It was amazing to watch the thing move, all that bulk thrown into forward motion, like a goddamn freight train barreling down on me. I’d heard rumors that some vampires could fly, but I never really believed them. The Gimp, though, was barely touching the ground, and the way he accelerated like that lent a certain credibility to those stories.

I tightened my finger on the trigger as I heard Irish yell my name, and at the same time the shadow alerted me to something small and round like a rock incoming. Whatever it was hit the ground between me and the Gimp. I felt it hit, baseball-sized, and round, no, more oval, textured… egg-shaped.

The grenade went off a split second before I fired. I jerked the trigger more out of surprise than any intention to shoot.

The explosion blew me off my knees. The Gimp was closer to it, though, and he was blown clean off his feet. I felt each shred of shrapnel and the force of the explosion, tearing and rippling through the dark. Through the shadow, I heard his rusty bellow of pain even over the ringing in my ears. He hit the ground like a ton of bricks, bleating, short gargling honks of noise that sounded more surprised than anything.

I felt a second grenade sailing through the gloom as I shoved myself up. It was arcing our way, and as I scrambled to get out of the blast radius, I felt the shadow snap out at it, like she was funneling it, directing it. That shouldn’t even be possible – she’d never had the strength to manipulate physical objects before, nothing beyond a cigarette butt or a scrap of paper, anyway. I was so shocked I stumbled, hitting my knees again as she dropped the grenade neatly in the Gimp’s crotch.

It exploded. The Gimp screamed. I reeled in the blow-back, feeling shrapnel bounce off my back and head, and went face-first in the dirt.

Men’s voices called through the shadow’s darkness, “Did we get ‘em?”

“I can’t see anything!”

“Spread out! Open fire!”

“Get around ‘em!”

Rapid gun fire filled the night, machine gun fire, hundreds of bullets. The shadow tracked them all, marking the trajectory of each bullet even as she informed me the Gimp was getting to his feet, his well-dressed handler flinging himself to the ground as his all-too-human caddy was carved into so much hamburger by the deluge of bullets. The noise was stunning. In my mind, a topographical map of half the golf course formed, the positions of eight shooters calculated by the bullet trajectories pinpointed, the taste of the mud and the grass and the fertilizer, cordite and explosives and putrid corpseflesh sharp on my tongue.

I levered myself up, a few more bullets bouncing off my back.  I wondered briefly if Sam had managed to get the glue off his face yet, and hoped he hadn’t. I shook my head, trying to sort through the deluge of sensory input, and the shadow helpfully pointed out the hollow space she wouldn’t touch about twelve feet in front of me – Irish, diving for what little cover there was to be found in a sloped sand-trap. Shit. I thought of the caddy’s jittering dance when the bullets riddled him, and shoved myself up, lunging towards Irish.

“Oi!” Ignoring his surprise, I threw my arms around him and pushed the bracelet to cover him, too. It wasn’t designed for that, and I felt the effect flickering and guttering like a candle in the wind. There were no electrical lines here in the golf course, either – nothing to draw on but my own reserves.

“Watch out!” I hissed as a few bullets peppered the back of my head. As a testament to the workout I was putting the charm through, I could feel the sting of their impact. I hissed through my teeth and caught Irish rubbing his forehead.

“This isn’t so bad,” Irish said, holding me with one arm. He pulled me in a little tighter, pulling us lower in the sand and ducking his head against the hailstorm of bullets. I shot him a dirty look, and caught him smirking at me.

I counted ten approaching men now; no, thirteen, no… fifteen of them breaching the shadow’s area of influence and moving into the gloom with flashlights that suddenly didn’t work and hot machine guns that weren’t producing any muzzle flare to speak of when they were fired. They were rough men, the shadow feeding me their tactile descriptions as they moved forward into the gloom, spreading out to encircle us. I felt stiff Kevlar vests and padded steel plates under their winter coats. They wore radio earpieces and moved with precision, avoiding each other’s field of fire. Whoever was out there was professional.

“Who is it?” Irish asked, shouting right into my ear to be heard over the chattering roar of gunfire.

“Gotta be deAngelos,” I shouted back.

“Is that bad?”

