“Alex! Down!” I pulled her by the hair down to the bench seat just as the man reached into the car. I pulled one of my knives and lunged forward over Alex, effectively shielding her with my body. I thrust the knife into his stomach and he screamed. Heads turned at the sound and a dozen people headed our way. But it was too late. If he had been a normal human, he would have fallen to the ground with a horrible gut wound … which could have been treated by the EMTs. And I would have gone to jail.
But as it was, the lead policeman threw out his arms to stop those behind him when he saw flames lick out of the wound and eat the man alive, leaving only a few tatters of black nylon to float away on the breeze.
I crawled off Alex and she sat up, one hand to her nose. Blood was running between her fingers and she wiped it away with the back of her hand. She didn’t look at me or thank me before she was out of the car. “Davis, go find one of the priests. I want everyone at this site to pass a holy-water test. Barnes, clean up this mess before it infects anyone. I want people in full magical armor from now on. We’ve got rogues among us. LaFuente, find the FBI SitCom and get him over here to see this before we bag it up.” She turned to me and let out a sigh. “Graves, go … just go do whatever you’re going to do. I don’t even want to know how you did that.”
“No creds,” I said as I got out of the car and stopped, resting my hands on the roof. “I’ll get hauled out of here by my teeth. I need to stick with you. At least you know me.”
“I know you, too, and trouble isn’t ever far away.” I smiled at the familiar voice. Rizzoli was walking up behind the man Alex had called LaFuente. He stepped lightly over the pile of still-smoldering ash and handed me a piece of plastic over the hood. “Put this on and start ferreting out more of the bad guys. You’ve got talents we don’t. Use them.”
I looked at the tag he gave me. On one side it bore the seal of the FBI. On the other, underneath the plastic laminate, it said: Celia Graves, Special Consultant.
“How cool is this!?” I put the little clip on my shirt, unsure which side should show out. “Thanks, Rizzoli.”
“No,” he said very seriously. “Thank you. There’s a boat captain at Smallmouth Harbor who was very grateful we showed up last night.”
My jaw dropped. I’d completely forgotten Maria’s problem with the drug lord. “Did you get him?”
Rizzoli smiled and it had a satisfying dark edge. “Red-handed. He’ll be behind bars for a very long time. The judge agreed he was a flight risk. No bail.”
Awesome! “You rule, Rizzoli. So you got promoted to situation commander?”
Now his expression wasn’t so pleased. The muscles in his cheeks and forehead tightened. “Field promotion … to replace the two guys above me who are in pieces. Now I’m the lucky guy in the line of fire.”
Ouch. “Sorry. Anything I can do?”
“Yeah. There is.” He stepped out of the way as a hazmat-suited team came up behind him with a body bag. “You have the strangest group of contacts I’ve ever seen. Call them. See them. Find out why this is happening. I don’t want to know how to seal the rift. There are a thousand people behind me who can do that. I want to know why it’s here—in this place, at this time. There’s never been a problem before at this prison and the area got a seal of approval from the MPRC after a five-year white-paper study. I want to know that when we close the rift it won’t show up somewhere else next week.”
That was surprisingly forward thinking and I was flattered that he’d asked it of me. Of course, I might be one along with 999 other people whom he’d also asked. But it still felt nice. “You’ve got it. Do you want me to start right now? Because I’d have to leave.” And I didn’t know if I wanted to. There were people here I cared about. Alex and Rizzoli, Matty, Bruno, and, yes, John.
Wait. When had I started calling him John? I thought back and realized it was right after the grotto. No wonder he’d been smiling in the car. Shit. Still, there were demons afoot, plus vampires and werewolves who might well be lurking in the shadows, waiting to pick off stray cops who wandered off to take a leak.
Rizzoli nodded thoughtfully as the hazmat team used an ordinary-looking broom and dustpan to scoop up the bits of demon-infested guard and pour them carefully into a black zippered bag. “Stick around for a bit. Stay with the guys who are doing the holy-water tests. Anybody who doesn’t pass goes to you.”
“So you’re sanctioning me to … kill people?”
“No,” he said seriously. “I’m sanctioning you to keep the demons from getting out of this zone. If you know a better way to do that with every priest in Southern California already busy, I’m open to suggestions.”
I touched my pocket and felt the press of hard ceramic. “Well, if there aren’t more than five of them, I might have a solution.” I walked around the car and whispered in Rizzoli’s ear about the charm balls John had made. Damn it. Creede. Creede had made.
“I like it. Give them a try. We can put them in containment then and keep them from escaping until a priest is available.”
All of a sudden a hum rose into the air. It was an airy, light sound, very much like the children’s choir I’d heard on the call with Mr. Murphy. It caught everyone’s attention and we all turned as one. A blue light rose into the sky like a beacon until it dwarfed the fountain of lava that was spewing from the earth. The air felt immediately cooler and I could finally take a deep breath that didn’t scald my lungs. Everybody waited anxiously as the blue shield began to round over at the top. Some demons can fly, so it can’t just go straight up. It has to close and lock.
“C’mon, guys,” I willed the two mages I knew and the hundreds I didn’t to give it everything they had. Slowly the shield began to close. A few imps threw themselves against the barrier nearby and bounced off before melting. Sweet. Someone must have added holy words to the spell to beef it up.
Sound faded and everybody took a collective breath. Lights flashed silently and the unearthly howls became quieter and farther away until, with a flash of light that was nearly blinding, the prison was contained inside the barrier.
A chorus of cheers rose into the air, but I heard two screams of pain. A female officer a few feet away started swearing and dropped to the ground to thrash. Everybody stepped back and a hundred guns were drawn from holsters. I didn’t think twice. I grabbed one of the TBB charms and threw it hard. It hit her and exploded and she froze as solidly as if I’d thrown liquid nitrogen. Rizzoli held out his hand and I put two of the disks into it. He sprinted toward where the other screaming was coming from, and a moment later it stopped. I hadn’t expected that the demons would start screaming when cut off from their own kind. Handy knowledge.
“Where’d you get those? How much are they?” The cop was young and eager and was staring at his paralyzed former colleague with unabashed admiration.
“Find a mage named John Creede. He’s here, somewhere. He’ll hook you up.” I turned my head once he left and called, “Hey, Alex! C’mere.”
She looked at me, put up a hand to stop the person who was speaking to her, and walked over. “What’s up?”
“You might check with the priests to see if it’s normal for a demon to scream and thrash when cut off from the rest of the pack. It might be an easy way to at least track down the escapees who were possessed.”
She stuck out her bottom lip as she thought. “Might be a pain in the butt, but I can certainly call the nine-one-one dispatcher in the area to see if anyone’s called in about someone with symptoms like that. And maybe the hospitals.” She paused, then nodded. “Y’know, that might work.” She turned abruptly, muttering to herself, and went back to her team and started to talk rapidly.