Magie Noire

By Rurouni Star

Chapter Fourteen

Father Forthill insisted on driving the van. That was fair, considering my condition, and I figured he wasn't the worst person to have with me while I tried to wrangle a distressed woman and her two kids to safety.

I was glad I'd been paranoid enough to bring my backup firearm with me. After the giant scorpion incident, it just hadn't seemed like a good idea to go running around town without any firepower, but I didn't want to have to explain missing ammunition to the precinct later if I had to shoot at something weird again. I really hoped I wasn't going to have to fire at a completely normal (if deranged and abusive) husband. But if it the situation came up, at least I'd be in a position to protect Monica and her kids.

Forthill gave me a bit of a side-eye as I counted bullets and checked the safety on the gun. I frowned at him. "Just being careful," I said. "I'm not expecting trouble, but I'm not counting it out either. If anything at all happens, I want you to drive away with the wife and kids, and then call the cops for backup."

"I've been in a scrape or two in my time," Forthill told me. "You don't need to worry on my account."

I tried not to let my skepticism show on my face. I can't do undercover work worth a damn, as I'd been so directly reminded recently, but I liked to think I had an okay poker face when I needed one. "I'm not worried about you," I said, glossing over it. "It's just better for everyone involved if the family gets out pronto, if something starts up. I sure as hell can't focus if I'm trying to keep an eye on the three of them in the middle of something."

Father Forthill nodded. "Of course. I understand."

My phone warbled pathetically, and I snatched it from my pocket to glance at the screen. It was Carmichael's number. I cringed. I deeply didn't want to answer, but I knew it was better if I did.

"Ron," I said, as I picked up the phone. "I'm not dead. You can stop freaking out."

"Jesus Christ, Murph." There was a shaking in his voice that I wasn't accustomed to hearing. "I didn't know what to do, whether I'd just fuck things up more if I called—"

"Yeah," I muttered. "Don't worry about it." The worry in his voice put a sinking feeling in my chest. "I'm sorry I'm such a hot mess. I am. You didn't deserve that."

"I… no, yeah, I did. We need to talk, Murph. Maybe it's time we put our cards out on the table—"

I winced. "I'd like nothing better than to hash shit out with you, Ron, but I'm in the middle of something right now. I'm with a friend. I'll give you a call when I'm done."

I could tell Carmichael didn't like that answer. But he must have still been shaken from the morning, because he reluctantly knuckled under. "...okay. Take your time, I guess. Just call me when you get the chance."

Forthill gave me another sideways glance as I hung up, but he didn't say anything. I knew he wanted me to talk about it, but I wasn't ready for that. I'd already done more opening up that morning than I'd managed in years.

"Eyes on the road," I mumbled. "I'll cry to you about it some other day."

0-0-0-0

The two-story house hadn't much changed in the days since I'd last seen it. It still gave me the heebie-jeebies, in spite of its innocuous exterior. I wondered if I'd been subconsciously picking up on the trouble inside the house before.

Monica opened the door as I approached with Father Forthill. If Monica had seemed tired the first time I'd seen her, she was exhausted now. Her body was shivering, in spite of the sweater she'd pulled on. Dark, puffy circles under her eyes told me she'd been crying a lot, and recently.

She blinked at Father Forthill, instantly on-guard. She hadn't been expecting him — she was already on edge, and he was something out-of-place.

"The Father's just going to help out some," I reassured her. "I'm under the weather, so he's driving."

Monica swallowed. She didn't have the energy left to protest. "Thank you for coming," she said. "I don't… I don't have anyone else left to call."

I frowned. "We can talk about what's going on once we're safely on the road. I know a shelter that can take you today, no questions asked. Did you grab the essentials?"

Monica nodded dully. "I've packed up the kids," she said. "They should be ready to go." She turned back inside the house. "Jenny!" she called back. "It's time to go! Can you get your brother, please?"

I heard footsteps on the stairs. A gangly little green-eyed girl appeared, holding her younger brother's hand. He was only a few inches shorter than his sister, but he showed his confusion and distress much more obviously on his face. Jenny was carrying two backpacks — her own and her brother's. She had a determined-looking expression on her face. I wondered if she'd seen this coming for a long time — whether it was a relief, of sorts.

"Jenny, Billy," Monica said softly. "This is Detective Murphy. She's going to take you somewhere safe."

