Night Owls

27

ELLY PEERED THROUGH the window and into the darkened bookstore. Val had called them a couple hours ago, saying she was heading to the store and getting everyone the hell out, that they should sharpen their stakes and meet her there. She’d mentioned the note they’d left her: the nest was on its way, and they needed to be ready.

Even more unnerving: the whole damned street was deserted, the other businesses buttoned up tight. It was a perfect autumn night—clear skies, a bit of a chill in the air but nothing too bad—and yet no one was out for a stroll along this quaint stretch of road. Elly was fairly certain this wasn’t the succubi’s doing, but she couldn’t feel other magic at play, either. She didn’t trust it, but then again, if it kept the civilians out of their hair for the coming brawl, maybe she ought not to try too hard to see the teeth in this particular gift horse’s mouth.

The bookstore’s sign was flipped over to Closed. A typed note was taped below the sleepy owl: Closed due to water main break. We’ll reopen tomorrow. The door was locked, but Justin had his keys with him. He led Elly and Cavale in, picking his way carefully around displays and furniture. Feeble light came in from the streetlamps, enough to keep them from tripping and breaking their necks, but not enough to see very well beyond that.

“What the hell is he doing here?”

Val’s voice snapped from somewhere down back. Justin jerked away, colliding into Elly and trodding none too delicately on her foot.

Cavale set down his duffel bag full of stakes and holy water and addressed the direction her voice had come from. The lights were off back there, too, except for the pale fluorescent glow coming from beneath the office door. Everything was shrouded in gloom. “He insisted on coming.”

“Insisted” was putting it mildly. There’d been an epic-scale shouting match, actually, which Justin had won. Elly had spent the last few hours teaching him how not to impale himself on a stake. Now they’d just have to hope that training stuck if a Creep got close enough.

There was a thud from off to the left, away from the back room door. Elly could make out the shape of another door back there, presumably the rare books room where Justin had taken his first peek at the Creeps’ spell book. There wasn’t much of anywhere to hide back there. Was she clinging to the ceiling before we came in?

Before Elly could get a gander at the ceiling tiles to see if there were claw marks, Val was stalking down the aisle toward them. Her stride said she was walking, but to Elly it looked like someone had sped up the film. “And I told you to leave him with Sunny and Lia.”

“I’m right here.” Justin’s shoulders had lost their cringing slope as Val got closer. His voice trembled a bit, but it was an even bet whether it was from anger or fear of back talking a pissed-off vampire.

Elly thought about putting a hand on his arm and reining him in, but Cavale caught her eye and shook his head.

Justin stepped forward, past Cavale. “You can stop talking like I’m not in the room. I told them I was coming, and if they’d left me behind, I would’ve climbed out a window and walked over by myself.”

Val kept coming at that eerie gait until she was nose to nose with Justin. To his credit, he stood his ground. “They were supposed to get you out of town,” she said. “It’s not going to be an exchange.”

“Why not? They took Chaz, Val. They aren’t fucking around.”

“They weren’t fucking around last night, either.” She glowered down at him, nostrils flaring. “I thought you would have noticed that, what with all the fighting.”

“So why let it escalate?” He turned to Elly, looking for help. “What was it you told me Father Value said to do when you were cornered?”

Elly winced. It had come out earlier today, when they were driving around looking for Chaz’ trail. Justin had asked for a lesson in Creeps 101, and she’d gone over the basics. Including the rule both she and Father Value had been breaking since the night they’d yanked this book from beneath an altar: “If you’re cornered,” she recited, “give them what they want and get out of there.”

“That. Exactly.” He turned back to Val, ready to declare a triumph of logic, but Elly kept talking.

“It doesn’t work like that. Not this time.” She stepped around him, putting herself on Val’s side both literally and figuratively. “They might not try drawing a circle around you and getting it out with a ritual like we did. They might just do it the easier way.”

“There’s an easier way?”

