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Sunlight leaked through the motel room curtain in a burning band which stabbed into my skull. I squeezed my eyes shut again to keep out the pain. Headache subsiding, I felt the full brunt of the congestion in my chest. My first waking breath escaped as a rasp.
Lungs are full of bronchi and alveoli; little tubes and sacs. I’d seen drawings at the doctor’s office while he spoke into my numbness, assuming I’d heard anything past “you have six months to live.” Those individual airways stretched painfully like torn muscles. As a spasm shuddered up with my breath, I turned to find the trash can and hacked up clots of blood.
Araceli sat meditating in the floor beside the bed, her satchel of tools spread out in front of her. She opened her eyes and watched, emotionless. Dutifully she got up and headed toward the bathroom. I heard water running.
I hung over the edge of the bed, staring at the implements of her trade. Many new types of magic had crossed my paths on this trip, and not one had what I needed.
Soon she was back and pressing a hot towel against my back. She held me steady as I retched. I wanted to tell her I was fine. This was normal. But the helplessness of this coughing fit humbled me. It made her assistance with sitting up, necessary.
“You’re dying,” she said.
I plunked my head against the wall, the cheap wooden headboard digging at the base of my skull. I couldn’t speak, so I just gave her a finger gun. On target. Bullseye. Here’s your prize.
“It’s that barbarism you call magic.”
I wagged my head in disagreement. “Atofo’s magic is the only thing keeping me alive. This is nothing but lung cancer.” When she didn’t respond, I cracked open an eye. “Hasn’t been this bad for a while.”
“How long have you known?” she asked.
“Four years. Doctors said I had six months. When those six months were nearly over, I skipped town, went looking for a miracle.”
“That’s when you found Atofo.” She made the statement without her normal serving of judgment.
“Damn straight. I’m on borrowed time, he keeps winding the clock.”
Her steel gray eyes clouded. “I understand.”
We sat in silence, my breathing slowly clearing as the heat from the towel seeped through my skin. Sitting upright helped. Keeping my mouth shut helped as well. Araceli sensed this and knelt patiently beside her tools.
“What about your gold? The alchemists gold?” I asked when I’d recovered enough to speak. “You healed those demon dog bites.”
She stood and studied her hands. “The magic within can bond with the taint of what you call the Below and draw it forth.” She made sure to square up with me when she said the rest. “Natural causes? A bullet to the heart? A severed artery? Cancer? No magic can reverse fate.” Back to studying her hands, she became introspective. “Immortality has been a fool’s errand for many an alchemist. They’ve sought for centuries to defeat death, never finding anything close. Those who thought they had...” She caught herself and her soft eyes settled on me.
I finished her thought. “Had actually made deals with demons.”
At least she’d chilled on me enough to keep the ‘I told you so’ to a slight lift of her eyebrows.
“Whatever Atofo is, whatever he does, he keeps me alive until I can find the cure.”
Her silence made it clear she thought of me as one of those misguided fools from the dusty history of her Order. Immortality? Hell no, I didn’t want that.
I swung my feet off the bed until she stood and moved clear. As I tried to get up, she reached out to help. Calloused palms pressed against my forearms. Out of those sooty overalls, she could be the Catalan noblewoman she claimed to be. The hands though, they gave her away. All her hype about formal training and magic school, she’d learned her real lessons elsewhere.
She kept a hand on my shoulder while I found my balance. “Why can’t you just leave then? Come back later, after you’ve had Atofo renew his ritual?”
“I made a promise. I had a vision at the manor and spoke to a spirit. He made me promise to find his son.”
“A binding,” she said, assigning my spirit deal some of that textbook terminology. “That’s what you meant about bodies on the property.” She bit her lip. “Also more your specialty than mine. A centuries old corpse will be difficult to find if he is even there at all.”
“He’s there,” I said, retrieving my holster and sheath from the nightstand. “Or the spirit wouldn’t have demanded I stay close.”
“You will find spirits no longer have a solid grasp of the material world. One reason why such bindings are dangerous.”
“If I break it?”
“You will die,” she said, matter of fact.
“Been doing it. I might have two days at best.” I shrugged into a fresh shirt from my bag. Fighting the soreness in my back, I slipped into my holster then strapped Atofo’s knife to my wrist. One arm in my jacket, I caught sight of the stack of papers beside the bed. Names of all the people Hallewell’s ancestors owned. The boy would be listed there, somewhere. I grabbed those too. “I need to face this head on. No more time for games.”
“Where are we going?” she asked, no hesitation.
“We’re going to have words with the Sheriff. Demons might be after the sword, they might be pulling the strings at his podunk department, but he’s the one who’s lived here all his life. He’s the one who they came to corrupt. I want to know why.” I reached for the door, cautiously this time, but determined. “And I want my dookie chain back.”
Araceli gathered her gear and followed muttering in Catalan, or Spanish, or a prayer in Latin, maybe all three.
***
LEAVING THE MOTEL, the lack of squad cars worried me. I’d been so out of it I hadn’t noticed the visiting five oh clearing out. Could be they’d gone to the crime scene. If they’d finished with the house, maybe search teams were exploring the rest of the grounds.
Arriving at the town’s emergency services building solved that little mystery. Sheriff had company. State and county vehicles overflowed the small lot. A certain Escalade, complete with dented hood and missing side mirror, took up the handicap spot again.
Araceli backhanded me as I slowed to a stop in the street. “Keep driving.”
She made sense. We could hit up Fenwick Hall and search without any interference. Even with magic though, going by the old plat we had hundreds of acres to cover.
