Hammer of Darkness (Veil Knights Book 8) Read online

  Then it happened.

  I was well back in the room, at the end of the bar furthest from the stage, standing in the darkest part of a dark nightclub, just one more guy alone standing at the bar. Despite all that, like a predator sensing prey, she turned and looked at me.

  Our eyes met, and hers shone so powerfully the tatts on my skin heated up like water about to boil over. She saw me, knew I was there, knew I was there for her.

  The wicked bitch smiled.

  Let me tell you the secret of my success.

  First, I'm not really successful, that's a big part of the strategy right there. These days I'm a lawyer, of sorts. I don't practice law, not in a courtroom, not anywhere really, the license just affords certain perks that Grimm finds useful. Attorney-client privilege being paramount among them.

  I dress well when I want to. I went to a good school, not Ivy League, one a little smaller, a little more select. Brains aren't my problem. In life it sometimes takes intelligence, sometimes it takes wisdom. Sometimes it takes cynicism masquerading as wisdom, and I've got it down; real, soulful, world-weary cynicism.

  Still, brains aren't why I'm successful; they just got me in the game this time around. Neither is charm, half the time I get what I need through deception and intimidation; I'm a blunt instrument and my charisma suspect.

  Personally, on that front, I blame my nose. It's been broken so many times no one can think of me as anything but a thug at first glance, no matter how expensive my suit is. This is a shame because Grimm hooked me up with his tailor and the woman is simply impeccable. I have to go to Hong Kong to get the damn suits fitted, but whatever.

  I'm old, older than most who are unfamiliar with the Veil would think possible in a man. With age comes experience, and that goes a long way in helping you out of tight situations. But then so can lot of money, or a willingness to use firearms indiscriminately, so there you go.

  No, the real secret to my success is that I'm hard to kill.

  Back in the day, by which I mean the turn of the century (twentieth, not twenty-first) in boxing, they called them Ironmen. These were not the modern masochists who compete in triathlons. The sport hadn't been invented yet, as such, anyway.

  An Ironman was a bare-knuckle fighter with one thing going for him. He wasn't a technician, he didn't have speed or footwork, and he didn't hit that much harder than anyone else.

  The trick of an Ironman, if you could call it that, lay in his ability to absorb damage and continue fighting. Some assumed it was because of a thicker than normal skull, which may very well have something to do with it. But for whatever reason, an Ironman climbed into the ring with better boxers, stronger hitters, faster fighters, and still emerged the victor. Round after round, he took blow after blow, long after another fighter would have gone down, and keep throwing his own punches. After awhile the quicker, more nimble fighters would tire, and he'd eventually land a telling blow of his own or overwhelm them in the last few rounds with a violent flurry of punches.

  The big punchers failed more quickly. They were used to eating a few strikes then landing a freight train and ending a match. But no matter how many big, fight-ending-punches they landed, the Ironman didn't go down. Eventually, those big punches wore them out, left them vulnerable, and they'd get caught.

  It was never a pretty victory for an Ironman. He always finished the fight looking bruised and bloody and damn near broken by the countless blows he took. But he always finished the fight, always went the distance. This ability to absorb punishment made them legendary.

  When they lost, it was always by decision. Someone out boxed them and managed to never catch a hard punch to the jaw or temple in the final rounds. When an Ironman finally went down, it always signaled the end of their career.

  That's my secret: I can last. I can take more punishment than anyone I've ever faced. I'm so hard to kill I was able to take Euryale as a lover and live to tell the story. I'm not immortal, I'm not invulnerable, but the things I've survived have been extraordinary. Grimm has put me to the test often enough that I say this with confidence.

  So I smiled right back at her.

  I drank my drink, she sang her set, and then she came out with an entourage of cannibalistic monsters and held court like the grim empress she was.

  Chapter 5

  I looked at her. She looked at me.

  She wore the same half smile I remembered so well and gazed at me with the knowing look that taunted me with our history together. I've felt you tremble in my arms, that look said. I've heard you cry out my name, that look said. I tried to murder you, that look said.

