Nicholas started ranting about monsters and possession just before I left the room in my new meat-suit. Freaked out and started thrashing on the gurney. They strapped him down — for his own safety, they kept telling him — and sedated him. His lids slammed shut like a set of blinds whose string’d been pulled, and the poor guy was finally, briefly, at peace. He’d probably start right back up with the freak-out when the drugs wore off. The scuttlebutt at the nurse’s station afterward was that he’d experienced a mental break on account of all he’d seen. For what it’s worth, they weren’t far from wrong. Except for the part where they thought the insane nonsense he was spouting wasn’t true.
Personally, I find that judicious application of alcohol helps stave off such mental breaks. Hell, some days it’s all that keeps me from being Thorazined into oblivion and left to drool inside my very own padded cell. No lie, today was one of those days. Which is why — for strictly therapeutic purposes, you understand — I walked straight out of the hospital in my new meat-suit, not even bothering to ditch the scrubs in favor of street clothes, and found myself a drink or six.
“So that makes what?” asked Lilith, mock-sweet as Splenda, “Four Brethren down? Just think, you’ve only five to go.”
“Yay,” I said. “Can’t hardly wait.”
“I can tell. The enthusiasm’s coming off of you in waves. No, wait,” she amended, “those are vodka fumes.”
“No worries. I’ll ditch this skin-suit before the hangover hits.”
“How lovely for him,” she replied drolly. “Perhaps I could be of assistance in identifying your next vessel.”
“I take that to mean you’ve got a new assignment for me?”
“That’s right.”
“Another feral Brethren?”
“Feral, no. Brethren, yes. Leads on the two remaining feral Brethren have been scant of late, I confess. For a time, I felt as though I might be closing in on one of them in rural Brazil. I’ve been following centuries of lore about a strange creature dragging villagers and livestock into the dark waters of the Amazon under cover of night. Rumors of new abductions came at a rate of one or two a week stretching as far back as there’ve been people there to spread them. But a few months back, they seem to have ceased.”
“You think whatever’s been, uh, eating all those people and chickens or whatever has gotten wise to what we’re doing?”
“I think it’s likelier than a sudden change in diet,” she replied. “And regardless, I think you’re unlikely to find the thing if it’s not hunting.”
I thought back to Jain’s words in the tunnels, to the nameless dog-beast’s in the forest just last night. “Ricou,” I said.
Lilith’s eyebrows shot up, and she flashed me a look of puzzled surprise. “Excuse me?”
“The thing you’ve been tracking,” I said. “I think its name is Ricou.”
“That’s all well and good, Collector, but as I said, this Ricou of yours seems to’ve pulled up stakes, or at the very least, stopped hunting, which is one of two reasons why I think it’s time to move on one of the three members of the Brethren who’re still on hell’s radar.”
“Do I get to pick from off the menu, or do you have a particular one in mind?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. His name is Grigori.”
“Okay,” I said. “Why him?”
“His behavior’s grown erratic of late. Ever since our ill-fated first attempt to eliminate he and his fellow Brethren, he’s been moving vast quantities of money around — liquidating assets, reshuffling the deck on his portfolio of shell corporations, offshore accounts, and corporate holdings. Some of that went to the other two we’d been monitoring — known to us as Drustanus and Yseult — who’ve since vanished. And I think he’s looking to do the same. The other two are far from feral, but they’re both vicious and impulsive, operating strictly hand-to-mouth and leaving a bloody trail of bodies in their wake; without Grigori’s aid, I’ve no doubt we could track them down in no time. But a man of his means, who’s spent fifty lifetimes learning to live beneath the radar, can no doubt hide a good long time. If we allow him to vanish, it may take centuries to find him.”
“‘Ill-fated first attempt’,” I parroted. “Funny way of saying this guy and his buddies slaughtered the last set of folks hell sent to kill them.”
“I rather thought you wouldn’t like to be reminded of that fact.”
“Yeah, well, it ain’t like I ever forgot. And you buried the lede just now, didn’t you? The fact is, this guy ain’t just my next target, he’s the biggest and baddest of the bunch. Not only that, but he’s helped the remaining Brethren on our list disappear, so for all intents and purposes that makes him our only play.”
Lilith paused a good long while before answering. “You’re not wrong,” she said grudgingly.
“Okay, then, lemme ask you, if he’s the guy who helped the other two fall off your radar, doesn’t that mean the only reason he’s number one on hell’s Most Wanted list is because he fucking volunteered? Or, put another way, does this look at all to you like one seriously big-ass trap?”
“Possibly,” she said, “but I’m afraid we’ve no other choice. These orders come down from on high.”
“You’ve,” I corrected.
“Excuse me?”
“What you meant was you’ve no other choice.”
Lilith smiled as if she were a teenager caught sneaking a twenty from her pushover dad’s wallet. “I suppose I did, at that.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic. So where’m I headed?”
“That’s the spirit,” Lilith said, clapping me on the shoulder as if I’d responded with great brio and not resigned indifference. “And perhaps your task will prove less unpleasant than you suspect. After all, I understand the Carpathians are quite pleasant this time of year.”
“The Carpathians.” Me, incredulous.
“That’s right.”
“As in Transylvania.”
“Mmm hmm.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I’ll admit, it’s a tad arch, but I assure you I am not,” said Lilith
“You got an address?”
Lilith paused. “Not exactly.”
“What do you mean, not exactly?”
She sighed. “When we last moved on him, he was at his summer home on the French Riviera, one of seven such homes we’ve routinely monitored over the years. Needless to say, he hasn’t been back since. We’ve always suspected he keeps another abode — home base, perhaps, or safe house — but wherever it is, it’s always been well hidden to our seers. He must have masked it with some kind of occlusion spell, the strongest of its kind I’ve ever seen, in point of fact.”
My mind tracked back to Pemberton Baths, which seemed to go all Teflon beneath my eyeballs’ gaze, and to the cabin of last night, which existed only in the viewfinder of Nicholas-not-Nicky’s camera. “Seems the Brethren are quite fond of those,” I said.
“Yes, well. Our seers had their third eyes on him after the Riviera debacle, tracking his movements eastward across the continent remotely, but then, suddenly, he vanished. Working with our best chronomancers, those seers were able to revisit the moment of his disappearance again and again in their minds, and have narrowed his position down to the twenty-square-mile patch of countryside surrounding Bucura Lake, which is nestled in the southeastern elbow of the Carpathian Mountains.”
“Awesome,” I said. “I can’t tell you how psyched I am at the prospect of traipsing around a whole new batch of cold-ass mountains, looking for the biggest, scariest baddie left on the table.”