Possession

TWENTY

I was impatient to talk to Carlos without Stymak around, but I needed the medium’s help first, so I reined myself in.

“Given to Limos . . .” The recorder had played that segment again and although I wasn’t very comfortable with it, I’d produced the photos of my dermographia. Stymak had looked them over and passed them on to Carlos by putting the phone on the table and pushing it toward him. He wouldn’t touch the vampire even through the intermediary of the device.

“Did you ever listen to those recordings I sent?” Stymak asked me.

“I couldn’t get more than the one phrase I mentioned. I was going to have my . . . someone try translating them or running them through various decryption and filter programs, but he hasn’t been available.”

“I don’t think it’s that complicated, now that we’ve done this. I think it’s just backward. Because you remember the first time we heard this—at the Goss house—there was that phrase, umm. . . .” He searched through his pockets until he found a memory card, which he swapped into the recorder.

He pushed the button and the speaker squealed a bit before it let out the words “. . . Slows row someel vague rot codeth—” He clicked it off and looked up, accidentally catching Carlos’s eyes, and then shifting his gaze to mine. “Makes no sense, does it?”

I shook my head. I’d had the same problem with some of the written pieces I’d seen at Sterling’s house and the dermographia that afflicted Jordan Delamar.

“But if it’s just backward, ‘slows’ could be . . .” He wrote the word on one of his notebooks and then wrote another under it. “That could be ‘souls’ and ‘row’ could be . . . ‘oowwrr’ . . . ‘our’ and then comes ‘someel’ . . . which could be . . . ‘leemos’ . . . that’s got to be Limos—the hunger-monster thing, right?”

“Yes. The ghosts also said ‘Given to Limos,’ and there it is again,” I said, retrieving my phone from Carlos and looking through photos for what I wanted. “Here. The message on Jordan Delamar’s skin.”

I handed the phone to Stymak, who read it aloud. “Given as Limos tribute, those who wasted away. Given to the wheel of death and birth, to break the wheel we are driven.” Stymak put my notebook down and listened to his recording again, writing the message down phonetically and then writing under it, “Souls, our, Limos, gave, tor thedock . . .” He stared at it. “No . . . that’s not right. That’s got to be ‘the doctor,’ so the whole thing is perfectly backward.”

He rewrote the sentence forward: “The doctor gave Limos our souls.”

“They’ve been saying the same thing over and over—we just didn’t get it,” Stymak said. “God, how could I have missed that? Backmasking! It’s the oldest trick in the book!” Then the color rushed out of his face and he stood up, looking more than queasy. “Holy Jesus.” He dashed out of the room.

I glanced at Carlos.

He cocked an eyebrow at me and I took that as permission to pick up the conversation we hadn’t had earlier. “I think the ghosts given in tribute account for the extra energy in the system we were discussing last night,” I said.

He gave it some thought and nodded. “They could. A few recent cases of starvation might have been required to start the cycle, however.”

“At least two homeless people—one of them a contact of mine—died of starvation near the end of last year or the beginning of this one. That’s right in the time zone. There could be other deaths that didn’t come to my attention, or anyone else’s, especially if there was a more obvious cause of death, like cancer or HIV. And here’s another thing—Quinton mentioned a box that sounds like it might be some kind of portable shrine his father brought from Europe for this project of his. He says it contained something when Purlis arrived, but was empty when he got a look at it himself. But it had dirt from the tunnel project on it. I’ve seen Purlis around the square off and on for about a year now, so I think he hid the shrine in some segment of the construction near or in Pioneer Square for a while—probably in one of the monitoring wells—because the area has a high homeless population. There are always a few who don’t or won’t get enough to eat, so they’d be a nice attraction for this hungry monstrosity. And his presence in the area might help explain how he caught on to your people, too.”

“The disruption of the soil accounts for the initial upwelling of ghosts and magic, but the continued presence of Limos would explain why the rise continued, rather than falling back. With Limos loose and fed, she could have been a formidable problem for us, but she hasn’t been.”

I wondered at his use of “she” but I didn’t want to derail my train of thought with that right now, and instead I said, “I think the deal between Limos and Hazzard is not just for their own profit. I think Purlis must have some stake—”

Carlos cut me off with a quick motion of his hand and a glance at the door. In a moment Stymak returned and sat down again, looking pale, smelling slightly sour and wiping his face with a damp towel. “Sorry. This thing is wigging me out.” He looked again at the transcript he’d started and at my photos. “Couple of these guys are kind of poetical, aren’t they?”

