be dealing with a pretty bad signal-to-noise ratio. To give me the best chance of success, I prepared the potion so it would mature slowly and evenly. Unfortunately, that meant it would take time to reach its full potency.

  “You need to back out of this fight before it’s too late,” Early said as I worked.

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “You’re being a fool.”

  I spun around on my stool and glared at him. “I’m doing what you fucking taught me to do.”

  “I taught you to use your head! I taught you to think!”

  I snorted. “Is that what you believe?”

  “I didn’t teach you to solve your problems with murder. You learned that before I ever met you.”

  It was like he’d driven a shard of ice into my heart. For several seconds I was unable to speak. As I stared into Early’s eyes, I caught a glimpse of doubt there, a hint of regret.

  It was too late.

  Slowly, I rose to my feet. I towered over the old man. From here, he looked so small. Frail. Weak.

  “Murder?” I said quietly. “If I kill Holdfast—and make no mistake, I intend to give it my best shot—it won’t be murder. He wanted this.”

  “Ozzy,” he said, speaking slowly and enunciating every syllable carefully. “You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Then I’ll die!” I shouted. “I’ll die, and the vampires will bend their necks, and there will be peace for long enough for it to become someone else’s problem. I didn’t ask for this, Early. This isn’t some master plan I concocted so I can indulge the murderous impulses inside me.”

  I realized he was backing away from me. I was following. Baring my teeth, I jabbed him in the chest with my finger, hard enough to make him stumble.

  “You’re supposed to be the diplomat,” I snarled. “You’re supposed to be the one with all the right words. If you’d done your fucking job and kept the ogres in check, maybe I wouldn’t be walking to my own funeral!”

  My shout reverberated through the small workshop. Early’s face fell.

  “Maybe,” he said quietly, not meeting my eyes. “Maybe.”

  He looked up at me again, opening his mouth. He closed it without speaking. Silently, he turned and walked out of the room.

  As his footsteps receded, I uncurled my fists. Blood pounded in my head. The wound in my arm ached with remembered pain. Exhaustion pulled at my bones and scratched at my eyes.

  “Early, wait.” I called, walking back into the living room.

  I was just in time to see the front door close.

  “Shit,” I muttered, standing alone in the living room. Then I threw my head back and shouted. “Shit!”

  I slammed my open palm into the door frame. All I got for my trouble was a throbbing pain in the heel of my hand. I felt like the same dumb, angry, half-insane kid I’d been when I came out of the Mines and Early took me in.

  I went to the fridge, cracked a beer, and took a long pull. It didn’t help, but at least the cold glass felt good against my throbbing palm.

  For a few minutes I stood in place, going over and over the argument with Early in my head. In the end, I realized I was getting nowhere.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe I was an idiot. Maybe I didn’t stand a chance. It didn’t matter now. If I was going to die tomorrow night, then I had things I had to set in motion.

  I took the rest of my beer back into my workshop and went to work again on the tracking potion. It would take at least 30 hours for the potion to reach its full strength. I wouldn’t have time to go hunting for the vodyanoy before the duel. But that didn’t mean someone else couldn’t go in my stead.

  If the duel went bad, or if one side refused to abide by the terms of the treaty, it might fall to Early to finish the investigation. Maybe it would be too late by then. Maybe the vampires and ogres would be at war, and nothing short of one side’s destruction would stop it. Maybe the goblin assassin would have already tracked down the vodyanoy and finished him off before Early could use my tracking potion to find him. But I had to at least give Early the best possible chance of success.

  The sun was dipping below the horizon by the time I reemerged from my workshop, sealed potion in hand. The sky had turned a fiery orange. I had an apple for dinner, gathered my things together, and left my cabin. On the way to my van, I stopped by the back door to Early’s house.

  I stood there for a while, wondering if I should knock. In the end, I just set the bottle down on the mat along with a note detailing how best to use the tracking potion. Early was smart. I had him beat as a tracker, but I’d done the heavy lifting for him. He’d be just fine.

  Besides, I didn’t have time for a make-up chat. I had a corpse to interrogate.

  22

  I picked Lilian up from outside Alcaraz’s estate. Lilian was more than capable of driving herself to Lockhart’s mansion, of course, but I figured that what we were about to do wo
uld leave her drained. I didn’t want her falling asleep at the wheel on the way home.