“Kill you and it will hop to one of them. An energy like that, its instinct is to reach its own kind. You were the closest thing around when you released it from the book, so it didn’t have any choice. But if they release it from you when one of theirs is right there waiting to receive it, it’ll make a beeline for the more compatible host.”

“. . . oh.” He thought for a moment. “But what if it doesn’t work? Then they don’t have the knowledge either. What good is that?”

“If they don’t want to risk losing it, they could always keep you until they figure it out. Chained up. Probably starving. Beaten, too, in case you try resisting them . . .”

Val pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s enough. You’re here now, and it’s quarter to ten. Too late to send you back.” She glanced out the front window. Elly followed her gaze. Nothing moved outside. “I assume Sunny and Lia are coming, too, then?”

“They said they’d be here,” Cavale said.

“. . . it’s like you summoned us.” Sunny’s voice came from everywhere and nowhere.

Elly whirled, trying to pinpoint it anyway, but the four of them were the only people in the store. No, wait. The shadows were deepest by the rare books room, probably why Val had been lurking back there, too. But now, instead of lying flat and uniform, like shadows ought to do, the darkness writhed. It licked up the walls like tongues of black flame, then subsided, leaving behind two feminine silhouettes.

Sunny and Lia sauntered forward, the shadows slipping away. Once they were away from that corner of the store, they became incredibly easy to spot. Both of them were wrapped in bright white bathrobes from neck to ankles. The hilts of their keris knives peeked out from the robes’ deep pockets. They were in their demon forms again, beautiful and terrifying at the same time.

“We didn’t know if anyone else would be here,” Lia said. “Figured maybe it would be bad form to show up stark naked from the get-go.”

“Kind of a dead giveaway that we’re not, you know, normal,” Sunny added, as if Lia’s twilight-colored skin or her own seven-foot stature might go unnoticed. “Who else is joining the party?”

For a moment, Elly thought Val was going to chew out the succubi for not adhering to the plan. Then she seemed to recognize the futility of arguing about it now and simply sighed. Maybe she was tucking the yelling away for later.

“I don’t know,” said Val. “Ivanov hasn’t returned my calls.”

An awkward pause descended, as everyone avoided saying what they were thinking. They’d nearly been overwhelmed last night. There was no way the Creeps wouldn’t show up without an even stronger force tonight, and Night Owls wasn’t warded against them the way Sunny and Lia’s house had been.

The sound of the duffel bag unzipping made them all jump. Cavale tossed a piece of chalk to Elly, then gestured at the bag. “You guys go ahead and line up the stakes and holy water on the counter. We’ll get at least a few wards in place.” He nodded at Elly and set off toward the rear of the store. Elly headed for the front, wondering if Val had anything she could use to write on the plate glass window itself. One big rune to say fuck you to the Creeps.

She pulled up short three steps away from the window. “Uh, guys?”

Bitch stood on the other side, one hand around Chaz’ throat, the other waving cheerily. Elly squinted. There was something wrong with the light. It took her a second to realize what it was: Bitch and Chaz should’ve been lit from above by the streetlights. Instead, the light splashed over them from the front, bright white instead of amber, more like someone had a car’s high beams trained on them.

Then they disappeared.

Val was beside her. She’d been by the register an eye blink ago. She sniffed at the air, then strode over to the door, yanked it open, and stuck her head out. “They’re not here yet,” she said, pulling back in, “but they’re close. I can smell them now.” She stood there for a moment, staring out at the night. The confidence she’d had since Elly had met her had fled. Her shoulders hunched; her hands clasped and unclasped. Worry was written in every line of her body. When she spoke, Elly almost didn’t hear. “Did he look all right?”

She thought about it. No use softening what she’d glimpsed in those few seconds. “Pissed off, mostly. But his nose was bleeding, and I think he has a black eye.”

Val straightened up and lifted her chin. Anger replaced the worry in her stance, until that deceitfully lazy grace was back. “They’ll pay for that.”