  Relationships are hard, don't ever let anyone tell you differently.

  "You're Grimm's errand boy,” she said.

  "Buddha said your purpose in life is to find your purpose."

  "Why are you here now?" she asked.

  "I have questions."

  "So did Kay," she said. I guess we were dispensing with small talk.

  "Her questions are my questions," I admitted. "Plus the questions I now have about what became of her."

  "To quote the muse, ‘we live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender.' End quote."

  "You refer to John O'Donohue as ‘the muse'?"

  "The scribe? The poet? Which do you prefer?"

  "I prefer not talking in riddles."

  "You may have come to the wrong place then."

  "Touche. Now, what happened to Kay?" I asked. "Why did she come to you? What was she looking for?" No need to let anyone know I knew about the Basket, not yet anyway.

  She drank me in with her gaze and that Komodo dragon smile widened into something approaching good humor. "Is that suit silk?" she asked.

  "It's Armani," I admitted.

  I shifted my eyes over to the doorman. He remained a wall of ridiculously large muscled flesh. He stood there giving me the hard eye. Unless you're an utter psychopath, it's easier to beat someone's ass on command if you can find something to dislike about them. The key to keeping an even emotional keel in the thug business is to quickly dislike people you have to hurt.

  Upon seeing Euryale, my mood about the help had morphed. I now disliked him, and I saw he was, in kind, building a real hate-on for me.

  "You look like a thug in an expensive suit," she said.

  "Guilty," I countered. "I clean up just fine, but I am a thug in an expensive suit." I indicated the doorman with my chin. "Put this suit on that clown and see what it looks like."

  Here's the truth. I didn't say he looked like a gorilla because of the racial implications, which I find a little passe' in trading insults. I'll go there if I have to, I'll go just about anywhere if I have to, but it's not my first choice. In this case, however, the sonofabitch simply looked like a goddamn mountain gorilla. He was that big, thick, and imposing. If you've never seen over 350 lbs. of raw athletic ability, it's a terrifying picture. People that big don't even seem part of the species anymore. The bastard looked like he could mate with a Clydesdale. I'm not going to apologize for calling them as I see them.

  He looked at me. As you may have noticed by now, there was a whole lot of looking going on.

  She laughed. It sounded musical and appealing. "I have missed you; you're quite the man."

  "Double Y," I agreed. "True story. I don't have an X chromosome."

  "The myth of the Double-Y Superman has been disproved."

  "You know better, first hand," I said.

  "To answer your questions," she said, "Kay came to see me because she thought I knew something that could help her. She was looking for the Basket. And, lastly, I don't know where she is."

  I have up until now been struggling to find a way to describe her eyes. The image I keep coming back to, time and time again, is one pulled from old black and white horror cinema: Bela Lugosi playing Dracula. They'd keep his face in shadow, then cast a bar of sharp light across his eyes, making them seem to glow with hypnotic intensity.

  Her eyes didn't actually look that way beca
use of course they weren't illuminated by external lighting effects. Their energy was all internal by nature, but the effect, the emotional intensity, was something very much like that. Which is ironic for a number of reasons that should be obvious by now. I didn't know if it was art imitating life, or my mind seeing life imitate art, either way, it didn't matter, because to an even larger degree than Ilsa the Ice Queen Bartender, Euryale was a woman with whom you could get lost in her eyes. This wasn't a good thing. Once lost you're rarely found.

  I blinked, slowly and purposefully. Then I looked at her again. She smiled at my breaking her glamor. We have an understanding between us, hard earned on my part.

  "I don't believe you," I said.

  The doorman stiffened. I'd just entered the throne room of a goddess and called her a liar to her face. Men lose their lives for such things. Luckily, I'm hard to kill. She smirked, and he walked over and shoved me hard in the chest if the chair hadn't been so squat in design, maybe one of those narrow, high back jobs you see around formal dining room tables, say, I'd have gone ass over tea kettle.

  As it was my 230lbs slid back eight inches, chair and all.

