“Which meant that once Moran recovered, he had a reason to come back to Charleston and bring the demon back, and he’d want the items from the Cristobal, to strengthen his control over the demon,” Teag added.
I nodded. “That accounts for the deaths near the Navy yard.” I glanced to Teag. “Could it account for the cryptomancer? The one someone was looking for on the Darke Web? Maybe Moran needed help breaking a code on the artifacts from the Cristobal.”
“Very likely. And if so, then the odds are good that the cryptomancer is one of the dead men,” Teag said.
“Anything useful from Landrieu’s notes?”
“Nothing as interesting as what Harrison describes. Most of Landrieu’s journal has notes about the dives his crew took – looking for the Cristobal, and other wrecks. Water condition and tides, longitude and latitude – the kind of stuff you’d expect.” He sighed. “Now and then, Landrieu goes on about how he hopes the Cristobal find will put his crew in the big leagues. But it all starts to change about three weeks before the dive.”
“Oh?” I shifted in my chair and unwrapped myself from the afghan, finally warm.
“Landrieu was afraid he was being followed. Some of their equipment got vandalized, and he started to get the feeling someone was warning him away from the Cristobal.” Teag shrugged. “Landrieu thought it was a rival dive team. And he sketched the man he saw.”
Teag held up Landrieu’s journal. I was not surprised that the pencil sketch showed a tall man with a withered face partially hidden beneath a broad-brimmed hat.
“Why didn’t Moran just let Landrieu’s team salvage the Cristobal and steal the stuff from them after the hard work was over?” I asked.
“What if, over time, something about the magic changed?” Teag speculated. “Or maybe Moran got paranoid, and was afraid that whoever had the artifact might get control of the demon?” “You’ve told me what the journals say. Does your magic tell you anything else?”
Teag thought before he replied. “It makes Landrieu’s feelings about the dive tangible. Excitement, and then suspicion, and at the end, fear. I think Landrieu knew something bad was after them. He just didn’t realize how bad.”
“So Moran called up some kind of dark magic to destroy Landrieu and the crew of the Privateer. Did you think he was paranoid enough to believe Landrieu was working for Sorren?”
Teag shrugged. “It’s possible. Moran and Sorren have a history. And from Moran’s point of view, Landrieu was going after something he wanted. He might have thought Sorren put him up to it.”
Until now, Baxter had been happy to curl up under the table around our feet. Without warning, he jumped up and raced out to the front door. His bark was so loud and shrill, I thought my ears would bleed.
Since the ‘front’ door on my Charleston single house really looks out on the piazza and garden, I had to go to the side window to see the street. Chuck Pettis was out there, and he was facing down an akvenon
minion.
I didn’t take time to think about it. I threw open the door and ran the length of the piazza.
“Chuck! Hurry!” I shouted.
The akvenon swiveled to glare at me, and from its baleful look, I knew that Teag and I were the real reason it was stalking my street. Chuck glanced at the open door and made a run for it, moving faster than I expected. The akvenon followed, growling and snapping at his heels. I suspected that the creature didn’t really want Chuck: it wanted a way into the house to get at Teag and me. It was about to get a surprise when it hit Lucinda’s wardings.
And if Chuck wasn’t on the up-and-up, he’d be just as surprised.
Chuck sprinted for the door, with the akvenon close on his heels. The demon minion sprang at Chuck, launching its squat, misshapen body into the air. I ran forward, but Teag caught me by the arm before I could step beyond the warding.
Chuck wheeled, leveling a boxy device that looked like a souped-up TV remote control at the akvenon, and stood his ground. I expected to see a flash of a laser or hear an ear-splitting squeal. I heard nothing.
But the akvenon did.
The demon spawn minion dropped to the ground, shaking violently. Its squashed head swiveled one way and then the other, as its lantern-jawed maw snapped in fury at the air.
Chuck didn’t prolong the standoff. He gave the minion one last blast from his weapon and practically dove across my threshold.
It didn’t take the akvenon long to react. Howling and snarling, it reared up on its clawed feet and bounded for the doorway like a mutant Doberman. I slammed the door, waiting for the bulky minion to come crashing through the glass. Instead, it hit Lucinda’s warding. An amber glow flared and disappeared, knocking the creature back ten paces and putting him flat on his demon ass.
Chuck looked from the warding to Teag and then to me. “Who the hell are you people?” He asked. “And what the hell is an akvenon minion doing outside your house?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I FROZE. IT wasn’t like I could deny what had just happened. Chuck had run for his life from a snarling demon minion, which bounced off a Voudon mambo’s protective warding like a marble off Jell-O. So I decided that a good offense was the best defense.
“Why were you stalking me?” I demanded. Teag was next to me, and he casually fell into a defensive posture.
Chuck rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t stalking you – not really. I wanted to check you out, the way you checked me out. You don’t think I fell for that cockamamie story you gave me, did you?”
“What’s in your hand?” Teag said. Up close, the gadget really did look like a remote control, but the akvenon sure hadn’t liked it.
Chuck smirked. “EMF disruptor. Kind of like pepper spray for spooks. They give off an electromagnetic field. This scrambles their signal.
“That’s not exactly off-the-shelf technology,” Teag observed, raising an eyebrow. He would know.
Between the supernatural Darke Web and its mundane competitor, he had a pretty good idea of what kind of equipment was out there, legally or not.
Chuck shook his head. “Military. I told you – I was Black Ops, the real Black Ops dealing with the stuff that lives in the shadows, that ain’t from around here – and I mean Earth, not the old Commie Block countries or the Middle East. Terrorists, they’re the least of our worries. Hell, all they can do is kill you.
The stuff we chased could eat your soul for breakfast.”
He could have been lying, but I didn’t think so. Question was, did that make him an ally or a rival?
“You certainly can’t go back out there right now, so you might as well come in,” I said, exchanging a glance and a shrug with Teag.
“I’ll go clear off the table,” Teag offered, which meant I should stall Chuck while Teag hid Sorren’s package and the journal from the museum. Baxter had been barking like a maniac, but as soon as Chuck was safe inside, the little fuzzy turncoat toddled up, sat down and gave our unexpected guest his most adorable expression.
“Well aren’t you quite the watchdog!” Chuck said, and to my amazement, bent down and scratched Baxter behind the ears. I still wasn’t sure how far we should trust Chuck, but that went a long way toward convincing me he was a quality person. That and the fact that he made it past Lucinda’s wardings.
I glanced past Chuck to see Teag nod the ‘all clear’, and put on my best hostess smile. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”