The Gimp was moving, and the Dapper Vamp was returning fire with a largely ineffectual handgun. I felt the Gimp reach one of the guys in the lead. He staggered back as he realized he was under attack, firing point-blank at the massive vampire looming suddenly in his face. The Gimp rained blood, hardly seeming to notice it, and snatched the gunman up, almost severing his arm as he buried his mouth in the man’s shoulder, gnawing through Kevlar to get to skin and blood. The Gimp pulled his victim apart, tearing him at the bite and chewing deeper as he went. He flung the leftovers aside and shook himself like a dog, sending a rain of blood in the air. I could feel his wounds already closing as he launched himself at a second man. That one got off a short scream as the Gimp snagged him. He ripped the guy’s arm off, shoving his face in the wound and pulling his victim’s head back until with a snap, it met his spine.

As the Gimp grabbed a third man, the remainders stumbled through the gloom, firing at random in the hopes of pinning us down. The shadow was doing more harm than good at the moment, and I made her back down a bit. She snarled at the command, reveling in the semi-panicked chaos. My mouth was full of the flavor of blood and gun smoke, and she was in her glory with so many things to track and watch and touch, so much happening all at once. We struggled back and forth a bit until I finally convinced her to at least let the men see where they were going. If they turned out to be a problem, we could kill them ourselves in a few minutes.

Liking that prospect, she relented. Colorful swaths of light blazed through the stand of trees as the shadow thinned – strobe lights from the response vehicles over by the pileup on the road. In a matter of seconds, eight guys had surrounded Dapper Vamp and concentrated their fire on him. His body shuddered under the impacts, most of them centered on his lower body mass. One man knelt down, dropping a loop of cable around the perforated vampire’s neck. He pulled it taut, raising his head as he drew a huge bowie knife, and my shadow and I noticed that he wasn’t breathing. Oh, joy, another vampire.

He put the knife to Dapper Vamp’s throat, below the cable – which I recognized by the loops at the ends as the sort they sell as bicycle locks. Probably plastic-wrapped steel cable.  “Call off the revenant, or I take your head right now! Do it, asshole!” The shadow brought me the words, and the voice felt familiar. There was too much noise to hear it with my own ears, of course, which would have helped. Who was that?

A fifth man fell victim to the Gimp, his guts pulled out in a steaming wet mass as the vampire buried his face in his throat, chewing his way to the spine. The man vomited even as he died, and the shadow shared the taste of it with me even as she riffled my memories, looking for a voice that matched that familiar one from the guy holding Dapper Vamp.

“Some of them are getting closer, Alice,” Irish said, into my ear, and I belatedly became aware of his hand in the small of my back, holding me tight against him. “Should I start shooting?”

Dapper Vamp held up his whistle, wheezing “Two.” The bowie knife was lifted, spun around into an overhand grip, and brought down into the prone vampire’s chest. He gurgled and stiffened as his heart was pierced, and the whistle was snatched out of his limp hand. The shadow and I heard two hard blasts on the dog whistle, and the gunfire died down as radios crackled and conveyed a weapons-down order.

“Not yet,” I told Irish, pulling myself out of his grip and relaxing the flow of energy into the bracelet. It was steaming on my wrist, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could have pushed it like that. I belly-crawled up to the grass berm atop the sand-trap, and peeked over the top, Irish right beside me. The Gimp had thrown his last victim away, and fallen into a low crouch, sniffing the air and whining. He must have caught the scent of Dapper Vamp’s blood, because he suddenly took off, leaving a series of divots in the turf as he sprinted away into the night. A few of the men squeezed off a few short bursts after him, but he didn’t slow.

“Fuck.” The new vampire blew half a dozen more times on the dog whistle. “Clever, Pinstripes, but the retard won’t get far. Who’s not dead?” The shadow recalled where we’d heard that voice a second before I recognized it. It was Michael deAngelo, Gianna’s second eldest son, and the scarier of the two other deAngelo vampires. His brother Gustavo was the Don, and sensible and conservative, as vampires went. Michael, though, wasn’t playing with a full deck. I had the impression that his death hadn’t gone entirely smoothly, and he hadn’t come back with all his marbles. He wasn’t very creative, but he followed orders well. Maybe a little too well – it was almost impossible to get through to him when he was on-task. “Okay, half of you who aren’t dead, go get that kinky Sumo fuckstick. Not you, Al, you stay with me.”