Fury is an acceptable substitute for bravery. It had been one of Father Value’s favorites. “They will.” She resisted the urge to pat Val’s arm—she’d never been so hot at the whole reassuring thing, anyway. Instead, she took up her chalk and got to work on setting the runes.

Five minutes later, as she was laying the last of the hastily drawn set, the first hulking shapes of the Creeps began slinking their way onto Main Street.

HE PROBABLY SHOULDN’T have opened with “Where’s your other lackey?” when he saw Bitch and Twitch standing in the kitchen without Asshole. How could he have known Elly had stuck Asshole with that spike of hers and done him in? Lucky for him, Bitch—whose real name was indeed Diane—seemed to be under orders to leave him mostly unharmed.

Mostly.

His nose hadn’t stopped leaking since she’d knocked him on his ass, and from the way she’d said “Behave” as they left the house, he knew she hoped he wouldn’t, so she could make it bleed some more. They’d covered his face with a blanket that smelled of mold and dust, and shoved him into the backseat of a car whose shocks were completely shot. A couple of Jackals piled on top of him. He figured one had to be Bitch, from the elbow that dug none too gently into his ribs anytime they went over a bump. Every pothole brought a new flare of pain in his nose, in his aching shoulder. The headache had ramped back up, too. It sang in a chorus with his other injuries.

By the time they got to Edgewood, Chaz felt like an overused punching bag. He didn’t bother playing it cool when they yanked him out of the backseat, gulping down mouthfuls of the crisp night air. He only got to enjoy it for a few seconds before Bitch came over and dragged him in front of the car. The brights blinded him, sending another jolt straight through his skull. She held him by the neck, and for a moment he wondered if she was about to throw him, like a stick tossed for a dog to chase. Only, in this case, the dog was a car.

I can run. If she throws me, I can run. He recognized the street they were on. The woods were to his right. If she threw him that way, he’d make a break for the trees. If she sent him sailing to the left, he’d see how far he could get toward campus.

But the throw never came. Through slit eyes, he saw her wave at the car. Then the driver killed the lights and the engine, and Bitch’s grip moved to Chaz’ arm. “What the hell was that?” he asked.

“Five-minute warning.” Another pair of glorified rust buckets rattled their way up the hill and parked. More Jackals spilled out, and still more came loping out of the woods. If she’d thrown me to the right, I wouldn’t have made it far after all.

Bitch handed him off to Twitch while she went to rally the troops. The kid seemed distracted, even more jittery than the last couple of times Chaz had seen him. He was a few inches shorter than Chaz, though they probably matched one another on the wiry scale. If it weren’t for the whole Jackal thing giving the kid an unfair advantage, Chaz figured he could take him in a bar fight. Since scrapping wasn’t an option, Chaz figured talking was worth a shot. The scrawny ones also tended to be the voices of reason. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“Shut up.”

“No, I mean it. You guys are kind of fucked right now. Look how badly last night ended—you lost one of your trio, and you still didn’t get Justin. You think they’re not ready for you now?”

Twitch’s grip tightened, his fingers digging into Chaz’ bicep. “Shut the fuck up. Josh was my friend.”

Josh. That had to be Asshole. “Yeah, well, your friend was trying to kill my friend, so I have to chalk that one up to turnabout being fair play.”

That was clearly the wrong thing to say. Twitch’s already-feral face rippled. His nose and jaw darkened, sliding and lengthening into a snout. “No. Josh was trying to save your friend. I saw it. He was keeping everyone else off him, and that mousy little bitch stabbed him when he turned his back on her. So don’t you fucking say another fucking word to me. Understood?” He was up in Chaz’ face by then, his breath hot and rank as he ranted. Chaz could see a row of sharp teeth in that canine mouth.

“Okay,” he said, holding his free hand up. “Okay, got it.”

Twitch stared at him a bit longer before he stood down. Chaz had to rethink his bar fight theory—get this kid angry enough, and Twitch would kick his ass, scrawny or no.