While it would be smart to be nervous, the creepy preacher and his minions wanted me out there, searching. He wasn’t about to frame me for his appetite, not yet. I needed to find out what kind of pull Mordecai had over several county’s worth of law enforcement. A lone, isolated sheriff, I understood, but this? I cursed and pulled into the lot. No open spaces, I glided up behind the Escalade and slid Bubonic into park.
“We need to figure out what Mordecai is up to. You wanna come in with me?” I asked Araceli.
“No puc creure que faci això.” She drummed her fingers on the dash, assessing the situation. “Okay. Okay.”
We walked in through the front doors. The reception desk empty, a buzz of voices came from the bullpen. On the other side of the glass, I could see a room full of officers, all eyes forward.
The ones in uniform had shoes polished and brass shining. The rest wore suits and ties, but you can’t hide a cop under cheap suits. They weren’t dressed for a search, they were dressed to impress. These were department chiefs and ranking officers. Desk jockeys, not door knockers and field technicians.
Araceli and I exchanged a glance and moved closer. Lights in the room were dimmed except at the front where the beacon of a projector drew their attention. Beside a large monitor and a whiteboard scribbled with figures, Mordecai Sunday smiled a toothy grin for his congregation.
“This is bad,” I muttered.
Araceli quirked an eyebrow. “You think?”
I couldn’t quite understand what was being said, but I could tell the blueprints on the screen weren’t for another cozy little department. These were the blueprints for a larger facility. Offices. Hundreds of rooms. A yard.
“That’s—”
“Diable,” Araceli said, her hand wandering toward her knife.
I grabbed her wrist. “Preacher. And a room full of armed cops.” She relaxed. “He’s pitching a prison.”
“Why?”
“Part of a private system his ministry either owns or is partner in. He mentioned it in the interrogation room...”
Another screen flashed by with a logo branded in the corner: MiRA. I’d seen the same name on the sheriff’s data terminal display the night I’d been dragged in here. I turned away, thoughts racing.
“What’s wrong?” Araceli asked.
“When we were at the crossroads together, we never saw another car drive up and down that road. Sheriff was alone when he rolled up.”
“That’s right.”
“This whole time, I figured Sheriff Hallewell had called in the cavalry for the murder. He didn’t. He doesn’t want anyone to know about his brother’s death. The cops, they all came for the timeshare presentation.”
Araceli drew me to the side, out of view of the bullpen. The foyer had cameras, sure enough. They’d know we’d stopped by if they didn’t already know we were here.
“You’re saying they’re trying to cover up his death?”
“Could be. And if for some reason it does go public, they’ve got their suspect all lined up,” I said, thumping my chest.
“We could use this,” she said. “But why would they keep it quiet?”
“Well, if they send their mark to jail, who’s left to find the sword?”
“True, but remember, these demons work on a different scale of time. If they know it’s here, they’ll sift dirt for centuries and eventually find it.”
“Sift dirt,” I repeated. The image brought me back to the blueprints and the construction site which would soon follow. She was right they’d find it, unless some sort of mojo hid or protected it. “If they did find it could they move it? Is it protected?”
“They wouldn’t be able to put their filthy hands on a proper mactator daemonium. Handling it could drive them mad. Kill them. Even being near one could cause discomfort,” she said, her anger rising but quickly controlled. “A mortal thrall could.” Her eyes shot toward me then quickly away. “Of course, that might depend on any enchantments already on the blade.”
Great. More things she knew which she wasn’t sharing with the heathen. “Such as?”
“It could be enchanted in such a way that it could only be passed down through dynasties or wielded by noble blood. Weapons like this have their own bloodline and rules.” Her eyes flicked away.
“You talk like it’s alive.”
“Not alive like you and me, but it has a memory. It lives through those who possess it.”
That didn’t sound good. “Hallewell? Like it’s all part of his family now?”
“No! Time, remember? He had it for but a blink of history. When forged it would’ve been attuned to the intended wielder and their descendants.”
“He buried the sword,” I said. “As his own property.”
Araceli’s mouth set into a thin line. “No. No saps de què parles. That isn’t how it works. Is he buried with it? No. Did his family have a clear royal line traceable back nine centuries to Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona? No.” She’d moved up into my grill, wagging her finger. This wasn’t about the sword anymore. She wanted to stake her claim. “Only one who is worthy can wield a mactator daemonium. Just because he held it, he touched it, doesn’t make it his.”
I raised my hands in surrender and came back at her with a lowered voice, hoping she’d take the hint. “Fine, so they can’t use it. And demons wouldn’t want to build their prison on top of it, would they?”
Araceli crossed her arms like she was trying to contain her outburst. “Makes sense. It’s powerful enough it may undo whatever magic or wards they place. So they want you to find the sword, they’ll destroy it or relocate it, and go on with their plans. But why does the prison have to be here? If the sword is preventing them from building, why not build elsewhere?”
I didn’t have an answer. Plenty of former family farms run out of business by massive corporate operations had left behind empty land. With all this top brass here, Mordecai could hit them up for a spot anywhere in the state.
But this wouldn’t be just any prison. I felt the magically dampening walls here starting to close in. The location could be an important part of whatever ritual they used to construct it.
“Come on,” I said. “Maybe we need to talk to somebody else first.”
“Who?”
“There’s a town gossip who might’ve been holding out on me. I thought she’d been told I was a murder suspect. My guess though, the sheriff just asked her not to talk to me. I can work with that. Then we’re stopping by Fortune’s place for some lemonade.”
We’d just turned for the door when the buzz of the bullpen conference behind us jumped to full volume. Deputy Gardener stepped into the waiting area. He hooked one hand on his gun, the other on his collapsible baton.
“Goin’ somewhere?”