“He’s gone,” I called.

“Alice? You are in here!” Michael sounded pleasantly surprised. “We been looking for you all day! Didn’t I say, Al? I said, ‘Twenty car pile-up, that’s gotta be Alice,’ didn’t I?” I was offended. Why did everyone always blame me? It’s not like I do this often! Irish’s smirk didn’t help my mood, any.

“Yes sir, you called it.” Al sounded tired, and spoke very carefully. Michael was eerily focused on pleasing his mother and elder brother, and could be… unpredictable. I didn’t envy his position.

“Here,” said the man, passing something that felt like a cellphone off to Al. “Call Gussie and tell him to get the fucking cops off my ass. Let him know we found the witch, too. Alice? I’m coming over there, so don’t fucking shoot me or anything. You – new guy. Secure this little fuck. And watch him, he’s tricky.” As the big Italian vampire approached us, one of his men dug out a roll of duct tape, and started winding it around Dapper Vamp’s torso and the handle of the bowie knife. His fingers and toes twitched, but the knife in his heart kept him mostly dead. Good to see they weren’t taking chances, though.

“Gussie?” I repeated quietly, a frown wrinkling my forehead.

“Who’s out there?” Irish called. I wondered how much of all that he’d actually heard.

“Who the fuck is that?” The man called back in.

“Gussie – Gustavo?” I said, louder this time as I started to get an idea of who was out there. I stood up, brushing damp sand off my jeans and my turtleneck.

“Nah, this is Mikey. I’m the homely one.”

“Who’s Gustavo?” Irish asked, drawing his guns and kneeling beside me in the sand. I readied my Colt, wanting to be ready in case Michael was here to carry out any of Gianna’s death threats. He sounded friendly, but that didn’t mean a lot.

“The Don,” I whispered. “This is her other boy, Michael. She sent the big guns.” I willed the shadow to settle down, to come back, and the remaining gloom thinned and dissipated. She still liked the ‘kill everybody’ plan, but wasn’t too upset. She probably figured we’d get our chance soon enough. It had gotten dark out while we were busy trying not to die. Bits of her awareness flitted about in the shadows, but there was no need to thicken the gloom anymore.

Michael strode over a small rise, and I could feel the gun in his hand, a snub-nosed machine gun. It was aimed at the ground, though the barrel was still hot. He walked with confidence, surrounded by the stink of the grave, a subtle smell the shadow shared with me. With the shadow thinning, he’d be able to see just fine in the darkness, and he navigated the rough ground without so much as a stumble. He pulled up short as he spotted us, aiming at him.

“Easy, Alice.” He put his hands up, machine gun in one, the other empty. He grinned, a big, easy smile that showed off a lot of straight white teeth and never touched his dark eyes. Michael looked like a young man in his late twenties, though he had to be pushing eighty by now, if I had my math right. His black hair was only slightly mussed by the excitement, and he had the sleeves of his pale blue business shirt rolled up, his tie loosened. He was built like a football player who’d gone soft after high school – wide and solid but with a little extra in the middle. The strobes from the police cars across the golf course caught his eyes, and the red gleam there seemed just a little bit too bright. “I’m not here for any trouble.”

“What do you mean, you’re not here for any trouble? I have a phone full of death threats from your mother!” I rolled my eyes and kept the Colt aimed at his forehead.

He waved his empty hand dismissively. “You know how she gets during the day. She’s grouchy when she’s sleepy, that’s all.”

“His mother?” Irish didn’t take his eyes off Michael, and hadn’t lowered his guns yet, either. “So this is one of Gianna’s sons? I’ve heard of them.”

“Yeah. Michael deAngelo, meet Irish.” I glanced the way Michael had come from. Back in the darkness, I could feel his men bagging up the bullet-riddled remains of Dapper Vamp. He was still twitching, but they’d got him bound and gagged efficiently, and the body bag was snug and form-fitting, with a slot in the front for the protruding knife handle. Like they’d planned this all out.