Bitch wandered back over to them. “Let’s go.”

They headed down the hill, the majority of the Jackals melting into the shadows. Had anyone else been out and about, they’d have only seen Chaz, Bitch, and Twitch strolling along, but the street was eerily deserted. Chaz wondered if that was something the Jackals had done, or if Val had some kind of people-repelling ability she hadn’t told him about. They passed the turnoff that would have led them to Sunny and Lia’s and kept heading toward Main Street.

Chaz tried backpedaling as he realized where their final destination must be, but Bitch and Twitch dragged him inexorably onward. “You can’t,” he said. “There’ll be people there.”

“She had warning,” said Bitch. “Any dead bystanders are on her conscience, not mine.”

You say that like you have one at all.

No one was around on Main Street, either. Even the twins’ coffee shop next door to Night Owls was closed. Chaz let out a sigh of relief, one that deepened as he saw the darkened front window of the bookstore. A shape moved within, too short to be anyone but Elly. Her hand came swooping up along the glass, completing a dark, smeary circle that began to glow a dark, warning red. Bitch swore when she saw it.

Elly saw them coming. She stepped back from the window into a pool of amber from the streetlights outside. She waited until they were all looking at her, then she waved, an echo of Bitch’s greeting in the headlights, only her smile had a savage edge to it. Blood dripped from a gash on her palm.

They slowed to a stop in the middle of the street. Jackals swarmed around them, flowing out of the shadows, dropping from the rooftops like paint dripping from the edge of a canvas. Too many, he thought. There’s no way we had all these with us back there.

A new shadow joined Elly in the window. Val.

Bitch stepped forward, leaving Chaz in Twitch’s grasp. “Send out the kid,” she said, her voice bouncing off the empty storefronts. “Yours for ours, like we said.”

Val shook her head. “They’re both mine.”

Chaz registered Bitch’s slight nod a second before Twitch spun him around and slammed a fist into his jaw. He saw stars. Blood coated his tongue and he leaned over to spit it out. He snuck a glance at the window on his way back up. Val stood there, fists clenched. He tried communicating I’m okay with a look, but he wasn’t even sure his eyes were focusing correctly.

“Send the kid out,” said Bitch. “Your friend’s had a long enough day as it is.”

“I can’t do that.” She was shouting through the glass, but Chaz could hear the regret in her tone. “Let Chaz go, and when we figure out how to get this thing back on the pages, we’ll turn them over.”

Another nod. This time Twitch hit lower, driving into Chaz’ ribs. The air went out of him for the second time today, and this time, breathing it back in was agony. Cracked ribs, nose possibly broken, might’ve knocked a tooth or two loose there. They’re going to love me in the ER. If I get there.

Inside, Val lurched a step toward the door before she stopped herself. Her claws were out. Chaz dug deep, past the pain, and stood straight. He shook his head no.

Bitch snorted and gestured at the seething crowd of Jackals lining the street. “Look around,” she called. “It’s, what, yourself, three kids, and a pair of slut demons in there? You might have been the shit in Sacramento, but that crew’s all dead, from what I hear. Do you really want to be the last one standing again?”

Funny that he learned more about Sacramento from five seconds of Bitch mouthing off than he’d learned from Val in five years. But it made sense now—Val’s separation from the Boston colonies, her occasional overprotectiveness. She lost friends out there. Had she lost a Renfield, too? He’d never asked, and she’d never offered up the information. She’d been a vampire for forty-something years, though. She must have had one in that time. Before me.

If he was honest with himself—and what better time to be honest, really, when a bunch of assholes were beating the shit out of you in front of your friends?—he hadn’t asked because he was afraid the answer would make him jealous.

“Let him go,” Val said again, and again Twitch got him in the gut. Chaz felt his knees sag, but the kid didn’t let him fall over.

“We can start breaking bones next.” She paused and tilted her head, examining Elly’s bloody rune. “Or windows.”