  When I stopped the van beside her, she was sitting on top of a large plastic storage box. Sliding off the box, she opened the back door of the van. Despite the fact that the box was almost as big as she was, she had no trouble lifting it over her shoulder and throwing it into the van.

  “I’m pretty sure the vampires are supplying the corpse,” I said. “You didn’t have to bring your own.”

  She climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door. “Just some new equipment I’ve been working on.” She shrugged. “Like I said, I’ve never done a vampire before. I want to be prepared.”

  “Making the Boy Scouts proud, as always.”

  We drove back down the hill toward Lost Falls. The sun had vanished below the horizon now, plunging the valley into darkness. Below us, the lights of the town shone like a tiny cluster of stars within the endless dark of the void.

  I glanced over at Lilian. She leaned back in her seat, eyes staring at the road ahead. It was hard to make out her expression in the dark. Every now and then her face was caught in a flash of reflected light. The light softened the sharp lines of her face and made wisps of dark hair glow around her cheeks.

  I turned my eyes back to the road, silent.

  “How’s your sister?” she asked after a few minutes.

  She doesn’t know about the duel, I realized. If she did, she wouldn’t be opening with small talk.

  I should tell her, I knew. She was my friend, and she deserved to know that I was about to get my head crushed by an angry ogre.

  I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I just said, “She’s good. They’re thinking of renovating the basement, turning it into a play room for the kids.”

  “With padded walls, I hope,” Lilian said. “How many bones have the twins broken already?”

  “We’re very hardy, us Turners. We don’t break. We just bounce.”

  We fell into silence once more.

  After another few minutes, I noticed her absentmindedly rubbing at her sternum with the heel of her hand.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  She glanced at me, then seemed to realize what she was doing. She returned her hand to her lap. “Heartburn.”

  “Want to stop and grab some lozenges?”

  She shook her head. “Not that kind of heartburn.” She paused. “You ever think about the tomb? Morley’s tomb?”

  “I try not to,” I said.

  She nodded, looking out her passenger window at the town below us. “I tried to go back.”

  “What?”

  “A couple of months ago. I just…I couldn’t get that place out of my head. After the fight with the wraith and everything, we left in such a hurry. I kept feeling like we’d missed something. Like I’d missed something.”

  I thought of the locket that was sitting in a locked box in my workshop back home. The silver and cobalt locket that held a picture of a turn-of-the-century Lilian with a pregnant belly sitting next to a man I didn’t recognize. A glimpse of her life before she’d died and been reborn as a revenant.

  One day, I would tell her about it. One day, when I had more answers to give her. The locket alone would give her nothing but pain. It would tear at her soul, demanding more and more until she had nothing left to give.

  That was what I told myself, anyway.

  I swallowed, pushing the thoughts away. “Did you find anything? When you went back, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “I couldn’t even find the tomb. It was weird. I took the same route we did. Down that mine shaft, along that tunnel. But I kept getting turned around down there. Even started marking the walls to try to keep track of where I was going, but I always found myself back at the bottom of the ventilation shaft, looking up.”

  “The hag,” I said. “She said she was going to make sure the tomb was hidden again. Not much chance of finding it now. Not while she’s still alive. I mean, unless you want to ask her to help you.”

  I was expecting a hard pass on that, but when I glanced at Lilian it seemed like she was actually considering it. She never did seem as creeped out by the hag as I did. Finally, though she shook her head.

  “Maybe it’s for the best,” she said.

  I nodded. “You need to get that place out of your head. It’s bad news.”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Have you tried alcohol? Always works for me.”

  A half-smile touched her lips. “Tell you what, Turner. When you’re all done averting World War 3, I’ll let you take me to Ollie’s and get me fall-down drunk.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think you’d be a scary drunk. I’m not sure I want to get a lifetime ban from Ollie’s for being associated with you.”

  “Nah. I’m more of a crying drunk.”

  “Well, that is what I look for in a woman. Low self-confidence and big streaks of mascara on her cheeks.”

  “You old dog, you.”

  For the first time since I walked into a restaurant full of vampires two days ago, I found myself relaxing. The gulf that had existed between Lilian and me ever since our visit to Morley’s tomb seemed to be narrowing. As we drove along, talking shit to each other, I realized how much I’d missed her these last few months.

