Suddenly feeling the withering glare that prickled my spine, I looked to Veronica, her blue eyes icy. The vein at her temple danced to the beat of angry drums. She was pissed. Out of reflex, I tried to deflect.
“Hey, I’m not the one who made you do it.”
“You might as well have,” she spit back. “I don’t know why Baalth caters to you, but one of these days your preferential treatment is going to come to an end. When it does, I’m going to put my foot so far up your ass you’ll be able to taste my knee.”
Painful visual aside, she was handling it all better than I thought she would. Rather than risk aggravating her further, knowing damn well she’d make good on her promise, I chose the better part of valor and kept my big mouth shut.
I picked Chatterbox from out of the fog and lifted him up where he could see. His squirmy eyes were glazed, subdued, and they tracked on Veronica like a lovelorn puppy. He was quiet and pensive, nothing like himself. I didn’t like it. There’d be no metal serenades today.
Maybe when everything was said and done, I’d get my singing buddy back. Of course, considering what I had in mind to do next, I might not have to worry about that. I might be dead.
Rather than dwell on the grim likelihood of my future, I went to work. “You passed on my message exactly as I gave it to you?”
“Of course,” she huffed.
“Good. Then let’s get going.”
Veronica glared at me a moment, then shifted her gaze to Chatterbox. Her repulsion colored her face, seeping out like mercury in her voice. “Lead us to Reven.”
“Folllllloooooowww meeeeeeeee, meeeeee, eeeeee,” he answered immediately. Though incapable of independent movement, the whole lacking a body thing, he made it clear which way we needed to go. His slippery tongue jetted from his mouth and wiggled in the direction of the portal we’d used to enter Limbo.
At the sight of it, Veronica stormed off looking nauseous while I followed along lugging Chatterbox, Poe silently bringing up the rear. We looked a ragtag bunch: an angry ex-wife, a battered mentalist, and me, the white sheep of the black family. I could think of a handful of people I’d rather have at my side, but beggars can’t be choosers. In the end, I was likely marching off to my death.
Did it really matter which side killed me?
Chapter Twenty
We made it through the shimmering portal and returned to Earth without any problems, much to my surprise. It was as if the spirits knew there was some major shit going down on Terra Firma and they didn’t want anything to do with it. Can’t say I blame them. I didn’t want much to do with it myself.
It was the same uncomfortable quiet on the Earth side. Lilith hadn’t posted a guard or wasted her time watching the gateway, trusting her manipulated goons to kill me. She didn’t know me very well.
Had she been on better terms with her daughter, Veronica could have told her I was real good at screwing up the plans of mice and men, and a succubus or two, now and again. It was a specialty of mine.
Expecting me to be dead, there was probably steam coming out of her ears when I popped back onto the plane alive. Not only had I survived her latest trap, but it’d look to her like I offed the three powerful minions she stole from Baalth. She was not gonna be happy.
To that end, I spurred Veronica and Poe on, our unholy trinity following the waggling lead of Chatterbox’s blackened tongue. While I wanted Lilith to come after me, I didn’t want to face her in the alley. If she showed up too soon, she’d ruin everything. And that likely included me.
A stolen car and an aggravating, circuitous drive to the other side of town later, I could have kicked myself as I realized where Chatterbox was leading us. I should have thought about it long before this. It was the perfect hideout, invisible in plain sight.
When El Paseo was smaller-more dirt, less people-travel to the city was mainly military related, minimizing the need for expensive, public air transportation. Before the city’s population exploded, inheriting the need for an international airport, what didn’t come by railroad was flown in to a small, privately owned airfield situated just outside of town. As the city grew, the need gone, the airfield was shut down, the government canceling their contract. Stubborn and too blind to see the value of the land it sat on, the owner refused to sell and the city engulfed it, building up around the airfield, isolating it.
Nowadays, the land is deeded to the owner’s sons under the provision they hold on to it, untouched, until the military comes to its senses and renews the contract; a circumstance that will never happen.
As such, the land sits empty and ignored, an oasis of overgrown weeds and cracked tarmac, five miles square. Surrounded by a fifteen foot fence capped with redundant layers of razor wire, and rumored to be a preserve for the city’s wild Pit Bull population, the airfield is avoided by even the most ardent of trespassers. It’s a blackened abyss wedged in the center of El Paseo’s failing industrial district, cut off from the world around it. There’s no longer even a street that leads to its rusted, shackled gates, the way blocked off over fifty years earlier.
If there was a better hiding place for a necromancer and an army of zombies, I didn’t know it.
As we got closer, the sun setting in the hazy horizon, we ditched the car and headed through the jumble of weather-worn warehouses and half-abandoned factories. We circled around the perimeter to be sure, avoiding the more populated areas, but Chatterbox’s tongue was rigid with insistence that his master lay beyond the industrial plots.
Rather than take the time to search for an opening, Veronica slipped her sword through a hole in the fence and pressed down, the rune-covered blade slicing through the chain links like scissors through paper. After just a few seconds, she’d carved us a door without making a sound. I slipped through the makeshift entrance, following her. Poe was at my heels, the shining chrome of my old weapon in his hand.
My own gun was out and I carried Chatterbox cradled under my arm as we pressed on through the waist-high grass and grabbing weeds, keeping low to avoid being seen. While we knew Reven was at the airfield, the place was huge. I could guess he’d be somewhere near the center, out of sight from casual view, but I wanted a more accurate locator. Turned out, we didn’t need it.
As we approached the dilapidated control tower, its windows long since having fallen out, we spotted movement on the tarmac. I quickly set Chatterbox down and crouched beside him, Veronica and Poe doing the same, all eyes on the busy runway. The scene, illuminated by the dying rays of the sun and an early moon, made it clear we’d come to the right place. At the base of the tower, huddled together and swaying back and forth like a sea of rotten flesh, was a horde of mumbling zombies.
Out in front of them, gouged into the black asphalt were a massive number of intricate necromantic symbols, spread across what had to have been the length of a football field. Inside their carved shapes was a dark liquid that rippled in the gentle evening breeze. The air was thick with a rusty copper scent, so strong it made my nose itch. It took me a second to recognize the smell, its tang overpowering. It took a second longer to realize its source.
The liquid in the trenches was blood.
My mind boggled as I stared out across the field of symbols, imagining how many people had to die to fill their depths. Reven had been busy. My stomach tightened into a hard ball of hate, sickened by both the smell and his callous disregard of human life. Itching to put a bullet through his skull, I surveyed the runway, but couldn’t spot him anywhere.
Just as I was about to give up and ask Poe if he was capable of picking anything out of the zombies’ heads, a sudden rash of movement amongst their grouping drew my attention. The edges of the horde began to amble forward, spreading their mass thinner as they did. Centered within their smelly ranks, a tight cluster of six zombies trudged up the middle, an object wrapped in purple silk carried reverentially between them. It had to be Longinus.