I quickly noticed her omission. "Monica," I said. "You're coming too."

She shook her head, twisting her hands nervously in front of her. "I can't," she said. "It won't work that way."

Jenny's determined-looking expression melted into a confused panic. She reached out to grasp her mother by the arm. "Mom," she said urgently. "You have to come with us."

Billy went one step further, throwing his arms around his mother's waist in a vice-like grip. "I won't go without you!" he added hurriedly.

Monica blinked quickly. I'd thought she looked like a woman without anymore tears, but she managed to squeeze a few more out anyway. "I can't, sweetie," she said in a choked voice. "If I go with you, he'll find us, you know that."

Jenny looked over at me pleadingly. "You're a cop," she said. "Cops shoot bad guys. You can… you can just shoot him, right?"

"Jesus Christ." The words slipped out before I could stop them. I'd heard a lot of crazy things in my time, but hearing a kid talk with such eager desperation about killing her own dad was a brand new level of fucked up. What the hell had Victor Sells done to his family? "I, uh. I can't just shoot someone," I said, deeply uncomfortable with the fact that I even had to explain such a thing. "If your father's done something illegal, and I can prove it, I can arrest him and take him to prison, though."

Jenny narrowed her eyes at me. "He killed Cinnamon Bun," she declared.

I knitted my brow at that. Uh.

Monica shook her head at me. "Cinnamon Bun was her pet rabbit," she explained. "He went missing. Jenny thinks her father is responsible." She blinked rapidly as she said it, and twisted her hands more frantically.

Jenny thinks, huh? I'd have laid odds in that moment that Victor Sells had done something nasty to little Jenny's pet bunny, but Monica didn't want to dwell on the matter. She wanted me gone with the kids.

"Please, just take them and leave," Monica begged. "That's why I called you. Victor has… he has ways of finding me. I just want to know the kids are safe."

"Mom—" Billy started, his voice already near-hysterical. But Monica cut him off with a strong hug.

"I love you both so much," she told her children. Her voice was close to breaking as she said it. "You have to go now, but… I'll come and find you when everything is okay."

Billy looked reassured at that, but Jenny was clearly a cynical kid. "You're lying," she accused her mother. "Don't lie! He'll hurt you if you stay here."

Monica pressed her hands to her mouth. She was on the verge of a full-on breakdown now. If I let the kids continue crying around her, things were going to devolve in a hurry.

I frowned at Jenny. "Get in the van," I told her. "I'm not leaving your mom alone, but we've gotta have an adult talk. Worst-case, you go with Father Forthill, I stay here with her, and…" I winced. "Maybe if your father doesn't feel like being reasonable, I shoot him after all."

I said it, even though it made me cringe. I knew it was one of the few things the kid wanted to hear — maybe enough to get her in the damn van, so I could talk her mother out of whatever suicidal bent she'd suddenly acquired.

Jenny glared at me. "Promise you won't let him hurt my mom," she said.

I held up a hand. "Promise," I told her. I didn't know what was going on, but I did know I had no intention of walking away and hearing Monica's body had been found later.

Jenny hesitated, and I knew she was a lot more scared than she was letting on. "Now, kid," I said, putting some authority into my voice. "You want to hang out until your dad gets home, or you want to get a move on?"

That put the fear of god into her. Jenny pried her brother's arms off her mother, dragging him away toward the van outside. He started crying, and she did her best to shush him.

I gave Forthill a pained look. "Can you…" I gestured vaguely. "Do something?" I was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a kid person.

The priest nodded slowly. "I'll try to help them calm down," he said. He headed back for the van, and I turned back toward Monica.

"I'm not leaving you alone to deal with a guy who kills bunnies and gives you cigarette burns," I said flatly. "So we're gonna have to come up with a different plan. If you want any say in it, you better help me start brainstorming."

Monica sagged against the doorframe. Her hands were still pressed against her mouth. I saw tears in her eyes again, now that her children were out of sight. "There's nothing you can do for me," she whispered. "He owns me. But if the children are safe… that's all I need."

"Is he blackmailing you?" I asked. "Is that what this is about?"

Monica shook her head. "You wouldn't understand," she said. She closed her eyes, despairing. I saw her struggling to think through the fear. "...we can go somewhere else," she told me. "A different car, far away from the children." There was a resignation in her voice. She didn't think it was going to make a difference, but she knew she had to entertain me somehow.

