Viper Moon (22 page)

Flynn hadn’t spoken for a while. “You okay?” I asked.

“Just thinking. It’s only been a couple of days, but it feels right. You and me.”

“I know.” Amazing. The man actually thought about a relationship. In the middle of chaos he—But wait. How would I deal with this? I wasn’t sure I was as capable of juggling this all at once.

“When I saw you in that stupid T-shirt, my first thought was, ‘That’s for you, buddy.’ It just popped into my head.” He leaned back and relaxed.

Sure it did. Mom had laid her manipulating hand on him, too. “I don’t know why,” I said. “Let’s face it. I’m not beautiful. Some malcontents say I have the personality of a pit bull.”

“Malcontents? So it must be true.”

“I’m not really a prize catch among women.”

“Prize catch?” Flynn laughed. “I had one of those. Three years ago. She was rich enough for me to take care of Mama and Selene. I made my plans. Even rehearsed my proposal. Certainly my chosen bride was ready. Selene heard me and told my mother. Let’s just say it was not a nice scene. Mother believes in marrying for love.”

“Glad to hear that.
Do
you have a problem with what happened to Hammer? I mean, he’s dead and Dacardi is going to dispose of the body.”

“Your involvement with Dacardi and what it might lead to troubles me. Hammer, no. We didn’t kill him. Did we?” He hesitated on that one.

“The stuff I fed him didn’t. Abby doesn’t do poison.”

“There are some things I won’t do to find Selene.” He shifted uneasily in the seat.

“I know. That’s why it might be best if you let me get her by myself.”

“You’re saying you’re willing to do things I won’t.” Flynn’s voice hardened around the words.

“Some. I’m not a psychopath, but I’ve been known to play judge and jury.”

“That’s comforting.”

I heard bitterness, but I couldn’t afford to be nice to him now. His sister’s life could depend on my actions over the next couple of days.

Flynn asked me to take him to the station house so he could write his report on the weapons. We stopped by my apartment so he could retrieve his badge. He said he’d take a cab and meet me at Abby’s later. He was quiet, so I figured he needed time away from me to think.

Dacardi had said, “Motherfucker knows
we’re
coming.” That meant he intended to come along for the ride. His son, his guns, I guess he had the right. Unlike my guerrilla attacks, that kind of strike force would need streets to travel and there wasn’t a map anywhere.

I called Thor, my computer geek.

“Static resistance rules,” Thor answered.

“Hey, circuit man.”

“Cass.” Thor sounded delighted to hear from me, which was weird because I owed him money.

“You get a machine to search for me this week?”

“Oh, yeah.” He laughed. “And when I told the guy your previous balance, he—”

“Tossed money at you. Great. I need something. Can you find me any aerial photos of the city? And print them out if you do?”

“You’re kidding, right?” He sounded indignant, as if I had challenged his superior intelligence. “How close you want?”

“Close enough to show buildings and roads.”

“Come get it.”

“Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked.

“Sleep? Waste all that time?”

I hung up.

Thor leased a narrow storefront in a strip shopping center that had seen better days. Half the glass-front shops stood empty, and those occupied ranged from the Hallowed Church of the Steadfast Savior to Clara’s Thrift Shop and Harmon’s Used Appliances. He ignored city codes and lived in the shop’s back room to guard his merchandise. A single geek didn’t need much space.

I drove to the murky, shadow-filled delivery alley behind the strip and parked near the ten-foot concrete block wall that buffered houses on the other side from the commercial center. A door painted with a bright yellow hammer and lightning bolt marked Thor’s place. I stood in front of the peephole, punched the buzzer, and beat on the door with my fist. Getting Thor’s attention required a bit of effort at times.

Finally, he opened the door. “Greetings,” he said. “You’re early.”

“Sorry. I’m on a mission.” I gave him my best smile.

Thor barely reached five-four and weighed a hundred and ten pounds. A disadvantage in many places, but in a world run by computers, he could cut anyone down in a heartbeat—or a few clicks of a key.

I followed him into his workroom, where a myriad of machines lined the walls. Such gadgets were beyond me. My highest level of technical ability involved a simple cell phone and an ATM machine.

“You find anything on that boy’s machine I had someone bring to you?”

