Frostbite (Modern Knights Book 1) Read online

  She had seen TV shows about New York. They took care of kids there. They had detectives who investigated crimes about kids and lots of social workers who knew how to do their job. They’d put her with child services and the caseworker would believe her when she said her dad hit her. She didn’t think the police in New York could arrest her dad in North Carolina, but she knew they wouldn’t send her back. She would be safe with a foster family until her knight came to her. If she was really lucky, she wouldn’t even need him when he did show up. She could take care of herself. Still, she would love him. He was a knight, after all, and his visitation had given her the confidence she needed to escape.

  The bus came and Carrie walked on at the heels of the man she had temporarily adopted. The driver took their tickets, but didn’t say anything. Carrie took a seat by herself on the row behind the pretend father. The rest of the day was spent studying the map she had purchased at the bus station and staring out the window. Carrie had escaped from the monster and was making her way to the fabled City of the North.

  It wasn’t marked on her map or on any of the road signs, but Carrie Ann Womack was heading straight to hell. It would be four years, six months, and two days before she would find herself sliding into an IHOP booth across from her predestined knight.

  Part Five

  Seasons Change

  “Is the pen mightier than the sword? Maybe, maybe not. Size doesn’t always count for as much as you might think: I’ve seen a goblin kill a dragon. Wait, the moral of that story is don’t swallow anything whole that’s holding a spear. Still, it’s not wise to judge a book by its cover.”

  - Jadim Cartarssi, Off-topic Parabalist

  1

  “Not bad for a newbie.” By the sound of her voice, Veruca was clearly entertained. “The way you’re spending money, a girl would think you had been rich forever.”

  “It’s not my money,” I said, defensively. “Besides, Lucien had most of this stuff lying around already.”

  She slid up beside me. Her long, lone bang was carnation pink today, a color that I’d come to associate with her being more playful than normal. “Relax, tiger. I think it’s nice. I bet you could sling some serious magic in here.”

  I hoped she was right. Lucien Valente has opened up his checkbook to help me open up shop. Valente International Headquarters already had a ritual magic room, but it was located a floor below the company’s servers and firewalls. To date, the National Enquirer had run three different stories about the specters Valente web surfers ran into the one and only day I was in said ritual room. After that, Lucien and I both agreed it would be best if I spent most of my time off-site.

  Fortunately, Valente owned an abandoned motel through one of his subsidiaries. The first floor was being renovated for use as halfway house apartments for sex offenders, which had more to do with tax write-offs than charitable interests on Valente’s part. They weren’t exactly my first choice of neighbors, but their parole stipulated that they couldn’t own or operate computers, much less have Internet access. I suspected the other reason Lucien picked this spot for me was that no one would miss my new neighbors if a ritual ever called for a human sacrifice or two.

  “I knew I liked the guy for some reason. He’s practical.”

  I ignored him. If that was on Lucien’s mind, I didn’t want to know. I was finding that applied to a lot of things when it came to my new boss: I didn’t want to know.

  “Because if you knew, you would have to do something about it. Damn hero complex.”

  “You said it.”

  “Ever thought about applying that principle to Sarai?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Colin?” Veruca’s tone was puzzled, suddenly cautious and curious. “Are you okay?”

  I shook the cobwebs out of my brain and let my fingers wrap around her delicate hand. “I’m getting there. Just an old ghost in the machine.”

  “Really?” She perked up.

  “No.” I hoped. Surely it was just me in here, right? I looked her in the eyes. They were currently mint green, but slowly fading towards tan. They were easy eyes to get lost in.

  “Liar.” She pecked me on the cheek with her lips, then wrapped one leg around mine. We had enough sparring matches that I recognized my growing peril and shifted my weight to brace against the coming leg sweep.

  Of course, we’d also sparred enough that I knew my preparations were utterly hopeless. “I yield, milady. I was just thinking that there are some things in life that I’m better off not knowing.”