I gave it a thought and said, “A lot of these ghosts are from the early twentieth century—pre–World War I—and fairly well educated, so, yes, they might be inclined to be flowery.”

“Yeah, I can see that, especially if they’re victims of Linda Hazzard’s. But who or what the hell is that Limos-thing? It didn’t feel like a spirit, really. Some kind of demon?”

“A god,” Carlos suggested.

Stymak and I stared at him. Stymak turned his gaze aside quickly, but kept his attention on the vampire. “What makes you think so? I’ve never heard of him.”

“A distant memory . . . from my childhood.” Carlos gave me a sly grin. “Yes, I did have one, Blaine. Greek and fairly obscure, I seem to recall—Limos, the goddess of famine and hunger. However long forgotten, she has the ability to create or destroy—if she can access power.”

That explained his use of “she” earlier, but I said, “Why didn’t you mention this before?”

He bowed his head very slightly and cut his gaze down. I thought that might have been embarrassment, but it seemed unlike him to be abashed. “I’ve been teasing the memory from the back of my mind since she gave her name. But even I can’t dredge up everything I’ve ever known.”

I hadn’t thought about the depth of memory he must have, or how much work it might be to put all the pieces of a disused fact back together. “Do you think she’s going to do something more tonight?” I asked, casting a glance toward Stymak, who was looking worse by the minute.

Carlos shrugged. “I think not. She spent a great deal of energy to come here and try to overawe us. She wouldn’t do that if she was planning some other action tonight as well. You’ve annoyed her and she’s made a tactical error in attacking you two, wasting energy and drawing too much attention to herself. She would have been better served to let us believe Hazzard was the only spirit we needed to worry about.”

Stymak looked ready to scream or faint—I wasn’t sure which was more imminent—and I thought I’d better cut the discussion short before he lost it completely. “I think we’d be best served to drop it for tonight. You and I can do some research. Stymak needs to rest.”

Stymak stood up. “Actually, I think I just need to get away from both of you. I—I can’t do this anymore. Tell Lily I’m sorry. I can’t . . . touch this anymore. I feel sick . . . filthy. This is . . . this is not what I signed up for.”

He tore the page he’d been working on out of his notebook and dropped it on the table, then swept the remains of his materials into his bag and hurried out of the room with his head down.

I looked at Carlos, who returned an arch look.

“A delicate one, your Mr. Stymak.”

“Sensitive—isn’t that what a medium is supposed to be?”

“He won’t last long if he continues this way. He hasn’t learned to separate his feelings from what he is told by ghosts. He allows the horror of it too deeply into his mind and it will drive him mad. Or kill him.” He peered at me. “I assume that would not sit well with you.”

“Of course not. But I suppose you would have a certain . . . connoisseur’s appreciation of it.”

Carlos snorted. “You continue to think little of me after all this time, Blaine. I do not revel in the distress of others. Unless they deserve it.”

He was right and I was being unfair. I sighed. “I guess we’re out one medium.”

“For now. He may recover.”

“We may not need him now that we know what we’re looking for.”

“I doubt this will be so simple. We should, perhaps, arrange some help for Mr. Stymak. . . .”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What sort of ‘help’ do you have in mind?”

He chuckled and my stomach flipped. “Nothing of that sort. I’m concerned for him. He has overtaxed himself and is in distress. I’ll arrange for someone to look after him and keep him from harm. I doubt he’ll be paying much attention to the psychic realm right now, and that could be dangerous for him. Cameron’s attention to our wider community makes it in my best interest to ensure that people like Stymak don’t fall victim to their own powers.”

“Altruism just looks so odd on you, Carlos.”

He let out a full, rolling laugh that hit me like an earthquake. “You must work very hard to remain so cynical, Blaine.”

“It suits me.”

He grinned, but didn’t reply.

We left the pub together, seeing no sign of Stymak and getting a strange look from the owner as we went, but no trouble. I wondered if I would be allowed back in the next time I went to the pub. We walked toward the parking lot where I’d left the truck. The séance hadn’t lasted very long; it was only a bit past midnight. The sun comes up early in the summer so I knew Carlos would soon want to get to whatever safe place he hid in during the day.