“Nothing you usually look for. Kid was into creepy stuff. Hard drive full of really sick music, too.”

A subjective opinion since Thor, unlike many of his kind, preferred classical symphonies to rock and roll.

Thor led me to a computer with a coffee table–sized screen. He sat in the chair facing it and motioned for me to drag up another. His baggy clothes made him look like a boy ready to play a game. He hunched over the keyboard and his fingers danced along them like a pianist at a grand piano. “This is the latest satellite the Ruskies sent up. Better than their usual crap.”

“You read Russian?”

“I read computer.” He tapped a few more keys. “Here’s Duivel.”

The main uptown plaza stood out at the city’s center, with the spikes of multistoried glass-walled buildings surrounding it.

“Great, Thor, but I want the Barrows. Southwest, between the plaza and the docks.”

He scrolled the picture to show the docks, but went too far west and cut off the Barrows in favor of the green-and-brown morass of Misfortune Swamp across the river.

“Thor, move the picture a half mile to the northeast. Can you do that?”

He moved it, but skipped over the Barrows again and picked up small towns outside the city. Amazing. The Mother’s
You won’t notice me—I’m not here
spell had grown to exert its influence miles beyond its borders to catch even Thor.

The screen went blank. Thor sat staring, his fingers poised above the keys.

“Mother help me,” I muttered. I leaned close and spoke into his ear. “You are the best, Thor. There is no place in the world you can’t go. Are you going to let this beat you?”

“No!” He gritted his teeth and punched the keys. In seconds, we had the city in view.

“Show me how to move the picture,” I said.

He passed me the mouse. “Hold the left button down and slide it around.”

“Close your eyes,” I ordered.

With a bit of clumsy mouse maneuvering, the Barrows came into view. “I’m too close. How do I back out a little?”

Thor opened his eyes. He drew a sharp breath. “What the . . . ?”

“That’s the Barrows, circuit man.” The spell broke once he actually saw it.

For ten years, I’d walked the Barrows, and with the exception of the Zombie Zone, I thought I knew it well. No matter where, underground or above, the compass points are burned into my brain like animal migration instinct. I don’t get lost. From its place in the high, cold reaches of space, the satellite’s camera gave me a perfect view of the Barrows’ street grid. I sat with my mouth open, staring at the screen, until Thor’s voice cut through my shock.

“Hey!” He bumped me with his elbow. “You okay?”

“Oh, yes.”

I’d noticed that the streets met at odd angles in places, but from the ground I had no idea they formed a perfect giant pentagram with the Zombie at its heart. The points of the star were marked with buildings constructed at cross-angles, and the lines were the widest streets.

My skin prickled and I shivered. I knew where I had to be on the dark moon. The magical convergence of planets and stars, the thinning of barriers that Abby and the Earth Mother spoke of, would remain a mystery. I had no grasp of such arcane matters. But I would go where I had to go to get the job done. I reached out and laid my finger on the screen. “I need this printed. Can you do that?”

“Sure.” Thor’s voice was soft. “I never saw it before.”

“You’ve seen it; you just never paid attention.”

Discomfort flickered across Thor’s face. Like most scientific types, he didn’t like mystery or mysticism. For him, magic was a sword-and-sorcerer video game. His eyes narrowed and his mind focused on something
he
considered more logical. “You’re not the FBI or something, are you?”

I had to laugh. “Come on, buddy. If I were a cop, I’d have busted you in June when you had your back room full of new laptops. You can classify me as an ‘or something.’ Gotta go.”

Not being a techno person, I’d never thought of an aerial view until now. Might have saved me time and kept me from some dangerous situations. I knew the big storm sewers followed the street grid, so they made the same pentagram belowground. Thor printed the picture on an eleven-by-seventeen page, which I folded and stuffed in my pocket.

“Thanks, Thor. I owe you big-time,” I said as I walked to the back door.

“I take cash,” he called after me as I stepped outside.

Exultation at my find made me careless. The door had no more than closed behind me when a gun barrel jammed into my back.

“Hello, bitch,” Pericles Theron’s voice said from behind me.

I froze.

“Don’t have pretty boy Michael standing between us now, do we?” Theron backed off on the gun. “Search her,” he ordered.