“The man himself, huh?” Michael grinned. “Gussie said he heard something about that.”

“What the hell do you want? Help with Duane’s goons?” I said.

“Duane’s – what do we need help with that for? We just handled Duane’s goons. Didn’t you see us handle ‘em?” Michael grinned again, that big white smile that somehow managed to be predatory and friendly at the same time. “We’ve been bagging his guys all afternoon. No, we got bigger problems than the Eldest. Benny woke up this afternoon.”

“Yeah? So?” I felt movement in the shadows and glanced to the right, spotting an approaching flashlight. A man stepped out, a bulky bald guy built like a cement truck, bundled into a heavy coat and wearing an expensive cashmere scarf. He had a big Maglite in one hand and another of those snub-nosed machine guns in the other.

“Nothing else around, Mikey. Two more guys in the van, but they’re both dead. Maybe from the crash, I figure,” he said, looking at Irish and me, and noted we were still aiming at his boss. “You want ‘em shot? Inna foot, maybe? Teach ‘em a little respect?”

“Nah, don’t worry about it.” Michael held his free hand out, and his man juggled the flashlight and the gun until he could retrieve a cell phone from his coat pocket. He handed it back to Michael, and stamped his feet, his breath fogging in the cold night air. I realized that Irish, too, was huddling in his long coat, and Michael and I were standing there perfectly at ease in the cold. My jacket wasn’t even zipped, and he hadn’t bothered with one. Neither of us were producing foggy breath. A quick look at Irish confirmed that he’d noticed, too. “You get a hold of Gus?”

“Yeah. He’s taking care of the cops. He said good job finding the…” he waved at me, floundering for a more polite word. “…finding the Alice.”

Michael beamed, a wide happy smile. “I told him I’d find her before those Order numbnuts did,” he grinned. “Anyway, Alice, Benny woke up this afternoon, right? Way earlier than he should of.”

“How’d you find out about that?” I asked. “I thought Duane had him.”

“Yeah. Had him,” Michael grunted. “He woke up, and musta bust outta wherever Duane was keeping him. So he heads home, I guess, and Mama’s there, and she’s all thrilled to see him, right? Only, it’s not Benny.”

“What?” Irish said it the same time I did, and we glanced at each other. Irish’s eyes narrowed.

“I know, right? Helluva fight breaks out, fucking laser light show shit going on, Mama said it was magic.” Michael shook his head. “So she gets out of there, and calls me, and the next thing I know, my ass is slogging around in broad fucking daylight, looking for you. She says, ‘Mikey, you go get me Alice. That bastard did something to Benny, and you go get Alice so she can fix it,’ right?”

“Fix it,” I repeated, staring at Michael as two and two started adding up.

“Right. You do your hoodoo, make Mama happy, and we finish taking care of Duane.” Michael put his gun away. “Hey, it’s a good deal for you, right? Mama’ll be the Eldest after we wipe that Duane jackass out, and she’ll owe you a favor. Who doesn’t want a favor from the Eldest, eh? I hear you’re in some trouble anyway, might do you good to have Mama on your side, amiright?”

“Mikey, your Mama isn’t near being Eldest, is she? She’s what, maybe a hundred years dead? Less, probably.”

“Well, it’d be an honorary title, we figure. Still, anybody wants to press the point, they have to get past the rest of us.”

Irish leaned down to murmur in my ear. “We need to get that ring,” he said.

I blinked at him. “What? Why? What’s that going to do? Apparently we just found Carl. You guys still have Benny?”

“No. He left again.” Michael stared at us, a little pinch of confusion wrinkling his forehead. “Who’s Carl?” he asked.

“Number One on my personal shitlist,” I answered, looking up at Irish to see what he was thinking.

He flicked a quick look at Michael, then to me. “It’s those rings. He’s using those rings to find bodies,” he whispered.

“You think?”

“It makes sense,” Irish frowned. “It’s like he’s a ghost, possessing people. A lot of ghosts can only haunt a certain place or person. Those rings show a connection between them all, right?”

“Yeah, sure, but how can he be a ghost?”

Irish shrugged. “You’re the one that said outlanders make their own rules. But if they don’t have him, we still need that ring.”