“Where is Inman?” he asked.

“Huh?” I grunted, surprised.

“You promised me the location where Purlis has Inman. I’ve done your task and now I would like my half of this bargain paid.”

“I’m not certain that Inman is there,” I hedged. “I didn’t get inside.”

“But you know where Purlis operates. That will do. Take me.”

“Carlos, the sun will be rising in a little more than four hours. I’m not sure it would be wise for you to start on a rescue mission right now.”

“That is for me to decide. Take me.”

“No. This conspiracy of ghosts has to be broken before they do whatever they’re going to do. I can’t let people die because you want your pet dhampir back right this minute. And if Purlis is actively involved in my case, it would be better to let me do my job and undermine his position before you go after him.”

Carlos grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me to face him. The shock of his touch weakened my knees and drove black pain through me. I struggled against the despair and horror that invaded my mind, trying to push them back, but the closeness of his dark energy was pervasive and I could feel him concentrating on me, driving the sensations and thoughts that made me feel fragile and helpless.

“Don’t toy with me, Blaine. You can do no more tonight without my help. And what else you would do can be accomplished in daylight, where I cannot go. Time is short, yes—short for both of us.”

I was shaking in his grip, but I tried to break free. I was having difficulty concentrating enough to draw any power from the grid with which to oppose him and the push I gave against his mental weight seemed feeble to me, but he snatched his hands off my shoulders and backed away from me.

“I don’t wish to harm you any more than I wish to beg you,” he said. “Why must I remind you that you made a promise?”

“All right. I know. But I’m . . . I’m afraid.”

“You? Why do you hesitate to trust me now, when we have seen and done what we have together?”

I kept my chin up, though I would have preferred to look away. “My . . . mate is there as well as his father and whatever prisoners and assistants he may have.”

“Love is a strange thing. You worry that I’ll disregard the harm that would be done by killing your mate’s father. I assure you, my desire to mete out some punishment to the man who would enslave and destroy my creatures is difficult to restrain, but I shall. I wouldn’t have to kill him.”

I almost laughed, as awful as that sounds. I steadied my thoughts before I replied, a little ashamed of myself. “I’m sorry. This situation bugs me as much as it does you and I can’t imagine how I’ll solve my case, and your problem, too, without you. I’m not thinking as clearly as I ought to where Quinton is concerned. I’m a fool to have forgotten what we’ve done for each other. I’ll take you there, now. But swear that no one dies tonight.”

“I can and will swear not to kill anyone at this place. I do not promise to do no harm to certain parties, but they will survive it. Will that do?”

I weighed his promise, though I really didn’t need to. I’d gotten out of the habit of trusting him, but there was no reason I shouldn’t and every reason that I should. I nodded. “Yes. Now let’s get out of here.”

But this time it was Carlos who stood still. “One thing more: The return of Inman means a great deal to me and to Cameron. If that is accomplished, I will lend you any aid I can with your ghosts—and Limos. If not, I will still help you, but without Inman my resources will be limited to the nighttime—which may not be enough.”

It was a considerable concession. Carlos is the most magically powerful ally I have. As much as it gave me a qualm to admit it, I felt more confident that the plot involving Hazzard, Limos, and Purlis could be unwound with him on my side than without him. I stopped and turned to him, risking his direct and dangerous gaze. “Thank you. That’s generous of you and I appreciate it.”

He laughed, the rolling tide of his amusement shaking in my chest. “I’m a fool to remind you, but I am indebted to you, as is Cameron, unto death and beyond.”

I felt uncomfortable; I hadn’t done the things I had just to help Carlos or the vampires of Seattle. “Come on,” I said, turning to walk to the Rover.

Still chuckling, Carlos came along behind me.

I didn’t enjoy the drive to Gas Works Park. I left the truck around the corner from the condo building where I’d last seen Quinton. But he wasn’t in the alcove near the trash and recycling now. I frowned and Carlos gave me a quizzical look.

“Quinton should be here. . . .” I felt a tugging, vibrating discomfort in my chest—the vibration of a preternatural connection that Quinton and I shared—and looked down toward the park, dropping toward the Grey.

