I joke and call my house my Fortress of Solitude. Except it isn’t a joke. Not really. It’s not much of a haven of silence, though, not with a resident vampire with a particular movie fetish, a love of loud music and a very strident voice when upset. However. The anonymity of my address is another layer of protection I use to keep the nasties from beating down my door. I used to have a decoy house in Ipswich but since it got shot up by an entrepreneurial ghoul (I did kill that one and have yet to regret doing so) I let it go. So now I rely on the fact my name isn’t on any piece of official paper about the Newport house and the fact I don’t tell just anyone where I live.
The only folks who know are Roberts, Erin and Amaya. Not even Jacob knows. He told me he didn’t want to know, not when he didn’t have any supernatural means of resisting torture (his words) and an almost pathological need to gossip (my words).
And now Dev knew.
Oh, and Sue and Charles, of course. Who happened to be in their driveway when I pulled into mine.
Charles was cooing over a new car, a blood-red Toyota FT-86, while Sue looked on fondly. As with Sue, I didn’t know what he did for dollars, but it must be going well. First, it was a new boat. Now it’s this.
Optimus Sub-Prime grumbled to a stop before my slowly opening garage door, big and ugly and scared next to the sleek, pretty sports car.
Charles smirked, Sue waved happily and I groused under my breath. Right about then, I realised the headache was back, lurking in my temporal lobes.
Before the door was all the way up, Dev pulled the rental car, a grey Ford Mustang, in behind me.
We’d stopped at the airport, he’d picked out his choice of cars (as American as he could find), then followed me home. Watching in the rear vision mirror, I’d noted he only veered too far right occasionally. Still, I decided I’d better drive when I ditched the 4WD.
The arrival of a new face was worthy of all sorts of gawping, apparently, and when Dev unfolded himself from the car, Sue would have won gold for it. And Charles would have taken out the silver. Dev nodded to them, then followed as I heaved the Monster Mobile into the garage.
“Nice car,” Dev said as I got out, nodding back to where Charles was brushing a speck of dust off the pristine duco. He just had to rub salt into the gaping, raw, bleeding out wound
“He’s a tosser,” I muttered in cutting retort.
Dev chuckled, then saw the Moto Guzzi. He went to inspect that while I did what monkey-sitting made me forget to do that morning.
“Do sorcerers have any weaknesses?” I asked, hauling the paintball rifle down from its shelf.
“Pardon? Weaknesses?”
“You know, like vampires have garlic and Holy water, and demons have salt. Is it silver? I have silver bullets.”
“Hawkins, we’re human. Ordinary bullets work.”
“You said this earth sorcerer had upgrades.”
“Yes, but he’s still human.” He turned away, looking over the array of my bad guy fighting arsenal. “Mortal like everyone else.” Again, that hint of something deeper going on.
“Okay, just making sure.” I put the rifle away and added spare clips for the Cougar, then went to the gun safe. “You want a piece? I have a backup.” Deemed necessary when a werewolf-dog had made me drop the Cougar one too many times.
“That might be beneficial.”
I opened the safe, took out the Glock 19 and checked it over. I’m not a Glock-person. There are reasons, one of which being because. When I decided to get a second gun, it was all I could find within my risk limits, however. As a person with a criminal record, I can’t legally own or carry a gun. I have to go under the table and that always comes with provisos. Fishing out a couple of spare mags, I handed it all over to Dev.
“You familiar with the Glock?”
His return expression isn’t worth mentioning. Needless to say, the answer was yes. He tucked it into the waistband of his pants, at the back, his outer shirt covering it nicely.
Kitted out for sorcerer, we headed to the rental car. Again, we both ended up at the driver’s side door.
“I rented it,” Dev said.
“I know the roads,” I replied.
“You nearly got us run over by a bus.”
“I have the experience of driving on the right side of the road. And by that, I mean the left.”
“I have a little reminder about which side to drive on.”
“Which is?”
“Bitch in the ditch.”
I tried not to, but Dev’s deadly serious delivery did me in and I started laughing. Somewhere in there, Dev lost it as well and we couldn’t stop.
Finally, Dev handed over the keys and we got in, still giggling like a pair of Giggling Gerties.
“This in no way means I concede to being the bitch,” Dev said as I backed out of the driveway, which started it all over again.
And simply because it had been a long, long time (a week in a manual, diesel-hobbled, lame elephant of a car is a very long time) since I’d been in a real car, I floored it and, amazingly, got somewhere, very fast indeed.
It was a challenge to keep to the speed limit going to Coorparoo but I managed. Mostly. I blame it on the 4WD. I was too used to having to make a serious effort to get anything decent out of it.
Still, we made it to the self-storage place ticket-free and walked back to the scene of the crime. Which, thankfully, wasn’t one. I’d remembered to pick up the spent casings in the hallway, so apart from the giant rat bodies (thankfully removed) there was no sign of dastardly deeds. Still had to take a moment to settle the murophobia down to acceptable levels before opening the door to the Belascos’ unit.
We both had guns out and ready, but it proved unrequired. A pile of dead bodies tumbled out around our feet.
“God!” I jumped away, free hand covering my mouth and nose.
Dev made a few gaging noises at the stench, backing up as well.
“I changed my mind,” I said around the serious need to gag. “I’d like to do something else today.”
“I’ll take care of it. Can you help me pile the bodies in the back corner?”
No. I desperately wanted to say no. Dead and rotting they might be, but they were still rats. Giant, gross rats.
I did it. Didn’t like it, though, and let Dev know at every opportunity. He told me to stop having conniptions and get on with it.
Finally, all the horrible bodies were piled in the back corner and Dev pointed a hand at them and said something. My skin itched mightily and there was a rush of dampness around me, then suddenly the rats were covered in frost. Dev kept it up until I felt like I’d been flayed alive and the rats were encased in a solid block of ice. He followed it up with a mini-whirlwind and cleared most of the stench out.