It was something, at least. If I could get her away from the house, it would buy me some time to figure out what terrible thing Victor Sells had hanging over her head. "Fine," I said. "We'll catch a cab somewhere else, anywhere else. Step one is just to get you out of here."

I pulled my phone out to order a cab — but the flickering screen had finally died entirely. I frowned, tapping it hard against my hand. "Damn it," I muttered. "Really? Right now, you choose to brick on me?"

Monica went pale. She turned inside the house — before I could ask her what she was doing, she'd turned on the porch light. It was guttering oddly. The look on her face told me that was significant.

"Get in the van, Detective," Monica said softly. She stared at the light as it flick-flickered unsteadily. "You'll only get hurt if you stay."

"Don't be silly, Monica," a voice rasped from behind me. "Neither of you can run from me now."

I pulled my gun on instinct, before my thoughts could catch up with me. An instant later, I realized bullets weren't going to help me any more now than they had done before.

The shadow man stood behind me, the darkness of his body rippling and twitching like a swarm of insects.

Oh my god, I thought. I'm a moron.

I'd been so convinced I had the right trail. Why wouldn't I be? The drug war, the attack on Marcone, the giant scorpion… everything had pointed toward Tommy Tomm as the intended victim.

I'd forgotten that sometimes killers get two with one stone.

"Hey, Victor," I said to the shadow creature, with a hell of a lot more confidence than I felt. "Fancy seeing you here. Again, now that I think about it." I paused, trying to think quickly. Witty one-liners might make for great stories, but they tend to escalate the situation and get people killed.

"You do know the Wardens are after you, right?" I bluffed. "I mean… if I was you, I don't know if I'd be throwing around flashy magic like it's going out of style."

A weird silence settled in at that. He doesn't know about the Wardens, I thought. The bluff would have worked better if I hadn't needed to convince him of the danger in the first place, but now that I'd started down the road, I had to commit to it.

"Ouch," I said. "You're in it pretty deep. See, what you've been doing is illegal in more ways than one. You might think the mortal police aren't much of a threat, but if you'd really chewed on it, you would have realized there's gotta be a magical equivalent. One of the wizard police came by to take over jurisdiction on my case not long after we talked in the car. They're real hard cases, Victor. Did you know they carry swords? Silver swords. Can't make this shit up."

Monica was staring at me with a mixture of shock and miserable hope. I felt a pang of guilt. She thought I had the wizard police on speed dial or something — that someone more competent and powerful than me was going to come and save her.

"Then I suppose I should make sure you can't tell them my identity," Victor snarled. He raised a hand. "You killed a toy of mine. But now… I think it's time you got a taste of my true power."

I sighed. If I was going to die, I thought, I may as well go down without regrets. "Really?" I asked. "Are you sure you're going with that one?" I paused, and surreptitiously clicked off the safety on my gun. "What about… you haven't seen even a shadow of my true power? Or, uh… you should never have darkened my doorstep?" I pursed my lips thoughtfully. "God, the possibilities are endless. I can't believe you walked right past all of them."

Monica gave a horrified, hysterical little giggle from the doorway. She'd finally cracked, I figured.

Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I felt the air get a little colder in my immediate vicinity. "I am going to enjoy watching you die," Victor said.

"Without a shadow of a doubt," I said.

The strangled sound the shadow man made at that gave me a deep sense of satisfaction. I decided Bob was right: I needed more unapologetic puns in my life.

I raised my gun and shot at the apparition in front of me.

The bullet went straight through, of course. I wasn't expecting much else, but hopefully the sound would convince the Father it was time to get the hell out of dodge, whether he could see things clearly or not.

The shadows in front of me shivered with fury. I heard Victor's hissing voice intoning in a way that carried unnaturally through the air. "Kalshazzak!" he called. Then again: "Kalshazzak! Kalshazzak!"

Something wormed its way up from the shadows, clawing its way through them like something from an old horror movie. What ultimately crawled out looked like nothing I'd ever seen before in my life. Toadlike and foul, with eyes like blue lightning, it fixed a hateful expression upon the shadow man, hissing in defiance.

I felt the distant echo of Victor's power as he closed his will upon it, forcing it to heel. "Kalshazzak!" I heard him snarl. "Kill them both!"