The ghost world was churning around me, the park an upheaval of paranormal activity, much more so than it had been earlier. I backed out and turned to Carlos. “Something’s wrong.”

“I can sense that. And Inman is close.”

“So’s Quinton. But he’s down there.” I swore. “I was hoping we could sneak up on Inman, but he’s probably with Purlis. It appears we’re just going to have to dive in and make the best of whatever is going on.”

I started running for the bit of temporary fencing—if there was a secret door to something it would be there. Carlos kept up with me easily. I didn’t care if Daddy Purlis had eyes and ears on the entrance—I figured that if the turmoil in the Grey was any indication, he was too busy to do anything about it—and so I shoved through the flimsy gate that was hanging ajar. Beyond it lay an old building that had been renovated into a picnic shelter, but a new door in the old concrete structure stood open, letting a blade of light fall onto the recently grown grass. I snatched my pistol from the holster at my back and went through the doorway hard and fast.

There was no one on the other side, just a stairway leading down and distant clangs and screeches coming up. I swept the room just in case and advanced with the HK down, but ready. In the back of my mind I was thinking it was silly to carry a gun when I was backed up by a vampire necromancer, but it’s a habit and, to be fair, sometimes a brute-force technique is easier and cleaner than waiting for magic. Carlos seemed to have no problem following my lead. He kept behind me, close enough to whisper but far enough not to foul my movements. I could feel the tingling cold of spells held ready but in check. He was taking no more chances with the situation than I was.

We advanced quickly, but with sufficient care to avoid being unhappily surprised. Our caution was probably overkill, since the staircase led to a long, dim corridor with nowhere to hide and nothing hiding in it. That led to another door that stood slightly open, letting sound escape from whatever lay beyond.

The first room was plainly a remnant from the old gasworks. Rusted bolts and anchor plates, still adorning the concrete floor where equipment had once been secured, were now being used as tie-downs for empty cages with their doors hanging open and a few locked animal crates that rocked and leaked disquieting groans. The overhead lighting was long gone and had been replaced with super-bright LED work rigs clamped to the remains of wall brackets or sticking up from tripod floor stands. The lamps cast overlapping shadows around the room and made our trip through it more difficult. I stared hard at each shadow to determine whether it was natural or paranormal.

As I searched the shadows, I noticed I was no longer seeing the overlap of Grey and normal vision simultaneously and wondered when that had changed. My preoccupation made me sloppy and I barely noticed one of the shadows shimmering as it shouldn’t have.

Darkness erupted from the shimmer with the crack of leathern wings unfurling and something built of nightmare and scales lunged into the world. I couldn’t say what it was—it seemed to have no real form, and yet it had a physical presence that swept toward us with a ripple of muscle under iridescent blackness.

I pivoted, raising the gun, and Carlos stepped forward, pushing me back with a murmur. “Don’t shoot. And avoid the claws.”

We both ducked as a forelimb trailing black wings like smoke and tattered funeral shrouds ripped through the air where our heads had been. Carlos muttered something and made a throwing gesture that propelled a coil of glimmering midnight toward the creature’s diving face.

It was a long-snouted thing with an evil smile full of glittering obsidian fangs. It opened its maw to bite and the spinning, expanding shape of Carlos’s spell ripped into its mouth, tearing the thing’s head in two. The monstrous shape vanished in a sooty cloud and a skeleton clattered to the floor.

The bones at our feet were pale, acidic green and black talons defined its digits. The concrete steamed with a thin, noxious fume where the claw tips touched it.

Carlos knelt by the remains and carefully picked a few of the claws out of the rubble by their rounded, bone-end attachments. He wrapped them in a cloth from his pocket and stowed them away.

“What was that?” I asked in a low voice.

“Night dragon,” he replied. “This is a very small one—young and weak. But where you find one of these, there may be a ley weaver or dreamspinner nearby.”

I’d met a ley weaver and would be quite happy never to meet another. I shuddered at the thought. “So it’s not a monster—it’s a construct . . . ?”

“Yes and no. This skeleton is drachen, but the animation and manifestation of the night dragon is created, not born. They are useful in rousing fear and panic, but not hard to destroy once you know they are mostly illusion—but only mostly.”

I wanted to ask more about dragons in general, but I felt the press of circumstance more with each passing minute. The strange connection between Quinton and me brought a sense of growing distress that was not just my own. I nodded and stepped carefully over the skeleton, ready to carry on. Carlos didn’t need any prompting to follow me.