The rock came sailing from behind them. Chaz saw its shadow arc across the pavement as Val and Elly both dove backward. Then came the terrible crash of plate glass shattering, incredibly loud on the night air. The Jackals around them strained forward like hunting dogs awaiting their master’s command.

“Last chance,” said Bitch.

Someone moved behind the register—Cavale?—and a gallon-sized milk jug wobbled its way through the air, cap open, its contents pouring out as it tumbled. Howls went up beneath its low arc, and when it finally hit the ground off to Chaz’ right, a clump of Jackals fell to their knees, scrabbling at their own skin.

“Get him out of here,” Bitch ordered. She turned and chattered at the rest of them in that guttural tongue, and a wave of Jackals surged toward the store.

Chaz struggled against Twitch as the kid pulled him away. He saw two shapes slide out of the sides of the broken window: tall and sinuous, wielding what looked like daggers. Sunny and Lia? More water bottles lobbed their way out, and Chaz was suddenly glad he’d slacked on bringing the recycling out for the last couple of weeks—Cavale must have taken them from the back room.

The store was receding. If Chaz couldn’t get out of Twitch’s grasp, he didn’t know when—or if—they’d bring him back here again. They were at the corner of Hill O’ Beans when Chaz remembered Marian’s vial. He stopped fighting Twitch so he could reach into his pocket. Despite the Jackals using him as a seat cushion and the punches Twitch had thrown, the vial had survived intact.

Chaz squinted at it. His eyes took their time focusing, but finally he could read Marian’s tiny handwritten label by the overnight lights coming out of the bakery’s display window: Silver Nitrate.

“Fuck, dude.” He doubled over, forcing Twitch to slow down. “Hang on, you broke my rib. I can’t fucking breathe.”

The kid finally stopped, loosening his hold on Chaz’ arm, but not letting go. “You’ve got like ten seconds.”

One shot at this. Chaz gulped a couple of breaths, the wheezing and snuffling only half faked. Twitch hovered over him, clearly wanting to keep moving. Perfect. Chaz lurched upright, bringing his right hand up with the vial cupped in his palm. It was a textbook movie-star slap. Twitch’s whole head turned with the force of it. The vial shattered on his cheekbone, driving a sliver of glass deep into Chaz’ palm.

There was a second in which he was sure it hadn’t worked, that all he’d done was made his own situation worse.

Then Twitch’s skin started to blacken and smoke, and Twitch began to scream. He let go of Chaz to clutch at his face, the side of it melting like thin plastic in a microwave. The lips peeled back from his snout; Chaz could see all the teeth on that side as they snapped and clacked with Twitch’s barks of pain.

He didn’t stick around to watch any more. When he turned back toward the store, he saw that the herd of Jackals advancing on Night Owls had thinned. What had seemed like a hundred of them lining the street had dropped way down—twenty or thirty of them, tops, and a few already down for the count. Shadows shaped like Jackals flickered in and out of existence, their solidity varying with the pitch of Twitch’s screams. So he’s the illusionist, not Bitch.

Was the illusionist, maybe. Chaz glanced back at the kid to make sure he wasn’t going to come lurching after him like the villain in a slasher flick, but he was curled up on the sidewalk, fetal.

Chaz stumbled back toward the fray, sticking to the edges of the buildings. He could see Sunny and Lia now, their blades smoking as they danced through a knot of Jackals. It had been so long since he’d seen their true forms, he’d forgotten how captivatingly beautiful they were. He stood, mesmerized. Watching them fight was like watching a complex, brutal, marvelous dance. Then Cavale darted past him, intent on a target off to Chaz’ left, and broke the spell. Chaz shook himself. He couldn’t see Elly or Justin, but the woman trading blow for blow with Bitch was . . .

. . . was not Val.

He had time to think Katya? before a pair of hands shot out from the store’s window and dragged him inside.

“I swear, when this is over I’m having you microchipped,” said Val, as she pulled him into a hug.