  "Boys," she warned.

  She didn't seem to be trying all that hard to call off her dog. I freely admit she might still be holding on to some hard feelings of her own.

  I stood up and looked the doorman in the eye. Not eye-to-eye of course, not even close, but in the eye. They radiated pure, animal, hate and he growled deep, low down in that massive chest. It would have impressed Cynthia's Rottweiler. It impressed me. He drew his lips back and bared his fangs. The time for quips was past, on both our parts.

  I slapped him across the face.

  All background conversation in the nightclub stopped. Until now it had been a barely audible murmur anyway, now the silence was tangible. My slap wasn't meant to injure, just insult, and I think it did the job nicely if I say so myself. I doubt it hurt him much, if at all.

  "Bad bitch," I said. "Put your teeth away."

  I couldn't have dodged the punch even if I'd been trying; we were too close. His fist drove into my jaw in a hard shot that snapped my head to the side and drove me to the ground. I didn't land with grace.

  What it didn't do was snap my neck, knock me unconscious, or dislocate my jaw. Hell, it didn't even make me cry out.

  From the floor, I pulled the pistol from its holster. It's an old school piece, a little like me, but a real beauty. The handgun was a Beretta 93-R machine pistol. It held a 32-round extended magazine and at the flick of a lever fired in 3-shot bursts. Attached to a shoulder stock, it was as accurate a close quarters battle weapon as you could ask for, despite being 40 years old. It was sexy in the way 1960s sports cars were.

  "This fires nine millimeters Parabellum," I said. "Now, nine mil was designed for killing Europeans. For men, I usually prefer forty-five ACP. I'm sure a nine is fine for you, though."

  The doorman looked at me in furious shock. I should have been a moaning, broken mess. I leveled the perforated muzzle, designed to vent gasses and improve accuracy, directly at him.

  "Of course," I continued, "I doubt that impresses you. What should is the fact each bullet is engraved with a silver inlay geas designed to harm Veil breed, Fey, as well as assorted Seraphim. And, news flash, it burns the undead like the goddamn sun."

  "Jacques," Euryale said, her voice quiet. "I appreciate your vigor in protecting my honor and dignity. However, I often indulge Mr. Hautdesert in his petty banter. It's alright." She looked at me, then finished, "for now."

  He snarled, face a feral mask, Dracula on steroids.

  "Yeah, yeah," I said. I waved him back with the muzzle. "You gave me your best shot, and I'm just fine." I stood.

  I figured my being laid out on the floor somewhat diminished how impressed he might be at my ability to take a supra-human punch.

  "Don't goad him, lover," she warned, voice casual. "It'll only prolong this silly game."

  I set my chair back up, cracked my neck with a shrug and put the pistol away. I arched an eyebrow at her, she nodded in response, and I sat. The hairs on back of my neck stood out like quills on a porcupine, and my runes lay scalding on my skin. Everyone, I thought, every goddamn one in here is a vampyr or thrall.

  "I suppose I was a little harsh," I conceded. "But Kay was here, she saw you, you told her something, and she followed up. We both know it."

  She shrugged and smiled as if to say, "girl’s gotta have her fun." It managed to look sexy and adorable and casually sinister. Like Billy Joel sang…she has a way about her.

  "I suppose I do recall Kay's stopping by in a little more detail, now that I've had time to recall more clearly." Her voice was almost a purr. "But I can't tell you what we talked about or where she went."

  "Can't, or won't?"

  Her eyes glittered across the table. I was oh so very much aware of every gaze in the place regarding me like an ambulatory protein shake. She was a pagan priestess in the middle of her savage tabernacle. No mistress has ever been more secure in her palace since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps longer.

  I swallowed. I'm tough to kill. But I'm neither invulnerable or immortal; I think I've mentioned this point. It might take them longer than they would like to admit, but eventually, an entire colony of these things would end my life. End it bloody.

  "Won't," she said simply. "You have competition in this little hunt." I noticed her phrasing. She just assumed I knew all about the Basket and was chasing it. I worked for Grimm, this was obvious, so I didn't argue the point.