I frowned, but it scanned, and I had to admit that I was a little embarrassed Irish had thought of it first. “Okay, then.” I holstered my Colt. “We need to make a quick stop, first. Then we can see Gianna.”

“No time.” Michael gestured for his man to take the lead, and gave a sharp whistle. “Come on! We’re out of here!” He shouted into the dark. A few men answered him back, and I felt them moving into the drifting shadows, heading our way. Several of them were carrying body bags, I noticed. Waste not, want not, I guessed.

“Make time,” Irish said, crossing his arms. “It’s important.”

“How important?” Michael crossed his arms, too, preparing to out-stubborn Irish. I could have told him that was a waste of time.

“Ye want help with Benny? Then we need to make a fuckin’ stop.” Irish set his jaw, eyes going hard.

“You know what I heard about you? I hear I don’t have to be that worried about you anymore.” Michael’s tone took on a hint of challenge, and his grin was looking less friendly and more predatory.

“Did ye now?” Irish grinned, too, and there was nothing friendly in his.

I stepped in between the two, a hand on Irish’s chest. “I don’t care who heard what, you can all still worry about me. And Mikey, we need to make a stop on the way.”

Michael glanced at me, then at Irish, and shrugged. “Fine. But we’re making it quick. Mama’s not a patient woman.” He turned, heading the way he’d pointed, and after a glance at me, Irish followed.

We tromped across the muddy golf course, sticking to the tree line to avoid attracting attention from the small army of cops and emergency responders out on the road. Don deAngelo may have “taken care of the cops,” but apparently Michael didn’t see any reason to test his luck. He led us to a line of three dark cars, all nice sedan-style vehicles, the kind that blend in anywhere because anyone with a half-decent investment portfolio buys one. Michael’s was a black LaCrosse, because buying American was still a big deal in Detroit. He dug his keys out and shut off the alarm as we approached.

“Al. Drive.” He tossed the keys across to the shivering muscle with the machine gun, who went around to the driver’s side. Michael opened the passenger door, gesturing for us to get in the back. “Where do we need to stop?”

“The old Ford plant.” Irish sat down in the car.

“What, just down the road?” Michael turned in his seat to look at us. “Sure, that really is on the way.”

“That’s the place, yep. It’s where Benny died.” I pulled my cigarettes out of my pocket as Al pulled out, and the other cars followed us.

“How’d that happen, anyway?” Michael reached out with a shiny gold Zippo, flicking it.

“He said he was meeting someone for business, but he ran into another problem the Arcana’s dealing with.” I let Michael light my cigarette, and took a long drag, rolling the window down. In the front seat, Al muttered quietly and hunkered down into his scarf as the cold air blew into the car.

“Benny don’t do any business. He’s a fucking accountant.” He pulled out a gold cigarette case that matched his lighter and popped it open, revealing several slender brown cigarillos. He tipped the case Irish’s way, and Irish shook his head. “Suit yourself,” he said, lighting one for himself. “Who the fuck does an accountant meet in a junk yard to do Family business?”

“The Deputy Mayor.” I watched Michael’s face as it wrinkled in consternation.

“Why would he be meeting Brant?”

“See, now I was hoping you’d tell me that,” I said as he put his cigarette case away.

He shook his head. “Brant’s ours, but there’s no reason for Benny to go meeting him. What’d he run into, anyway? Gus was telling me the magicians are all running around like crazy. Some monster or something you guys let loose. Fucking the town all up. Gussie’s pissed. Damn critter tore up one of our crack houses over on Camden, and a lot of the girls are hiding indoors instead of working their corners like they oughtta.”

“He ran into the monster.” I hit my cigarette. “It killed Brant, and must have thought it killed Benny, too. I found him spiked to a wall.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Trying to kill the beast,” Irish answered, and Michael turned his gaze on him, looking him over.

“Yeah? Y’know, I always figured you’d be bigger,” he said, off-hand, as though it had only just occurred to him that he had the legendary Irishman riding around in the back of his car. It may have only just occurred to him. None of his instructions had mentioned Irish, probably. “You hear all those stories, you know? So you didn’t kill it?”

“No.”

