Harmony Black (Harmony Black Series Book 1) Page 5

  Cambion. Half demon. I’d seen them before. In a heartbeat I did the math: cambion survive in human society by hiding their true nature at all costs. There’s only one time they’ll show a stranger their real face.

  When they’re about to kill you.

  Two quick gunshots echoed from the hallway behind me. A single moment of surprise. The cambion moved, blindingly fast, and hurled a tin can at me just as I opened fire. The can hit me in the face, smacking my cheekbone like a brick, and my bullet caught the half demon in the shoulder. He didn’t even flinch. He lunged, and before I could fix my aim, he threw himself onto me. We both went down, hard, into the mess of discarded groceries on the kitchen floor.

  I landed on my back. He drove a knee into my stomach, winding me, and pinned my gun hand. I shot out my other hand, not to punch him, but to grab his face. I wheezed the first line of an incantation—the twisting, doggerel Latin rolling off my tongue. The spell was designed to banish a bodiless demon from its unwilling host.

  For a living human with demon blood, it just hurts.

  The cambion let out a shrill scream and rolled off me, his face burned black and smoking where my fingers had gripped him. He landed on all fours, crouching like a jackal, baring his fangs at me. Then he turned and ran.

  I chased after him. On the other side of the living room, Jessie had a fight of her own. I saw her stagger back, her lip cut and bleeding, reeling from a cambion’s punch. A third man grappled her from behind, trying to pin her arms behind her back.

  The one from the kitchen loped out the door, still running on all fours. I let him go. My partner took priority. I lifted my gun and dropped a bead on the closest half-breed.

  “Federal agent!” I roared. “Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head!”

  The cambion behind Jessie shrieked. She’d gotten hold of his hand—and wrenched it so far backward that the backs of his fingers were pressed to his arm, snapping wrist bones like twigs.

  Jessie laughed with giddy delight. Before, it looked like her eyes glowed in the dark. Now there was no doubt in my mind. They blazed like blue fire as she spun the cambion around, still holding him by his mangled wrist, and broke his arm with a sound like a gunshot.

  The third man, the one who had punched her, had hold of her Glock. He raised it to fire, but she snapped out a lightning-fast kick and knocked it from his hand. I heard the bones of his fingers pop. Jessie shoved the crippled cambion away, hard enough to send him sprawling to the floor, and went after her new target.

  “Suffer!” she hissed.

  He held up his hands, frantic, backing up against the wall. I tore my attention to the crippled cambion on the floor, keeping my sights on him. He kept his good hand tucked under his body, close to his pockets.

  “Show me your hand,” I said, looming over him. “Right now. Show me your hand!”

  His fingers came out gripping metal, but it wasn’t a gun. I saw the curve of some kind of amulet, a rounded disk of hammered brass engraved with spidery runes. He ran his thumb over the sharp edge of the disk, slicing skin, bleeding on the glimmering metal as he spat a guttural incantation.

  The disk erupted with the fury of a flash-bang grenade. White light seared my eyes, a crump of deafening force pushing me back and knocking me flat. In my double vision I watched the two cambion run for it, leaning on each other as they staggered out the front door.

  I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. The sound of my blood throbbed in my eardrums, cranked up to eleven and pumping like a bass beat.

  The spell faded fast. I slowly pushed myself to my feet, legs wobbly, and rubbed my eyes until the white spots faded away. Jessie knelt on the floor, head bowed and eyes closed, palms upturned on her knees.

  “Jessie, are you—”

  “Shh,” she whispered.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Keep your distance,” she said. “I’m not safe to be near right now. Need to center myself. Shh.”

  We were going to have to talk about this.

  I left her alone and stumbled to the front door. It hung wide open, looking out on an empty lawn and an empty street. The cambion were long gone. I stood there for a moment, on the threshold, drinking in the cool night air and catching my breath. My cheek hurt. I pressed my fingers to it, and they came away dotted with tiny specks of blood.

  When I turned around, Jessie stood behind me.

  Her eyes were still impossibly turquoise, but they’d lost their glow. I nodded at her.

  “Your lip is bleeding.”

  “Your cheek’s scraped up,” she said. “What’d he hit you with?”

