Outside, I looked up at Lucado’s darkened condo on the top two floors. Good way to strain my neck, but it wasn’t going to get me inside. And I wasn’t about to try scaling the wall with my bare hands—besides the fact that I’d fallen off the climbing wall at the Y (twice), I needed my duffel bag with my weapons. If Difethwr was coming, I couldn’t face the Hellion empty-handed. Facing it one-handed would be bad enough.
There had to be another way in. No metal fire escape zigzagged down the outside—this building was too new and classy for that. Around the back of the building was a blank metal door, no knob or handle—probably an emergency exit. And I’d bet a week’s pay that it was hooked up to an alarm. I couldn’t risk it. The last thing I needed right now was to set off an alarm and bring the cops screaming in.
I stood in the visitors’ parking lot. A ramp led down under the building to a parking garage for residents. Instead of a door, it had a gate, an arm that swung up to let you through when you waved a card at a reader. I didn’t want to park; I just wanted to get inside. I walked around the gate and went in.
I kept toward the outer wall, crouching so I was no taller than the cars, as I searched for the interior door. That gate seemed pretty low security; I wouldn’t have been surprised if Frank had posted a bodyguard on duty in there, too. But I didn’t see anyone.
The building entrance was about halfway through the garage. There was a security camera pointed right at it. Did the doorman watch security cameras from behind the desk, or was that someone else’s job? Maybe the cameras just recorded, without anyone watching. The way my luck was running, I wouldn’t count on it. But I didn’t have a choice. I had to get inside, and this was the only way.
I walked over to the door and pulled. It didn’t open. I tugged harder, but I knew it wouldn’t give. There was a card reader next to the door, like the one that raised the gate to drive into the garage. And I didn’t have a keycard.
This would be a great time for someone to come home late, so I could be rooting through my bag, pretending to look for my keycard, and then gratefully let them open the door for me. But in the wee hours of a Friday morning, the chances of that happening were slim. Pizza delivery? No, it was too late for that, too. Anyway, the delivery guy would go through the lobby.
My next thought was to smash the glass door. That didn’t seem like such a hot idea, either. First of all, it could be wired to set off an alarm. And second, it was likely to make Frank even more pissed off than he already was. I looked around. There was a phone by the door. Maybe I could reason with Frank after all. Worth a try. I picked it up and dialed Lucado’s phone number.
He picked up on the second ring. “What is it?” His voice was thick with sleep and disoriented. I had a feeling that Frank handled a lot of problem calls in the middle of the night.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“What the hell? Who is this?”
“Victory Vaughn. I know I’m late, but—”
“You’re way past late. You’re fired. Don’t call me again.”
He hung up.
I stared at the phone in my hand. Well, Frank was still alive; that much was clear. But with more than five hours to go before sunrise, Difethwr still had plenty of time to show up. I wasn’t going to leave Frank to be a sitting duck. And I wasn’t going to miss out on my best chance to confront the Hellion.
I’d been in front of the security camera for a couple of minutes now, and the bodyguard hadn’t come running and waving his guns around. That was something. I inspected the glass of the door. There were no wires that I could see. That was something, too.
Okay, Frank, I thought, you’ve left me no choice. Whether he wanted my protection or not, he was stuck with it. I went outside and selected a couple of good-sized rocks from an ornamental border around some bushes. Then I walked back through the garage to the residents’ door. I stepped back, just under the security camera, and hoisted my arm.
Roger Clemens never sent a ball flying across the plate more perfectly than I threw that rock. It smashed a fist-sized hole right through the center of the door. Bull’s-eye. I held my breath, listening. No alarms, no running footsteps. That lunkhead of a bodyguard was probably snoozing at the desk. Or maybe he was off in the storeroom, playing all by himself.
I went to the door and used my arm, encased in my nice, thick leather jacket, to widen the hole. Safety glass rained onto the floor. When the hole was big enough, I tossed my duffel bag through it, then stepped inside.
Better not chance the elevator. I took the stairs, climbing the nine flights to Lucado’s condo. Ten, since I’d started in the basement. So I was a little winded by the time I stood in front of unit 901. I listened with my ear to the door. Quiet. I opened my senses to the demonic plane and listened again. All around was the usual din, but none of it came from Lucado’s place.
I sat down on the thick carpet, my back against Lucado’s door. From my duffel bag, I removed my broadsword and the vial of sacramental wine. I whispered the prayer and anointed the sword, held it flat across my knees, hilt in my left hand, and then settled in to wait. I had a feeling it was going to be a long night.
19
AT SOME POINT BETWEEN FOUR AND FIVE IN THE MORNING, the elevator dinged. I gripped the sword and stood, even as my rational mind told me that demons don’t use elevators.
The man who stepped out had white hair and glasses. He was reaching into the Boston Globe bag at his side when he noticed me. He stopped short, his eyes wide behind his glasses, and stared. Can’t imagine why. Didn’t he regularly encounter leather-clad women carrying broadswords on his paper route?
“Thanks,” I said, reaching for the paper.
He let me take it, then turned back to the elevator and stabbed at the button. Then he must’ve had second thoughts about standing with his back to me, because he yanked open the stairwell door and disappeared inside.
I resumed my post by Frank’s door, unfolded the paper, and scanned the headlines.
I was relieved to see that the Creature Comforts brawl had moved off the front page. Today, the top story was about a teenage boy who’d shot his girlfriend’s parents to death because they wouldn’t let her go to a motel with him.
And they say the monsters are heartless killers.
The Opinion section featured competing columns by Governor Sugden and Seth Baldwin, commenting on the Creature Comforts fight and laying out their positions on Paranormal Americans. Baldwin repeated the rant I’d seen on TV, vowing to drive out the monsters if he was elected. Sugden took a milder approach. Kane liked Sugden, as a politician and a person. Sugden’s daughter had been zombified in the plague, so he had a personal stake in making sure the zombies were treated right. More than that, though, the governor saw PA rights as a civil rights issue, just like Kane did, believing that the monsters were intelligent beings who could contribute to society. I’d vote for the guy—except, of course, as a PA I couldn’t vote.
Leafing through the paper, I saw nothing about a bloodthirsty panther on the loose. Nothing about a man having been mysteriously killed in South Boston. Good. I was starting to believe that maybe I really hadn’tkilled that thug. Not that he deserved to get away, but still. I’d prefer not to add “murderer” to my résumé this week.
It bothered me that my usual self—my personality, the part of me I thought of as me—had lost control of my animal self. Could I, Vicky, really disappear that completely? I flipped through the pages of the newspaper, reading financial news, the advice column, sports scores, even the classifieds, not wanting to face the question that pushed at me from the edges of my mind: Was Difethwr’s closeness boosting the demon essence inside me, infecting me like a virus—not with a disease, but with the urge to kill?