Accession of the Stone Born: The Vigiles Urbani Chronicles (33 page)

Finally getting to my feet, I grabbed my boots and other items to finish getting dressed. There was a lot to do, the first of which was to discover how Ms. Dodd had gotten the news about Marcus Gray. I was fairly certain that no one at the house was feeding her the information. My best guess was the CCTV station wasn’t as closed off as I’d suspected.

Of course, having a massive wound in my chest and a couple of broken ribs to boot may have had something to do with that. If it was connected to the Internet, Walter probably had a live show of the whole event. Thank God I didn’t go all shadow form on the bastard. That was one secret I’d like to keep to myself for now.

Heading into the kitchen, I found a covered plate of food with a note from Kimberly in a beautiful flowing green script. 

Gavin,

Made my famous beef stroganoff in honor of you helping Heather and I this morning. We are eternally grateful for what you did.

P.S. I can’t guarantee there is anything left for you. Isidore and Alexander look very hungry.

Pulling the cover off I was pleased to find a generous helping of the dish in question. I guessed Isidore and Alexander had seen fit to save me a healthy portion. Eating what I could, I put the rest in a plastic container before placing it in the fridge. I strode into the living room that was blissfully empty; after my conversation with Heather, I wasn’t exactly in the talkative mood. Something about a person having to come to terms with someone else killing their father kind of killed the whole conversational vibe.

Five minutes later I was pulling out onto 4th Street heading for Elmwood. I still had the files I’d pulled from the office earlier. I hadn’t read them, mind you, but I had them. I wanted out of the house as quickly as possible. I needed to breathe without having someone standing over me. After decades of virtual solitary confinement, the pressure of having such a large number of people around me at all times was draining.

The one on one interactions I had with Gabriel were taxing enough, but the parade of individuals through Andrew’s house was going to kill me or simply drive me insane. An odd thing occurred to me. My commute to Elmwood was something I looked forward to, since it was the only time I was ever truly alone.

I needed to check on Gabriel; after that I’d sift through the files before stopping at Brad’s to see what else I could find. Something needed to turn loose, and I could only handle one thing at a time, meaning that my main goal hadn’t changed…I needed to find Walter. After that I’d sort through the aftermath. I couldn’t risk him disappearing on me, and if I started taking out his kid, and possibly Robert in the process, he might run before I got my hands around his neck.

That was something that couldn’t be allowed to happen. Walter needed to believe that I was as clueless as ever. One of the most valuable lessons I’d learned while I was away was a simple one: Let everyone think you’re stupid, even if you’re the smartest person in the room. That meant that I never lost my accent. American’s with accents were thought of as stupid. It was amazing what people would say in front of you when they believed you were too dense to understand them.

Chapter 26

Monday June 8th

The sun was hanging low in the afternoon sky as I sat in the car, adoring the last few seconds of being completely alone. If this was how the outside world was, I wasn’t sure how people coped with the constant input of information overload. Mentally I was tired from meeting new people, constantly having to evaluate their every action to ensure they were not a threat. I was quickly realizing that living alone would mean more than not having to answer to someone, but would also be a chance to recharge without constantly being barraged with people.

Adding to my stress was the fact I hadn’t been able to shake the dream from earlier. Even the denarius was at a loss to explain what we’d been shown. It was so real, but as the denarius told me there wasn’t any possible way for me to know what was true and what wasn’t. The denarius was an ancient creature, yet it had no memory of such a battle. It was partially convinced that this was my subconscious’ attempt at making sense of all the events since my arrival in this new and foreign world. I was inclined to agree.

Pulling the keys out of the ignition, I stepped out of the car and headed into the old DHL building. I was maybe three steps inside when Gabriel rounded the corner with his gun drawn. Once he saw it was me he holstered the weapon quickly.

“Good evening. Are you always going to greet me with a gun or has this got anything to do with last night’s visitors?” I asked.

Gabriel grunted. “You’ll have to forgive me, that’s the first time I’ve been attacked in my home.”

He fell in step with me as we headed for the armory. Looking up at the big man, I patted him on the shoulder. “Hopefully it won’t happen again anytime soon.” Thinking back to my encounter with Ms. Dodd, I sighed. “They know about you.”

He stopped at the door and turned to look at me with the slightest hint of fear in his eyes. “Who knows about what?”

Waving for him to let us in, I continued. “Ms. Dodd, Andrew, and several others know that I’ve employed a nephilim and that you are under my protection.”

Gabriel didn’t stow his weapon as he had previously, but rather kept it holstered and took a seat. “Do you think they’ll be all right with that?”

Thinking back to Ms. Dodd being suspended in the air, I chuckled. “I don’t think I left them much of a choice.” Shaking off the memory, I found my seat as I leveled my gaze at him. “They won’t touch you…that’s one thing I’m sure about. It might help me deflect some things if I knew more about you other than Martha was your mother.”

