She? She who? With growing dread, I did as Grigori asked. As the touch pad clicked beneath my finger, the computer’s screen awoke. On it was a webcam feed of a man, bound to a plain wooden chair in the center of what appeared to be one of those all-day breakfast chains, Denny’s or Cracker Barrel or whatever. The kind of place with pictures on the menu and a stupid name for every dish. The guy was paunchy, middle-aged, with a long beard streaked gray and nicotine-stained around the mouth. A trucker-cap on his head, a tan Carhartt jacket over flannel, tucked into well-worn jeans. Split lip, black eye, blood running from one ear. The eye not swollen half-shut was wide with fright. The dining room around him had been cleared of all its furniture. Tables and chairs were tossed into the booths on either side, probably to make room for the elaborate concentric circles of runes around the fellow’s chair, all rendered in drying blood.
Grigori and his compatriots hadn’t, however, cleared the room of all the bodies.
They lay sprawled across the floor amidst the broken plates and clots of drying egg in damn near every pose imaginable: face up, face down, curled fetal, arms akimbo. Necks torn out, but little blood around them. Some women, sure, and little girls as well, but none in danger, on account of they were dead already.
“Uh, Grigori? Maybe you’ve been outta the game a while, but that’s a dude I’m looking at.”
“Oh,” he said through the phone to me as he picked up the computer on his end and turned it to face his own smiling face, “I wasn’t talking about him. He’s to be your new vessel. And I hope you like him, because you’re going to spend quite some time inside him. You see, my brother Simon was not wrong about you; you’re a threat that needs neutralizing. But he was a fool to lean on science when magic is so much more utile in this situation. A coma would only bind you until death. The proper ritual will seal you in stasis indefinitely, a shelving to last until the stars burn out.”
“Good plan,” I said. “A couple notes, though. Note the first: for it to work, you’d need me to hop into that-there meat-suit of my own accord, which I sure as shit ain’t gonna do. And note the second, you put me on ice, and hell’s just going to send another like me to finish the job.”
Grigori laughed. “To your second point, I have this to say, if you believe that, you’re far more clueless than I’ve given you credit for. I assure you, once you’re neutralized, the threat to me and mine will be as well. And to your first point,” he said, swinging his laptop around once more, “I’ve arranged what I think you’ll agree is appropriate enticement.”
On the screen was a young woman in a waitress’ uniform, tied to a chair like the man was, and gagged as well. She was flanked by a couple who looked no more than twenty, both bright-eyed and beautiful, with smiling, arrogant expressions that spoke of casual, even gleeful malice. The male had a single streak of blood trailing away from the corner of his mouth. The female held a kitchen knife to the bound girl’s left eye. Around them, crouched and feral, were red-eyed, blood-streaked restaurant patrons — five or so at least — whose necks still bled from where the Brethren fed from them, and whose features were warped and animal, like those of the undead women of Nevazut. Some tried in vain to drink from the lifeless corpses of those patrons the Brethren hadn’t turned, or gnawed eyeballs from unblinking sockets, while others eyed the girl in the chair with unfettered hunger, eager to partake of her blood, her tender flesh.
It couldn’t be, I told myself. It wasn’t possible.
But it could be, and it was, though how they found her, I didn’t know.
The girl in the chair was Kate MacNeil. The one I’d saved in New York two years back, when she’d been marked for collection by a rogue angel intent on sparking the End of Days by tricking hell into laying claim to a pure soul. I was told that she’d been hidden. Given a new face, a new name, a new life far removed from the horrors of her last.
Clearly, the powers that be hadn’t hidden her well enough. She was a little leaner, sure, and more angular, with high sharp cheekbones and a determined cast to her features at odds with the bright-eyed girl that I’d once known. Her once-creamy complexion was now sun-kissed bronze, and her once-auburn hair was streaked through with blond — not the result of cosmetics, but of honest-to-God physiological changes to her coloration. She was a few inches taller, her frame coiled tight with lean muscle. But all those changes added up to nothing: I would have recognized her at a hundred paces. You think whoever hid her woulda done a better job, but maybe some things about ourselves, no one can really change.
The image spun around again. Once more I was looking into Grigori’s eyes. “As I was saying, Samuel, Dru and Izzie are tiring of babysitting, and I suspect once their patience wears from thin to nonexistent, the transition will not be a pleasant one for the MacNeil girl — or Smith, I should say, since that’s what her nametag reads. They may simply take an eye, or an ear, or a finger. Or they may decide to throw her to our new pets, who — as you can see — grow hungrier by the minute, and unfortunately, this entire restaurant full of food appeals to them no longer.”
I heard a struggle in the background. A chair rattling, and some kind of sudden scuffle. Then Kate’s voice shouting, “Don’t come for me Sam Thornton, I’m–”
And then a vicious slap. And then silence once more.
“You son of a bitch,” I said to Grigori. “That girl’s an innocent. You let her go.”
“You have my word I will, provided you’re here in the next, say, three minutes?” He swung the camera once more toward the bound man in the chair. “You’ll find us at the Pancake Palace in Bellevue Washington. I trust that’s enough information for you to reach out and find us?”
Bellevue, Washington. Whoever hid Kate had a sense of humor, I’d give ’em that. Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan is where Kate and I first met. Where I’d shown up to collect her, only to abscond with her instead when I touched her soul and found her to be an innocent.
And sixty-five years before that, Bellevue Hospital was where my Elizabeth was cured of tuberculosis — right before she told me we were through. That she couldn’t stand the man that I’d become. What she hadn’t realized is that I’d become that man living up to my end of the devil’s bargain that saved her. What I hadn’t realized was she would have rather died than see me lose my way.
“It is,” I said.
“Good. Understand the building is protected. No one will be allowed in or out lest they suffer the same fate as the rabbit in the woods of which we spoke. Do you recall?”
I did, and said so. Burned alive from the inside, starting with the eyes, same as the crow at Simon’s place.
“Excellent. You should also know no one else remains alive here but for Kate and the fat man. Should you elect to possess her instead, my siblings and I will use the full force of our combined magicks to prevent you, and likely kill her for your impudence. I’m afraid you have no play here but to relent to our demands.”
I thought of Magnusson’s gun thug, Gareth, and my battle against Magnusson to control him, which I lost. I didn’t relish the thought of trying to slip into Kate’s mind while it was guarded by three others as powerful as Magnusson had proved to be.
“The clock is ticking,” said Grigori, his words dripping with the superiority of one who’s won the day. “And I do look forward to seeing you again. Even in this flabby meat-suit, you’ll make a fine addition to my trophy collection, my first living exhibit. The Collector who nearly felled the mighty Brethren. Perhaps I’ll have a plaque made.”