  “I’m not sure which statement is smarter. I think you are better off knowing when I’m about to kick your ass.” She kissed me again, this time on the lips.

  I relaxed. I wasn’t eager to crash down on the stone-tiled floor of my arcane laboratory. I was still sore from our morning workout and that was entirely done on padded surfaces.

  The second floor of the motel was entirely de-walled, save where they were a structural necessity, making one big room out of what used to be twenty-four rooms. The shag carpeting and picture windows went out along with the interior walls. It still looked like there were windows from the outside, but they had all been plastered over, save for one on the western side and one on the eastern side. In the center of my roughly 7,200 square foot apartment, a flawlessly round silver circle had been embedded in the floor. I could have parked Dorothy inside the circle’s nine-foot radius. I could probably squeeze two Doras in there, without either touching.

  All that had been more or less to my specification, once Valente had asked me what kind of setup I needed. As soon as the remodeling was finished (I won’t say how quickly he got it done; no one would believe me), the special deliveries began to arrive. Lucien had a rabid hunger for the supernatural and had accumulated thousands of relics and artifacts over the years. Those of known power and property were employed elsewhere throughout the company or were in Lucien’s personal possession, but that left a large number of items that were suspected of being magical, but with propertus arcanus unknown.

  Veruca and I were standing five feet from a prime example. The workers had constructed a display case to house two crossed identical spears. Supposedly, they were exact replicas of the Spear of Destiny, made by Hitler’s henchmen after the original escaped their custody. The lives of their past owners were interesting to say the least, but whether it was because they owned the spears, or because they were weirdo freaks, remained to be seen. When I asked Lucien why he sent them to me, he said he thought they might be of more use to a Catholic wizard than to a Taoist CEO. I thought they were creepy, but I was learning to pick my fights. If I was going to object every time Lucien Valente did something that bothered, frightened, or annoyed me, I might as well resign.

  “So what’s on the agenda for today?” Veruca queried.

  “I’m not sure. There’s a representative from the Unseelie court coming here to meet me tonight. The meeting’s set for sundown, but I’m afraid I haven’t checked the paper yet. Somewhere between six and seven. I should probably have some token of hospitality ready: a bottle of red wine, maybe. Lucien is sending me another batch of Jane Doe reports to sort through that loosely match Sarai’s description. Other than that, not much. Anything you want to do?”

  “Actually, I’ve got a job to take care of.” She kissed me on the forehead. “It’s been a fun month, Colin, but Mr. Valente still needs new art for his office.”

  “I don’t want to know, do I?”

  “Probably not. But I’ll tell you if you ask.”

  I shook my head. “Not necessary, my love. When will I see you again?”

  “Shouldn’t take more than three or four days.”

  “Short job, huh?” I didn’t know much about the murder-for-hire business, but I assumed it usually took weeks to properly plan and execute a job.

  She laughed. “Not really. Most stateside jobs only take five or six hours. This one’s international.”

  A whistle, low and somber, escaped my lips. “This isn’t the
first job since we’ve been back in Boston, is it?”

  “Our boss has a lot of enemies, Colin. I figured you didn’t want to know.” She pulled a black velvet necklace box out of her back pocket. “I got you something to keep you company until I get back. A second bodyguard of sorts.”

  “A going away present, huh?” I opened it up, looked at it, turned it, looked at it again, and still had to ask, “What is it?”

  “A ’til-I-get-back-you’d-better-not-get-yourself-killed present. It’s a chaos blade.”

  It looked like a letter opener made from soapstone. As I pulled it from its box, the crystal changed from off-white to limestone green. It didn’t look like much, but I could feel the vibrant hum of magical energy throbbing from within it. “What’s it do?”

  “Like most weapons, the idea is to put the pointy end into the other guy.” She took a couple of strides backward. “A chaos blade just lets you bring a few unexpected surprises to the party. It’s like the AK-47 of the supernatural world: everybody’s got one.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “This thing? Not much range to it, is there?”