One of his goons from the Goblin Den walked around to face me—the one Michael had bounced off the wall last night. He ran his hands down my body and under my jacket. He relieved me of my gun, but I raised my arms to facilitate his search and he missed the knife strapped on my arm under the jacket sleeve. Stupid bastard was more interested in feeling my tits. When he finished, I faced Theron. A cast covered his arm from wrist to elbow.

He shook the cast at me and bared his teeth like a dog threatening to bite. “I fucking ought to beat you to death with this.”

“You’re going to need more than a cast when Michael—”

“Michael won’t know shit. Son of a bitch. I saw him. I saw
you
. Cops took my guns. Three million fucking dollars’ worth.” His voice rose to a shout.

“Your guns? What are you—?”

“Got me an army, whore.” He gave a nasty laugh. “I’m gonna own this town. Dirty little Bastos come together for me. I’m gonna be king of the Barrows.”

I could see Theron dealing in guns and explosives, but he didn’t have the brains or balls to bring rival Bastinado gangs together. So who did?

“You’re gonna be king, Theron? Who’s king now?”

Theron grinned. “You don’t know shit.”

The door to Thor’s shop swung open and he stepped out. “Cass, are you—?”

Theron pointed the gun at him.

I grabbed Theron’s arm and twisted his gun hand toward his own man. The gun roared, and the blast, amplified by the semienclosed space, hammered my eardrums. The bullet slammed into the goon’s shoulder. He crumpled on the pavement.

I had a firm grip on Theron. He wailed as I broke his good arm and twisted the gun from his hand.

His man with the shoulder wound lay flat on his back, but managed to draw. As he pulled the trigger, I shoved Theron between us. The high-powered round slammed into Theron’s body. It punched on through his flesh and hit me in the right side.

I fell to my knees and clamped my hands over a wound that burned like someone jammed me full of hot coals. My liver, maybe stomach. Not my heart, but a killing shot anyway. I tried to scream and liquid filled my lungs. For ten years, I’d offered my life in the Earth Mother’s name. This time she’d accept the sacrifice.

Thor recovered from his shock and rushed to me. “I’ll call—”

“No.” I reached out and grabbed his shirt with a bloody hand. More blood bubbled out of my mouth. I was concerned with Theron’s goon hurting him, but the man lay unmoving, with Theron’s body sprawled over him. He’d probably lost enough blood to take him out.

“Take me to . . .” Blood sprayed with each word. I longed to go to the place where I felt safest. Abby’s house. But Thor had no idea where that would be, and no way to get me there.

“Cass!” Thor cried.

His voice came from a distance as I moved on to life’s next phase. Pain faded and my limbs went numb. My heart beat wild, franticly, starving for the blood pouring out of my side. As it fluttered for the last time, sight faded in my eyes until only one pinpoint remained—a single star in a midnight sky. I reached for that star, desperately longing for its light. Everything was as it should be in a perfectly ordered and peaceful universe.

She arrived instantly. The Mother had come to take me home.

“Oh, no, Huntress.” Her voice shook the darkness like thunder in the night. “I’ve gone to too much trouble for this.”

I returned to my body in an agonizing avalanche. I’ve had Abby heal me with potions and magic, a gentle thing filled with love. The Earth Mother’s healing poured into me like a giant ocean wave of power. Power that picked me up, rolled me over, and slammed me to the ground before it coughed me up on an asphalt beach.

Abby once told me that earth magic was as powerful in a sparrow’s wing as it was in the claws of a grizzly bear. The Mother used claws on me. She stitched my torn organs with threads of molten lava and bathed them in an acid antiseptic. Tremendous pressure tightened on my chest, and I choked and spewed scarlet fluid as she cleansed my lungs of blood. My heart beat again and pushed a river of fire through my body.

If I could have found a voice then, they’d have heard me shrieking in uptown Duivel. Shrieking in agony. Shrieking in pure hatred of the power that dragged me back into a world where I no longer belonged.

As suddenly as she arrived, between one heartbeat and the next, the Mother departed. I came back to the world and found myself on my hands and knees, gasping for breath. Pain had receded, but the searing memory would never leave. My body quivered, glowed. My arms shimmered with light, white as a full moon.