Okay, I was a little impressed. And a little moody. The headache had expanded into the frontal lobes, making my eyeballs hurt. There was an unsettling tingling in my left hand as well. I flexed my fingers, the knuckles feeling gritty and stiff.
“How about you start over there?” Dev pretended it was a question but it wasn’t really. He nodded me toward the left side of the unit and he took the right.
I picked my way over. “What exactly are we looking for?” Half of my allocated filing cabinets were dinted and splattered with rat bits.
“Anythin’ about earth sorcerers.” Said like I was slow or something.
“Yes, but… Oh, don’t worry. I’ll ask if I find something I don’t understand.”
He muttered something quiet and undoubtedly Texan under his breath and pulled out a drawer. Flicking through the files rapidly, he seemed pretty blasé about really seeing what they were.
My row of files started at Mo.
Montague, Samantha – witch. Hah.
Montego, Valentine – known alias of Darius, incubus. Oh, come on.
So it went, through the Ms, Ns and into the Os.
I found a few sorcerers, most of them deceased. Compared to the numbers of witches and wizards, sorcerers were few and far between. As I found another one—Omelnitskiy, Nakita – fire sorcerer, deceased—I realised that yes, sorcerers were a rare breed and they tended to die young. None of those I’d found had lived to be more than forty-eight, most of them dead by aneurism or stroke or falling into a coma and having the life support turned off. That’s not something I’d be spruiking at the careers fair.
Looking over my shoulder, I found Dev further along than me, though he seemed to have slowed down somewhat, a file out and resting across the drawer, open as he flipped through the pages it held. He rested an elbow on the drawer, his forehead cradled in his hand, as if he was tired.
He was younger than me, but not by much. Probably only had about twenty years left, if these files were anything to go by. He had to know. There was no way he couldn’t. Was that why he was up and down more often than a rollercoaster? Having a time limit hanging over you like that can’t be great for the general disposition.
Why become a sorcerer if your life expectancy wasn’t so hot?
“Find something?” I asked as he got to the end of the file he was going through.
“No.” Dev closed it and shoved it back in the drawer, then resumed his machinegun flicking.
Oookay. I went back to mine. All the while I was trying to find an opener for that personal discussion we were supposed to have. Somehow, starting with, ‘So, short life expectancy, that’s gotta be a bummer,’ didn’t feel like the right approach. On that inappropriate thought’s heels came the ‘if only I was looking through the front part of the alphabet’, followed almost immediately by ‘that crafty bastard, that’s why he wanted those filing cabinets.’ Curses! All our postulation about Dev’s history could be cleared up by finding his file.
Round about then I began to wonder if there was a file on me in here.
Figuring that wasn’t as obnoxious as looking for Dev’s while he was right there, I abandoned my side of the room and went and looked over Dev’s shoulder. He was up to the Gs. Moving along a bit, I opened a drawer. Bingo. Hs.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for myself.” Hamilton. Han. Harjo. Next drawer. Hatfield. Hawke. Score.
Hawkins, Matthew. Non-classified.
What the…?
I hauled the file out. It was rather thin, compared to some. Sitting on a crate, I opened it up.
Hawkins, Matthew. Non-classified. Photo not available. Contact information not available. Location not available. Threat level six.
“Any idea on their threat classifications?” I asked Dev.
He was still going through files. “If they follow those of the Council, one is non-threatening.”
“And ten is…?”
“Not too bad. It goes up to twenty-five. I’m sixteen, if that helps. Are you a ten?” He cocked an eyebrow at me but I didn’t know if he thought a ten was good or bad.
“No,” I muttered and turned the page quickly.
It went on to list known associates, enemies and accomplishments. All not available.
I can’t tell you it was ego boosting, because it wasn’t. The Belascos, who had a full dossier on a witch whose only accomplishment was making it rain baby toads on a Tesco in Hertfordshire, hadn’t even bothered to fill out my cover page. To hear Kermit and Aurum talk I was potentially turning myself into a Primal, or something very similar to one. I’d summoned and commanded Asmodeus, Lord of Lust, the Second Lord of Hell. I’d chopped the Violet Primal’s head right off her shoulders. Right off! Not exactly stuff to put on a CV for a job with an accounting firm, but still, big credentials in my circles.
Right?
Then again, maybe not. I wasn’t exactly clued into the wider supernatural world. What if Aurum was laughing his tits off at my expense right now? What if it was all a joke and I was the butt?
Well, fuck them. Fuck them all.
I gripped the folder and tore it in two, snarling.
“Hawkins?”
About to rip into the papers again, my left hand spasmed. Pain shot up my arm and the ache behind my eyes flared.
God fuck it. This was the last thing I needed. The absolute last fucking thing. Regardless of what everyone else might think, I wasn’t some wannabe unworthy of my own file. I was a warrior. I wasn’t something to be trivialised. I wasn’t not fucking available!
My vision blacked out, one, two, three seconds, then came back red.
“Hawkins?”
Surging to my feet, I slammed the remains of the file into his chest. “You know what, you can take your fucking Council and all the fucking classifications and shove them up Aurum’s arse for all I care. I do well enough on my own. I don’t need you coming into my city and telling me I know nothing. That I’m worth nothing.”
The sorcerer backed up until he was against the filing cabinets. “What is this about? Did I do somethin’ wrong?”
“Apart from getting in my way? No, you’re a fucking angel.”
I gave him another shove, really wanting to do something else. He wasn’t worth the effort, though.
Spinning on my heel, I stalked out of the storage unit. There were better things I could be doing right now. More important things. And I knew exactly where to find him.