  “A can of peas, I think. You want to discuss this?”

  She shook her head. “No. I want to kick the shit out of some cambion. Barring that, I want to figure out what they were tossing this place for.”

  I shut the front door. It slowly swung back open, just a crack. The latch didn’t catch against the strike plate. I leaned on it, hard, and it still didn’t catch. Finally I pulled the door back and slammed it shut, loud enough to boom through the house. Now it stayed closed.

  “Helen’s telling the truth,” I said. “Nobody could sleep through that. The creature didn’t get in this way.”

  While I prowled the wreckage, Jessie got on the phone to April. She stepped into the kitchen, but I could hear her end of the conversation.

  “Hey, Auntie April. We’re over at the vic’s house, and we just got jacked by three half-breeds. No, we’re okay, but they got away. Yeah, she held her own just fine. Homegirl knows how to brawl. I know, I know, I have to have the talk with her. Later, jeez.”

  I poked my head into Helen’s bedroom. A bomb would have done less damage. They’d torn apart her bedding, ransacked her dresser drawers, coated the carpet in sliced fabric and empty boxes.

  “Need you to pull any intel you’ve got on the local occult underground,” Jessie said behind me. “Yeah, cast a wider net, like, to the nearest big city. We need a player who can tell us the score around here, help us find these assholes. They’re working for somebody. Also, have Kevin put a flag on all hospitals and emergency clinics within fifty miles of Talbot Cove. Guy with a mangled arm is going to need some serious medical attention, and I think another one’s got a GSW. Hey, hold on. Harmony!”

  “Yeah?” I called back.

  “Did you wing one?”

  “Think I hit him in the shoulder,” I said.

  “You hear that, Auntie? Yeah, shoulder wound. Cool. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover here, so don’t wait up.”

  The door to the nursery was open, just a crack. I pushed it wide, the grainy wood gliding soundlessly under my touch. The cambion hadn’t gotten this far in their search: Elliot’s crib stood by a window, under a dangling plastic mobile. Stuffed animals grinned mutely from a long white shelf, leering in the dark.

  Jessie hung up and joined me. She put her hands on her hips.

  “So,” she said, “witch senses tingling?”

  Something was, anyway. I’d had the oddest feeling since I walked into the room, a nagging suspicion that I couldn’t see the clue dangling right in my face. Then it hit me.

  I closed the bedroom door, then opened it again. Jessie gave me a curious look.

  “What?” she said.

  “The nanny cam video. Right before and after the creature came on-screen, there was a squeaking sound.” I closed and opened the door again. “These hinges were oiled, not long ago. No squeak.”

  Jessie turned to look at the opposite side of the room. I followed her gaze, my heart sinking.

  The closet door.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Well,” Jessie told me, “you did name it the Bogeyman.”

  SEVEN

  Jessie covered me. She took a few steps back, raised the muzzle of her gun to target the closet door, and gave me a nod. I held my breath as I moved close, my fingers curling around the old, tarnished doorknob and squeezing tight.

  As I slowly pulled the door open, the h
inges gave a shrill squeal. The exact same sound we heard on the recording.

  Empty. It looked like Helen had been using it for storing linens. A comforter leaned against one side of the tiny closet, zippered up in plastic, and a few old towels sat neatly folded on a high shelf. Not a lot of room. Just enough for a grown man to hide inside, crouching in the dark, waiting for a family to fall asleep.

  A string dangled down, leashed to a single bare lightbulb. I reached in and gave it a tug. Stark white light washed over walls painted sunflower yellow, faded with dirt and time.

  I knocked on each wall. Solid. I figured it would be, but it’s best to rule out the mundane before you go hunting for phantoms. I took a step back and reached into my inside jacket pocket, fishing out a pendant on a long silver chain.

  “What’s that?” Jessie asked, holstering her gun.

  “Belonged to my great-great-grandmother.” My thumb played over the face of the pendant. It was a coin, ancient and tarnished, ringed with an inscription in Greek. A tiny hole, drilled through the edge, accommodated the chain. “First witch in the family, or at least the first to start writing things down for the daughters who came after her. Allegedly this is the first coin ever paid to the first Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi.”