“Too bad. We’re losing money.” Michael frowned. “A lot of folks are staying indoors, even if they don’t know why. It’s like Al, here. Every few months, he forgets that he’s working for vampires, isn’t that right, Al?”

Our driver kept his eyes on the road, and nodded. “It’s funny as shit when it happens, let me tell you. One time Al fucking wet himself when Mama tore into her dinner in front of him. Most of our guys never notice at all, or they get used to it and that’s that… but Al? He waffles back and forth. I’m thinking a lot of people – regular people – saw that monster in the last couple of days and don’t even know how freaked out they are. Or why.”

I was a little surprised, and let it show on my face. “You’re probably right, Mikey. That’s pretty perceptive of you.”

He shrugged, blowing a plume of smoke out the window. “I’m not stupid. I know what people say about me, but I’m not stupid. I just concentrate on the job, that’s all. But in between jobs? I pay attention, even if I don’t say much.” He eyed Irish, taking in the sword at his side and tapping his fingers on the dash thoughtfully. “I’m just putting this out there, but Gussie’d be real happy if that thing got killed, and soon. I mention it because I hear you went freelance or some shit, and Gus, he’s always looking for talent. We pay Alice pretty good, and a guy with your credentials? You could make bank.”

“Hey, there you go,” I said, nudging Irish’s arm. “That’s two job offers in the same day. And people say the economy’s bad.”

“No,” Irish said, shooting me a rather annoyed look.

“Almost there, boss,” Al said, turning a corner.

I glanced out the window. “Let’s go around front. It’s closer to the main building.”

“Whatever.” Michael waved at Al to follow my directions. “What are you looking for, anyway? You said something about a ring?”

Irish and I shot a look at each other, quick, trying to guess how free we should be with our meager supply of information. I shrugged. “It’s a ring, yeah. Big gaudy-assed ruby pinky ring, gold,” I said.

“Benny’s ring?” Michael laughed. “He’s had that thing for months. I’ve been picking on him for it. Thing’s a goddamn stereotype, isn’t it? Looks like something Joe Pesci would wear.”

“Months? How long?” I put my eyebrows up.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, watching me. “Is it important? I noticed it last Christmas. Thought his wife got it for him. I ragged the hell out of him. He sulked so much I figured Tina musta got it for him, right? She’s got awful taste.”

“Christmas.” I looked over at Irish, who frowned.

“Ye said geomancers worked slow. That gives him almost a whole year.” He rubbed his jaw as we pulled along behind the old Ford plant. There was police tape up along the fence.

“That’s still pretty quick. Geomancy is slow. Think more in decades than months. He would do things like work a pattern for positive healing energy into the architectural plans for a hospital, right? In eight or twenty years, if the design elements weren’t fucked up during a remodel, patients would start healing a lot faster, there’d be fewer infections, that sort of thing. It draws on the magic of the earth itself, right, and it takes a while to draw on that. Potent stuff, but it has a lot of inertia.”

Irish frowned at me. “Who’d sign up for that?” He shook his head.

“Oh, you don’t sign up for it, really. You’re just good at one thing or another.” I pushed my hair out of my face. “Still, maybe Benny joined the cause late or something.”

“Joined what cause?” Michael frowned, staring at the two of us. “What was he up to?”

“We haven’t nailed down all the details, yet,” I said, drawing off my cigarette as Al parked the car. “But it has to do with the monster running around loose. Everyone involved in summoning that badass has one of those rings. Most of them are dead now, too. I’d lay good money one of them was at that crack house of yours, getting as high as he could to not think about what was hunting him.”

“Shit,” Michael said heavily, flicking his cigarillo away as he opened the car door. “Gus ain’t gonna be happy to hear about that. Mama either.”

I got out of the car, heading around to meet Irish as he got out of his side. He stood, one hand on the door, staring at the yard. I pulled out my phone and checked the time. I’d been chasing Cur-ruptions down in there just a bit less than twenty hours ago. I glanced over at Irish, and his eyes were distant, mouth set in a straight, unhappy line. Right, right, the last time he’d been here he’d murdered an innocent woman on the orders of a bunch of assholes who’d been lying to him his whole life. That had to sting.