His frown grew and shook his head. “More specifically, you’d like to know who my father is.”

Giving him a “Well yeah” look, I nodded. “It would be a lot easier to tell them about your father than your mother.”

He made an “Oh, well” gesture when he flopped into his chair. “I won’t argue the point. Thing is, I don’t know. Mom wasn’t exactly forthcoming on the subject.”

Well fuck! That shot all sorts of holes into my first plan to deflect a steaming pile of shit off our doorstep. “That sort of fucks things up for us.” Keeping my eyes locked on his, I shook my head. “Andrew won’t be happy—or hell, maybe he will—that Martha had a child with someone else.”

He looked confused. “Why wouldn’t he be happy?”

“They were married; you knew that right?” I paused long enough for him to nod his affirmation. “Martha lost their child due to some sort of accident. From what I understand their marriage fell apart after that.”

His mouth fell open as realization settled over him. “I see how this could be a bad thing, and for once it would have nothing to do with me being a nephilim.”

Touching a finger to my nose, I nodded. “Exactly.”

“Anything else?” he asked.

Shaking my head, I said, “Not right now, but there’s going to come a time when you leave this place, and when that time comes—”

“You want me to keep Martha out of it.” He finished for me.

I shrugged helplessly. “At least for now. I’d really appreciate the time to break it to the old man when someone isn’t trying to kill him.” Flopping back into my chair, I let out a breath. “It won’t make it any easier, but he might react to the news better. There is so much of this world I haven’t gotten a handle on yet, and pissing off my uncle wouldn’t help matters.”

He snickered, smacking a meaty hand against the table. “Not to mention he might kill us both out of shock.”

There was that. Sitting there, I took in Gabriel and realized how most people felt around me. He was huge. How many times had I nonchalantly smacked a table, making it shudder, or clapped them on the back, only to knock the wind out of them? Gabriel was several inches taller than me, with a good hundred pounds of muscle to boot. Not to say that I was a slouch. I was in great shape and stood six feet six inches tall, but damn! This guy took the cake.

Thumbing back at the office, I said, “Now that I’m sure you’re okay, I’m going to see what I can dig up in the office.”

He gave me a big thumbs up. “You going to be here for dinner?”

Stopping, I turned around and looked at him curiously. “No idea.”

Gabriel nodded. “I’ll order an extra pizza just in case.”

Pizza sounded good to me, but I had work to do so I left Gabriel alone to do whatever it was he did. It occurred to me that one day soon I’d have to figure out what that was. From what I could tell his life was as sheltered as the one I’d left not long ago. These thoughts rattled through my mind as I sat at the desk and started sifting through the files I’d pulled last night, and I found my mind drifting.

Then something in the paperwork caught my eye. Martha had scribbled an address in the margin of one of the pages: 723 Congress Street, New Orleans. Punching the address into my phone, I zoomed in to see it was in a section of the city called the Bywater. From the looks of things this wasn’t the best of neighborhoods, and the address in question appeared to be a boarded up heap of shit.

I grabbed my gear, which at this point included both swords shoved into a backpack, along with a few other essentials. Time to go see what was so important about this run down piece of shit across town.

Stopping at the armory, I stuck my head in. “Looks like I won’t be here for dinner after all.”

Gabriel gave me a wave. “Good hunting.” He paused, looking a little anxious, almost as if he’d heard my thoughts earlier. “Would you like me to tag along? I don’t exactly get out a lot.”

Shaking my head, I replied, “Tell ya what; after I wrap things up on Friday afternoon, we’ll go grab a drink and have a good meal somewhere in the city.” Thinking back to my earlier encounter with Ms. Dodd and even Heather, I frowned. “Today, however, I believe having you out and about might cause more trouble than I’m able to handle at the moment.”

Gabriel’s smile was a knowing one and he took the rejection in stride. “I understand.” His voice perked up as he spoke the last bit. “I’ll hold you to the whole drink and dinner after Friday, though.”

Giving him a wink, I grinned. “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

I felt bad for leaving the kid, but if everyone responded to nephilim the way Ms. Dodd or even Isidore had, I’d spend more time explaining his presence than getting anything accomplished. With that thought depressingly fixated in my mind I headed out. Frankly, I could use the backup, but that couldn’t happen until after Friday.

Traffic wasn’t terrible, and dusk was rapidly approaching by the time I pulled up outside the matt gray shotgun double thirty minutes later. Shotgun houses were narrow houses only one room wide, with rooms arranged one behind the other. They were very popular in the south, taking hold after the Civil War. Northerners might be familiar with something similar called railroad apartments. Either way, they were normally in the poorer sections of town, and this wasn’t the exception to the rule.