  Jessie arched an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “Allegedly,” I said, shrugging. I strung the chain between my outstretched fingers like a cat’s cradle, letting the Pythian coin dangle freely. “I think my great-great-grandmother was a bit of a huckster. What I do know is that it gets sensitive in places where reality’s gone thin. Just have to concentrate a little, and . . . ”

  I took a step toward the closet. Slowly, as if nudged by an unfelt breeze, the coin began to turn.

  The closer I came to the closet, the faster it turned, revolving counterclockwise at the end of the chain. Then I stepped inside. The coin spun like a top, and the chain links twisted until they pinched my fingers like tiny mousetraps. The coin hung in the air, straining, trembling.

  I stepped out of the closet. The coin went slack. It spun the other way, suddenly lifeless, as the twisted-up chain unwound itself and relaxed. I slipped it back into my jacket pocket.

  “It teleports,” I said. “Came in and out of the closet, but it came from somewhere else.”

  “Any way to track it?” Jessie asked.

  I shook my head. “Not sure. Let me think about it. Maybe I’ll come up with something.”

  We poked around the rest of the house, but it was a lost cause. Nothing to see, and the cambion had turned the place upside down. If they’d taken something with them when they ran, we’d never know what it was.

  “I’ve got nothing,” Jessie said. “Just an aching lip and an empty stomach.”

  I didn’t realize how hungry I was until she said it. “Yeah, sounds good. Let’s call it. Maybe we can come back in the morning, see the place with fresh eyes.”

  Out in the front yard, trudging across the scraggly, tangled grass, something by the edge of the sidewalk caught my eye. It was a wicker ornament, about the size of my fist, hammered into the grass at the end of a short iron spike. I knelt beside it and waved Jessie over.

  “Have you got a penlight? There’s something here.”

  She crouched next to me and shined a thin, steady beam on the ornament. It was like a Möbius strip times ten, one long wicker ribbon twisting around and around and looping inside itself. The light caught the faint, almost invisible traces of needle-thin glyphs inscribed on the wicker, in a language I’d never seen before.

  “Think the cambion dropped that when they ran?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Don’t think so. That little spike is holding it into the dirt. Somebody planted it here, deliberately. Should be an evidence kit in the trunk; let’s bag it up and take it with us.”

  “Good call. April can check it out. First, though, food. I need red meat and beer, not necessarily in that order.”

  It wasn’t easy, this late at night, finding a place with open doors, let alone an open kitchen. We ended up at the Spit and Whistle, a barbecue joint with tables carved from tree logs and lit by strung-up Christmas tree lights. We settled into a booth by the kitchen while Lynyrd Skynyrd rocked out on an old Wurlitzer jukebox.

  “The waitresses are wearing brown-felt fox ears on headbands,” I said to Jessie. “I’m a little lost on the theme here.”

  “Red meat and beer,” she said, buried in the sauce-stained paper menu.

  She repeated herself when a waitress came over, then added, “Specifically, the brisket burger, and all the toppings. Rare. Rare as pirate gold. Just wave a candle in its general direction. What’s on tap?”

  “All the classics, plus we brew our own ale on site. It’s an IPA with a medium body, a little nutty—”

  “Sold.”

  “I’ll have the barbecue chicken salad,” I said when she looked my way, “and a Diet Coke, please.”

  “Living dangerously,” Jessie said. When the waitress left, she stretched her arms over her head and yawned. “How’s your cheek?”

  “Stings,” I said. “How’s your lip?”

  “Hurts. My pride took a worse beating, though.”

  “Jessie, we need to talk about this.”

  “My pride?” she asked.

  I leaned closer, taking a quick look around.

  “I watched you fold a man’s bones like a piece of dirty laundry. And your eyes were glowing when you did it.”

  “Eh,” she said, offering the waitress a smile as she brought our drinks over. She tossed back her mug, closing her eyes and smiling. “Mmm. Okay, that’s good stuff. Goes down smooth. You should really have one.”

  “Jessie.”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “I just hate this part. Fuck. All right. Better you hear it from me than from Linder. Or God, from Kevin. I just need you to be cool. Can you be cool, Harmony?”

  “Test me,” I said.