“Hey, lighten up. I’m all out of barfballs.” I slapped his arm. “Let’s go.” I started across the street, and Irish slammed the car door shut and followed me. He caught up to me in time to hold up the yellow police tape and open the gate so I could step through after I’d zapped the padlock with my keyring. I turned just as Michael caught up to the both of us. “You can just wait at the car,” I said.

“Oh, hell, no. I’ve been hunting for you all day, Alice. You’re not getting out of my sight, now. Mama’ll skin me if I don’t come back with you.” He shouldered past Irish, following me into the lot. Irish glared at his back, then shook his head at me.

“Where is it?” Irish asked, stepping through the fence, too, sounding resigned.

“By the main building.” I waved ahead.

“Let’s get to it, then.” He gestured for me to lead the way, and the shadow unfurled into the darkness as I struck out for the back of the lot. Honestly, I had no idea exactly where Benny had been, but the shadow did. I followed her directions, flicking my cigarette away into the wet weeds. The ground was uneven and littered with trash, but I avoided every snag without needing to look. Irish, though, stumbled every few steps. “Should’ve brought a light,” Irish muttered.

“Hang on,” I said, patting down my pockets. I came out with an Edison bulb. The very same one I’d had last night, as a matter of fact. I gave it a shake to wake it up and tossed it in the air, where it hovered and glowed. “There you go.”

“Ye can’t just have a flashlight?” He smirked at me. “It’s got to be a floating light bulb?”

“Counts for style points. Very important, style points.”

“What’s in it?” Michael asked, catching up to my other side and squinting up at the bulb. Vamps tend to be a little sensitive to bright lights.

“Lightning bugs.”

“How’d you get ‘em in there?”

“Magic,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at him. “And a teeny-weeny crowbar. How else would I do it?”

The bulb flared brighter, and the circle of light expanded, revealing the closest of the fallen storage racks. Somewhat less clearly, we could make out the heaps and piles of more of them in the gloom. A pair of bulldozers and a backhoe had been brought in, and a dump truck stood idle to one side, half full of debris. “What the hell happened up here?” Irish stared at the path ahead, strewn with rubble.

“Some asshole pitched a forklift at Jada, and knocked all this shit down on top of me.” I shot him a sharp glare.

“Ah, the bastard,” Irish said, grinning. “Point him out t’ me if ye see him again. I’ll have a word.”

We circled around the mess, and in a few minutes we cleared the wreckage and found the scorched remains of Benny’s Pontiac. Michael whistled as he spotted it, circling the metal carcass. It was barely recognizable as having been a car at all, sitting in the center of a puddle of cooled molten metal. The slagged hood had been tagged, too – an alien Gray in a pink bandanna flashing gang sign, drawn over one of those intricate tags that are almost impossible to read. I was pretty sure it said DaTruth.

“Shit, Benny’s gonna be fucking pissed. Did you do this?” He leaned on the frame, raising his eyebrows at me.

“Yeah. Didn’t want the cops getting the VIN off it.”

“Overkill, much?” Michael lit another of his cigarillos, digging his phone out of his pocket as it chimed. “It’s Mama,” he called to me, grinning his shark grin. He wandered away to take the call, but not so far as to lose sight of me, I noticed. Also, I don’t think he liked the light my bulb was putting out. It might have felt too much like sunlight for him to be entirely comfortable with it.

“Fantastic.” I let out a tired sigh as the shadow flowed through the toppled stacks, hunting down the deputy mayor’s remains.

“Is it – she – looking?” Irish asked, standing next to me in the circle of warm yellow light cast by the floating bulb. He squinted into the dark.

“Yeah. Give her a second. Won’t take long.” I dug my cigarettes out. Now that I had a moment to think, the monkey on my back was reminding me that cigarettes had been in short supply this evening. I lit up, stuffing my smokes back in my pocket. Besides, the smoke made it look like my breath fogged like a normal woman’s. Made me look a little less inhuman. Michael, comfy in his short sleeves, was making me self-conscious.

“I don’t see anything.”

“Well, you wouldn’t. It’s dark.” I hit my cigarette, breathing out a plume of gray smoke.

“I saw it before. Her, I mean.” He shifted his stance so he could look at me, hands in his jeans pockets as he studied my face.