  Veruca brushed the carnation bang back out of her eye. “You’d be surprised. What’s the wooden katana we practice with feel like in your hand? Try to imagine it.”

  I did. The letter opener, now a greenish-gold color, twisted in my hand until it was a sky blue duplicate of my three-foot long practice blade. Weight was no issue; it still felt as light as a nail file in my grip.

  “Shrink it down to the size of a hairpin and you can walk it past any metal detector or full body scanner in the world. Some colors set off Geiger counters, but most don’t.”

  “Some colors?” I mentally reshaped the blade to a large Scottish claymore. It stayed blue for half a second, then faded to muddy brown. Despite being six-feet long and three inches wide, it couldn’t have weighed more than a few ounces. “Any way to control the color?”

  “Nope,” Veruca replied. “Or if there is, I’ve never heard of it. It’s materialized chaos; it’s not meant to be fully controlled. Color does matter, though: when you hit a target, it has extra effects based on the current manifested color.”

  I tried to pretend we were talking about a new video game and found the conversation a little bit easier to process. “Effects? Like what?”

  “Hard to tell ahead of time. If it’s bright red or reddish orange, it will probably catch stuff on fire. But I wouldn’t be surprised by anything that it does. The only firm rule is that when two of them go against each other, the first person to hit usually wins. For the size and price, there is nothing more deadly than a chaos blade in the hands of a creative user.”

  I gave the sword a couple of hesitant practice swings, being careful to avoid my girlfriend or any of the display cases. I’d never used anything like it, but it did exactly what I wanted it to, more like an extension of my own arm and will then a held object. “So accidentally poking myself through my jeans pocket would be bad?”

  Veruca was smiling as she watched me test out my gift. “Maybe, but most likely not. You hear horror stories sometimes, but the blades seem to have a good sense of who they work for, who they belong to. I’d say that one likes you; it fits well in your grip.”

  I thought of something outside of the blade family, a spiked morningstar like something out of a cheesy B gladiator movie: overly large and visually menacing. The chaos blade went through something more like a baseball bat, before readjusting to fit my mental image, now a dazzling crimson. “I like it. Thank you, V.”

  I shrank it back down to a letter opener, then thought better of it and imagined an old school fountain pen. My gift cooperated and I slid it into my shirt pocket. Veruca walked up and looked me over. “Well, that’s a new way to carry one. It suits you and your revamped wardrobe. Harvard dropouts just don’t look right in jeans and a t-shirt.”

  “This from an assassin who never leaves home without something pink on?” Three weeks ago, I would’ve been too scared of her to use that particular barb, but I was evolving into my new life position. I had upgraded my clothing: a dark blue tailor-made long sleeved shirt and charcoal gray slacks. Only the leather jacket and steel-toed boots remained from my previous incarnation. I would be buried in both if I had any choice in the matter.

  She planted a kiss on me. “I may wear pink, but at least I didn’t get my ass kicked by a girl this morning. Don’t skimp on the exercises: I expect you to be more of a challenge when I get back.”

  “What about Thanksgiving? Are you going to be back in time for my first attempt at cooking a turkey?” It was the Friday before, but I knew she was less than eager for the event.

  “That depends. Are you using an oven or magic? Your sorcery I trust, your kitchen skills not so much.”

  Blow up one little microwave and no one lets you forget it.

  2

  After V left, I ran down to the liquor store to pick up a bottle of wine. I wasn’t sure what was appropriate for an Unseelie ambassador, but Autumn Chill red seemed like it might do the trick. I splurged on a bottle of Kahlua and some high priced vodka just in case the fae wasn’t a wine drinker…or in case I got lonely while Veruca was on assignment. Without the familiar comforts of road life, I found it harder and harder to sleep at night. If vodka was strong enough to help people survive Communist Russia, it would work for me, too.