  “All right.” She took another swig of ale, then folded her hands. “Temple is my mother’s maiden name. I was born Jessie Sinclair.”

  It didn’t mean anything to me. I gave her a helpless shrug. I peeled the paper on my straw, giving my hands something to do.

  “My father was Russell Lee Sinclair.”

  I almost dropped the straw.

  “Russell Lee Sinclair,” I echoed. “As in, Russell Lee Sinclair, the Dixie Butcher?”

  She stared into her mug. “Yeah. That one. He didn’t escape capture for as long as he did just because we moved around so much. I mean, that helped, but no. Dad’s official designation, in Linder’s records, is Hostile Entity 2. He’s one of the reasons Vigilant Lock was created in the first place.”

  “So what was he?” I said. “Some kind of sorcerer?”

  “Some kind, yeah. He was in contact with . . . something outside this world. That’s H. E. 3, for the record, but he called it the King of Wolves. The killings were sacrifices. Part of his payment to ‘ascend to a higher state of being.’”

  “Part of the payment?”

  “There were other rituals,” Jessie said, her voice fading. “He had to . . . do things. And on my eleventh birthday, he told me he had a very special present. It was time for me to learn the family trade. So I had to do things, too.”

  “Jesus,” I breathed. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”

  She shrugged. “No reason you would. I was fifteen the year the feds gunned my dad down. Linder covered up as much of the story as he could, and April took custody of me.”

  “‘Aunt’ April,” I said. I thought back to what I knew about the Sinclair story—the sanitized-for-the-public version, anyway—and blinked as the last piece clicked into place. “From what I heard, an agent was seriously injured when they tried to arrest him.”

  “That’s right.”

  I regrettably left the Bureau quite some time ago, April said when we were introduced. Taking an ax to the lower vertebrae tends to limit your prospects for career advancement.

  “It was her
. Dr. Cassidy.”

  Jessie sipped her ale and sighed. “It wasn’t maternal instinct that made April take me in. She wanted to make sure I didn’t turn out as fucked up as my dad was. Joke’s on her. I’m just neurotic. Could have been worse. Linder wanted me taken out on general principle. She convinced him I’d make a better tool than a target.”

  “Taken out?” I blinked. “You were fifteen years old.”

  She didn’t answer right away. The waitress swung by, bringing plates laden with food. The rich scent of homemade barbecue sauce, spicy and honey sweet, made my mouth water.

  “Spent four years ‘learning’ from my dad,” she said, looking down as she spread a paper napkin across her lap. “Hunting. Fishing. Tracking. The best ways to shut up a naked, screaming, bloody victim while you’re smuggling her across state lines in your trunk. Just your basic backwoods Serial Killer 101 stuff.”

  She looked up at me. “They called it Stockholm syndrome. That, and being too young to know right from wrong, being dominated by a parental authority figure, et cetera. Fortunately, I can report that years of therapy have done wonders, and now I have a serious problem with all authority figures.”

  I felt like I’d airdropped into the middle of a minefield. Reading Jessie was like trying to catch a bead of mercury. She slid from withdrawn and taciturn to smiling and gregarious in the blink of an eye, and it felt like she was daring me to push her.

  “Your eyes,” I said, “were glowing in the dark.”

  “Funny thing? In all my baby pictures, they’re brown. Like I said: there were other rituals, besides the killings. Dad wanted to make me just like him, a chip off the old block. Had these grandiose dreams of starting a wolf-king cult. Just a happy little pack of serial killers, roaming the country and biting out throats. He was going to fix me up with some nice young man, and I’d pump out lots of evil babies. Everybody wants grandkids, right?”

  “So,” I said, cautious, “what you did back there, your strength—”

  “When I get heated, when the adrenaline starts to pour? I’m stronger than most people. Faster. All my senses get sharper. It’s not something I have to think about, like you and your magic; it just happens. There’s limits: I’m not gonna outrun a freight train or leap tall buildings in a single bound, but it’s a handy equalizer when hunting the sorts of creatures that go bump in the night. Love that stupid look on their faces, when they think they’ve cornered a helpless victim and suddenly realize they had it all backward. They show me their claws . . . and I show ’em mine.”