  But the tension in my muscles came back with a vengeance when Lockhart’s mansion came into view ahead of us. I fell into silence once more.

  “That’s the place, huh?” Lilian asked.

  “Yup.”

  “I was expecting something more…”

  “Transylvanian?” I suggested.

  She nodded. Maybe it was just a trick of the light, but she seemed to have caught some of my tension. As we drove up to the gate, she began unconsciously massaging her sternum again.

  The gate opened for us as soon as we pulled up to it. Someone had been waiting for us. I drove up to the front door and killed the engine. The same elderly female swain who’d met me after my first visit to Doyle’s Reach was waiting there now. As Lilian and I got out of the van, Lockhart stepped through the front door as well, dismissing the swain with a few quiet words.

  The vampire looked well-rested. She was wearing a white blazer with impressively grotesque shoulder pads. Not a hair was out of place.

  “Glad to see you’re not letting the war take its toll on you,” I said to her.

  She ignored the barb and turned her attention to Lilian, who was hauling her box out of the back of the van. When Lilian turned to her, Lockhart flashed a smile.

  “I’m Sonja Lockhart,” she said. “A pleasure to meet you at last. I’ve heard so much about you.”

  “Yeah?” Lilian shot me a glance. “Is that so?”

  “All very flattering,” Lockhart said. “I have Selene downstairs. Will that be suitable, or…?”

  “Just as long as you’ve got a couple of power outlets nearby.”

  “That won’t be a problem. Shall I ask a swain to help you with your equipment?”

  Lilian picked up the huge box and rested it on her shoulder. “I’m good.”

  “Indeed,” Lockhart said, raising an eyebrow. “Well, follow me.”

  The vampire turned away and glided up the steps to the front door. I glanced at Lilian just in time to see her take a deep breath, as if steeling herself.

  As she began to follow Lockhart, I reached out and grabbed Lilian’s hand. Her skin was soft, cool but not cold. Was it usually that cool? I couldn’t remember. It was pretty cold out, I supposed.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” I said.

  She nodded. “I know.”

  “We can find another way.”

  Lilian shook her head. “I want to help.” She slipped her hand from mine and flashed me a small smile. Then she turned and followed Lockhart into the house, the huge black box on her shoulder. I stood still for a moment, watching her walk away. Then, with a sigh, I grabbed my bag and set off after them.

  Lockhart led us to
a set of stairs hidden behind a pair of large double doors. The stairway was wide and carpeted, leading deep below the ground floor of the house. We followed her down into a well-furnished, windowless basement that was as impressive as any room upstairs. One corner of the room had been sectioned off as an office, with three flat-panel computer screens set in front of an ergonomic office chair. There were more screens around the room as well—one big bank of security monitors displaying images of the grounds, along with a large TV hanging from the wall. It was set to a news channel, but the sound had been muted. The basement also boasted bookshelves aplenty, along with a couple of leather couches. At the far end of the room, the comfortable surroundings gave way to a large metal door that looked like it belonged to a bank vault. No doubt that was where Lockhart retreated when she needed to sleep during the day.

  Most of the furniture had been rearranged to clear a space in the center of the room. There, on the remaining couch, lay the body of Selene Eventide. Her head was in position atop her neck, though as I got closer I saw that it hadn’t been reattached. It was just sitting there in a nest of tangled hair, the ragged stump of the neck beginning to pucker and curl.

  Lockhart stopped beside the body, looked down at the face, then turned to Lilian. “This is Selene.”

  “I gathered,” Lilian said. She lowered the black box to the floor beside the body. “It’ll take me a while to get set up. Where are your power outlets?”

  The vampire pointed some out to Lilian. With a nod, Lilian got to work. She snapped the catches on the box and swung open the lid.

  Inside was a portable mad scientist’s laboratory. There were glass tubes and cobbled-together bits of machinery and dials with needles and a healthy assortment of buttons and knobs to fiddle with. Lilian started pulling out bits and pieces and connecting them together with thick wires that ended in clamps like the ones on jumper cables. Some of the gadgets that Lilian was setting up were ones I’d seen her use before, but others were completely new to me.

  Lockhart was watching Lilian as well, her expression carefully neutral. She must have sensed me looking at her, because a moment later she met my eyes.