The windows were boarded up with rotting plywood, but the transom over the 723 entrance appeared to have a curtain. The 721 entrance had a padlocked metal security gate, with foil in the transom. The decaying wooden door had the doorknob cut out but was closed. Turning my attention back to 723, I saw that the green solid wood door still looked functional. A part of me was horrified that people would still live in this sort of squalor here in the States. I’d, of course, seen much worse when I was overseas, but those were Third World countries, or literally in the middle of a war zone.

The air was still, thick, and hot. The stench of death hung all about the house as if it were seeping out of every broken and battered board lining the loathsome home. As I stepped closer a chill ran up my spine and the little hairs on my arms and neck stood on end. Pulling the gladius from the bag, I slung the backpack over my shoulder, pounded on the door, and waited like an idiot for something to happen. Nothing did. The hilt of the gladius became uncomfortably cold when I turned the knob, and with a push I let it swing open on its own. 

The place was a mess and smelled of feces, death, and vomit. Stepping inside, slowly allowing my eyes to adjust to the gloom, the uneasy feeling about the place ramped itself up into something otherworldly. Pressing my back against the wall, I remained cautious, clearing the first room before proceeding through the narrow hall that contained an entrance to the tiny bath that took only seconds to clear.

Taking a tentative step into the kitchen, a shiver ran up my spine and the denarius screamed out the wrongness it felt in such a confined space. The filth was one thing, but there was something hidden. Instinct forced my eyes up, where something shimmered into view and dove at me, claws outstretched. Diving to the side, I slashed out with the dark blade of the gladius. There was a hiss like steam and I felt the blade bite into flesh, followed by an unearthly howl of a deranged beast.

Scrambling to my feet, I turned and got my first good look at the thing. It was a filthy, twisted version of a woman, with long razor sharp talons on both her boney fingers and elongated feet, sharp pointed teeth, feathers for hair, and a hard horned colored beaklike mouth. One of her golden eyes was missing, and there was a long jagged scar across her throat. The denarius whispered in my mind that I was seeing what was left of a harpy.

Her movements were slow; I’d managed to slice through several muscles on her right thigh. Thick black blood ran freely down her leg as she stood defiantly between me and the final room. She swiped out with her overly long arms, her claws narrowly missing me. Moving forward, I planted a boot in her chest, deflecting another blow with the gladius, nearly slicing one of her hands off in the process.

Stepping back, I held my right hand out. “I don’t want to kill you, but if you continue I’ll have no choice.”

Her one good eye looked at me as if she understood my words. She fixated on the blade, gave me a toothy smile, and charged. Lifting the gladius, I caught her full in the throat, the force of her weight pushing the point through her neck and out the other side. For the briefest of moments, I swore I thought I saw a smile before death took her.

I gave the blade a hard jerk to one side, freeing the blade from the harpy’s neck, nearly decapitating it in the process as I let its lifeless corpse hit the floor with a splat and a thud. I checked the room for anything else and found nothing. Approaching the final room, I found it padlocked shut. My patience for this shit was at an end, and I backed up and planted a foot against the door, sending it splintering open.

I found the source of the smell. A small man lay slumped over a desk, and it was clear that he’d been dead several days now. Moving the bloated body aside, I nearly gagged on the stench. He was leaking onto the papers on the desk, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out they were blueprints. To what I didn’t know. I snapped several photos before dialing Alexander’s number, which was quickly becoming a habit.

Alexander answered on the first ring. “Good evening, Gavin. How may I help you tonight?”

“Evening,” I replied. “I’m in need of your services again.”

I could hear him stepping outside before answering. His voice was low, nearly whispered into the phone. “What’s going on?”

It took several minutes to fill Alexander in on where I was and what was going on. He seemed surprised. He flat out didn’t believe that I’d encountered a harpy within the city limits, since they weren’t known for being city folk or even indoor folk. Personally, I was starting to think that she was just as much of a prisoner as the man had been. Alexander agreed to bring a few guys out to secure the scene and clean up the bodies. One day soon I was going to have to find out what he did with them. That, of course, could wait until this situation was tied up. So much of my life now hinged on tying up this case and the ceremony on Friday.

Sifting through the wreckage of the room, I found several drawings of the dagger that the shapeshifter had used at the wedding. I would lay good money that the dead man was the missing enchanter, Aaron Lopez. I took the diagrams of the dagger and folded them up, stashing them into my bag.

Digging through the papers that weren’t stuck together with human fluids, I didn’t find any other weapon designs, which meant that he’d only made the one. Good to know. Then again, he may have only designed one type of weapon and they mass-produced the thing. That would be bad. Either way, daggers were about as easy to hide as the gladius and the wakizashi.