We continued through the room and I kept a much more careful eye on the Grey this time. A small flurry of ghosts caused us some disorientation, but as they passed I recognized a face and knew we’d gotten lucky: These were some of Hazzard’s ghosts and their energy was too depleted by the séance to do whatever they had been tasked with. But I had no idea why they were here and neither did Carlos.

“Perhaps it is not Hazzard but Limos that connects them here with Purlis,” Carlos suggested.

“I suppose, but I’d rather get to the end of this maze and find out what’s going on with the people who are still breathing before I worry about the disposition of the ones who aren’t.”

He nodded and we crept onward.

We didn’t see a single living human in the next room, only ranks of equipment and a ragged dead body of something with wispy hair and blue-green flesh. It lay on a steel table, oozing green liquid I couldn’t help but think of as blood. Whatever had been done to it had been done in haste and I had to hold back an urge to be sick or cry over it—whatever it was. On another table sat an object that looked remarkably like a salesman’s sample case made of bones and stretched skin. The boxy thing stood open, its three sections partially unfolded to reveal a cold sparkle within. A bunch of cables led off the table and away through a hole in the wall. The table was stained a curiously glimmering gray around the box. I paused at a distance to study it only long enough to see if it was an immediate threat to us, but while the cables carried power and the object was enfolded in dark energy, it appeared to be inactive and certainly not alive.

We moved on toward the door at the far side of the room, which let us out into a corridor. Not far away I heard Quinton—or someone who sounded very much like him—arguing with someone who wasn’t answering back. “You don’t understand this. I thought you did, but you just don’t get it, and you can’t have it both ways.”

Down the hall, light lay on the floor and crawled up the wall across from it. The voice had to be that way, and I assumed Purlis would be the person Quinton was talking to—if it was Quinton talking. I glanced at Carlos.

He nodded toward the light. “Inman is also beyond that doorway.”

I just nodded in reply and began moving forward again as quietly as possible. An ache in my chest and a cold feeling lying along my spine told me all was not well with Quinton. My anxiety was growing, pressing on my heart and lungs and sending cold thorns into my skin.

I looked at the floor and the wall opposite the open door, searching for shadows that might give me some idea what was happening inside the room, but nothing was revealed. I forced myself to breathe slowly and let myself drop toward the grid—it wasn’t ideal, but at least I’d have some idea how many animate things were in there, if not what they were.

The walls were stubbornly misty even deep into the Grey, as if someone had managed to obscure it from my particular brand of prying. I could make out three or four cylindrical skeins of colored energy—one of which seemed to exist, fade, and then surge slowly back toward existence again as I watched—but nothing more. There weren’t any temporaclines here that I could use to slide into the room as a fragment of history and step back out of, so I had no choice but to go through the doorway like a normal human. Carlos wasn’t able to discorporate, so far as I knew, so it looked like we’d just have to storm the door.

I eased to a more normal state, looking back at Carlos, but he wasn’t looking at me; he was squeezing his eyes shut as if in pain and murmuring under his breath. I put my free hand out toward him, not wanting to risk speaking to get his attention so close to the open doorway.

As my fingertips grazed his shoulder, Carlos snapped his eyes open and grasped my hand in a cold steel grip. Fury blazed in his expression and I winced under the onslaught of his glance and the pain he was inflicting on my hand. He clenched his teeth and glared at me for a moment, as if he could communicate his angry thoughts by will alone. I flinched and crumpled a little, trying not to collapse completely and swallowing my desire to scream.

The voice spoke again. “You’ve forgotten all sense of service. You’ve become a thoughtless, selfish little bastard.”

Carlos let go of my hand at the sound and I turned back toward the doorway, trying not to nurse my bruises as I crept forward again. It sounded much the same, but I knew that wasn’t Quinton’s voice.

“Thank you,” my love said. “I’d much rather be a bastard than be your son. I think it shows considerable good taste on my mother’s part, if it’s true. I only hope my sister’s a bastard, too, because having you for a grandfather—”

Something screeched and I heard a curse and a heavy thump. A large, dull-edged pain wrenched through my chest. I caught my breath and ignored it.

“Go,” I whispered and bolted through the door.