  She went on. "As part of a transactional covenant, in keeping with the spirit of the Reconciliation, I agree to remain silent. It is a vow, an accord if you prefer the term. You're a lawyer, you should understand non-disclosure agreements perfectly well."

  "There's a hex involved if you speak." My choice of words was deliberate.

  "Clever boy."

  Voodoo. Or witches. I thought about it. Most likely witches. Voodoo gets overestimated, people see it everywhere because of the Caribbean cultural references. I shot the sheriff, all that crap. But it is much, much easier to make a pact with sleazy infernals and to gain power than to master the arcane and exhausting rituals of Voudon.

  I had the next link in the chain or as much of one as she was going to give me. The clue was obtuse, but enough to rattle some cages, perhaps. That's what a judas goat operation was, stake yourself out smack in the middle of the jungle, bleat your ass off, and wait for the tigers to come.

  I looked at her. I knew what she was; she was a monster. But something stirred in me, an acknowledgment of memories, I suppose. I felt like the parent of a serial killer; you know they're evil, but you remember holding them as a baby.

  "I'm leaving," I said. "I see anyone following me I'm shooting first, no questions asked."

  "Be well, Hautdesert," she said.

  Chapter 6

  I breathed a sigh of relief when I made it outside. I remembered the look in her eye as I left and an uneasy certainty leaked fear through my body. She wasn't done with me yet.

  I walked out and let the rain wash over me. I'd just thrown a big rock into the pool of the shadow world haunting Frisco. All I had to do now was wait for the second great love of my life to notice. I didn't need to go to the witches.

  The witches would come to me.

  I stared up at the single bulb until it filled my vision like a nova.

  Seeing Euryale shook me. I was a victim confronting their abuser. A vampire’s seduction is forced surrender of will. If they want you to enjoy it, they can make you, but once their glamor is gone you're left hollowed out and empty, sometimes literally, remembering your actions, but divorced from the passion and left feeling only shame.

  Erica looked up at me in my mind's eye. Her face was a mask of blood, eyes pleading. That cool, lethal Beretta poised in my fist, finger on trigger. Our past was complicated.

  My thoughts drifted as they always do when I'm down from one painful subject and
on to the next. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is often defined, at least in part, as being caught in circular memories, in certain emotional recall flashbacks that run on endless loops.

  I watched the light burn with the sort of apathy people confuse for calm. I lay on the bed, arm tucked behind my head, in unbuttoned denim work pants and a tank top undershirt. It was, as an ensemble, a far cry from the Armani suits in the closet, but at my base, I'm a man of nature, a man of simple tastes if not simple experiences.

  I doubted that this current crop of knights knew that. They saw me as Grimm's majordomo, or bodyman, or even sometime bodyguard. Grimm needing a bodyguard seemed an unlikely proposition, but I look like what I look like.

  The bed I stretched out on was a sagging double mattress atop an ancient metal frame, cluttered with rumpled sheets and a couple of cheap pillows going flat. The place was a dump, a far cry from my Oakland Hills residence, and a universe removed from Grimm's LA domicile.

  The motel room sat tucked in the Narrows running Hunter's Point to Tenderloin and South of Market, a sort of informal combat zone. I was in my environment now, living close to the land as it were. It was more lair than safehouse.

  In my memory playing out in HD, Erica panted, as exhausted and in pain as I was. We'd thought we'd found Excalibur, or whatever Excalibur had become, but we were wrong. We hadn't discovered we were wrong until Erica overplayed her hand and attempted to double-cross me. Femme fatale indeed.

  The rental was a studio flat with a wide open floor plan, a low counter separating the kitchen and only the tiny bathroom getting its own private space. The radiator under the windows was about a thousand years old.

  In my mind, in the endless loop, I lifted the pistol.

  I blinked the image from my head and turned away from the hypnotic brilliance of the naked bulb. Through the windows, the sky, hanging low, looked like dirty iron. There was a storm building.