“She was exerting herself then. Making her own dark. Usually, she just moves through the shadows that are already there.” I avoided meeting his eyes, keeping watch on the darkness. Behind us, Michael was reassuring his mother that he did indeed have me, and not only that, but they’d taken Reginald, as well. I assumed that was the dapper vamp.

He watched me for a moment, while I smoked and avoided meeting his gaze, and with a shrug he changed the subject. “What of the phone call? The one you were listening in on?”

I ground my back teeth. “Yeah. About that,” I said, flicking ash away as the shadow weaseled through the mess and brought me the flavor of dried blood and dead flesh that had sat out for a day. I wrinkled my nose as she writhed through the body, hunting for the ring. “Randall’s giving orders to the Knights. He was setting me up.”

“What do you mean?”

“He knew about me. The whole time.” I hit the cigarette, hoping to chase the flavor of rot out of my mouth. It didn’t work, of course. “She found the ring,” I mentioned, off-hand.

His eyes widened some, and he let out a low whistle. “Already? It’s a bloody needle in a haystack out here.”

I snorted. “Please. That’s easy. Needles don’t taste anything like hay.” I felt the shadow, poking and prodding at the ring, nudging it gently along in the dirt, and at the same moment, perched watchful in my mind, listening to my thoughts. I eyed Irish’s guarded expression, and wondered what he was seeing on my face. I took a deep draw off the cigarette. “Randall was flirting me up, and had been for years. Trying to gauge what I was, probably, and looking for his chance to capture me. Harness my shadow for his own use, maybe, or put me away in some box somewhere to use, like… like Owen.” I smiled, and it felt rather brittle on my face. “It’s what they do. When Carl fucked up and I got caught in the mess, Randall tried to capitalize on it by shuttling me off to Havana, to keep me penned up. That’s why Detroit isn’t hip-deep in battlemages right now – Randall fucked it up, and I got away. He wasn’t counting on you. Now he doesn’t want the other Majors to find out what he did.”

“Majors?” Irish prompted, watching me.

“The Major Arcana. The guys in charge. There are fifty-one of them out there, and they pretty much rule the world. Well, fifty-two, technically, but The Fool left our universe a long time ago. Nobody knows if he’s ever coming back, but just in case he is they decided not to take his seat on the ruling council.”

“Who’s that, then? Edison?”

“Nope.” I hit the cigarette, breathing in, letting it out. “Nicola Tesla. Anyway, so it turns out that Randall’s a Major Arcana. I don’t know which one. There’s a couple with a lot of influence in Michigan. He found out about me, and set me up, only I got away. And now he’s letting Detroit burn, so he doesn’t get caught at it.”

“This whole mess was a trap for you?” Irish exclaimed, eyes darkening with real anger.

“Oh, I don’t know if the whole thing was a trap. He sold the summoning ritual to Carl, so maybe.” I shrugged. “Maybe he wanted Carl to bring in his bogey so he could put it on a flight to Havana, too, and let Carl take the fall if it went poorly. Hard to say.”  The shadow was busy nudging the ring around a long wooden plank. It would be within reaching distance in a minute or two. She could probably have put more effort into moving it, but she was busy watching me, feeling up the shape of my thoughts, making sense of them. She’d memorized the call, but hadn’t bothered translating the sounds into concepts she could grasp… and now that I’d processed the information for her, I could feel her building fury; a cold, vicious thing. “Sounded more like it was just a convenient clusterfuck Randall thought he could take advantage of. Except he kept Tyler and Damian from calling for help, like, oh, another healer who could have maybe helped Grace, or a few more evocators to help kill that hollowman.”

“And you got all that from a two minute phone call?” Irish asked.

“Well, it went on a bit while we were busy. The shadow remembered it for me. I only just took the time to recall it.” I shot him a wry look that fell off my face immediately as the shadow felt someone step into her range of influence. I pulled my gun and shifted, aiming into the dark. “Someone’s coming.”

“Wait!” Irish said, reaching out and lowering my gun. “Don’t shoot! The truth is out there!”

Table of Contents / Chapter Thirty-Two >>

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Image credits: Burned Car 01.