  I stopped by an ATM to see if my paycheck had made it into my account yet. Not that I was in any danger of going broke: with the next check, I would be approaching seven digits in the account. My check was in, so I went back into the bank and requested twenty grand (which they provided after another phone call to Valente’s office), and separated it into two stacks. The first stack went into my wallet as mad money. The second I wrapped in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil, and added it to the growing pile under Dora’s spare tire. It would take some explaining in the event of a police search of my vehicle, but I knew I might not be a personal wizard forever. An escape fund could come in handy if Valente ever decided I had outlived my usefulness. I now had fifty grand squirreled away for a really bad rainy day.

  “Rainy day? More likely the second coming of Noah’s flood.”

  When I closed Dora’s trunk, I was startled to discover I wasn’t alone in the strip mall parking lot. Special Agent Rick Salazar leaned against the trunk of a sidewalk-encased tree. He had experienced a wardrobe change, too, in the intervening month: only the tan trench coat looked vaguely FBIish. Beneath it, he sported threadbare blue jeans and a white t-shirt. “Mr. Fisher.”

  I wondered how much of that process he had just witnessed. It wasn’t illegal to store bricks of cash in the trunk of your car, but it wasn’t normal, either. As I slowly walked towards him, I absentmindedly brushed the pen in my shirt pocket. “Agent Salazar. Is this an official visit?”

  He shook his salt-and-pepper hair. “Furthest from. If anybody asks, I’m just leaning here, trying to remember my ATM code.” He glanced around the parking lot furtively. “I’m not allowed to talk to you.”

  “Not allowed? The bureau’s still convinced I’m a psycho?”

  “No.” He shifted the peppermint he was sucking on to the other side of his mouth. “Your employer. Nobody talks to Valente employees in a formal capacity without a warrant and the director’s personal authorization.”

  That shook me. “Is Valente under investigation?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t want to know. Either he has been for the last decade and we don’t know enough to arrest him or he’s bought the whole damn bureau from the deputy director level on up.” He paused, clearly deliberating whether he should ask what he had come to ask. “Were you working for him last time we talked?”

  “Nope. He hired me the morning after.”

  He nodded, his internal lie detector apparently satisfied. “Do you have a clue who you’re working for?”

  “The devil I know.” That line drifted back to me from my first interview.

  Salazar grunted. “Close enough. He’
s bad news, Mr. Fisher. I can sympathize with some terrorists: they believe that what they are doing is the right thing, at least within their own twisted logic. Lucien Valente…all he believes in is money and power. He’ll sell weapons to the Israelis, then invent counter-measures to sell to the Palestinians, then upgrades to let the Israelis bypass the counter measures. Drugs, slaves, guns, brand-name clothing…he’ll sell anything if the money is good.”

  “Nobody else wanted to pay for my skills. A man’s got to make a living somehow.”

  “Like this?” Salazar thrust a manila envelope at me.

  I looked inside and wished I hadn’t. The contents were a stack of forty or fifty black and white crime scene photos. The people in them resembled the aftermath of a war, just waiting for the bulldozer to dig the mass grave. All of them were dead from the same wound: massive, gaping holes where their hearts should have been. I recognized a few of the faces despite slight decomposition, especially the large man with his right arm in a crude sling. The last time I had seen him, he had been trying to separate my head from my body via tomahawk. “The Old Ways. When?”

  “Hard to tell. We didn’t find them ’til more than a week later. Sometime between when you asked for directions at the drug rehab center and when you and Veruca Wakefield left town two days later.”

  I shot him my best tough guy look. “Are you sure this isn’t an official interview?”

  He shrugged. “You could tell me you killed all of them and I couldn’t use a word of it in court.”

  “I didn’t kill any of them.”

  “That’s the damnedest part of it, you didn’t. It would work so much better if you had. You found one of the bodies, you went to work for the victim’s employer, heck, took over the victim’s old job for all I know. I’ve got witnesses that show you were out there trying to find a group of people, who all just happen to get killed that same way a couple days later. The more I look at those pictures, the more those chest wounds look like what a really big animal maw would do to a human body…and your old car got tore apart by wild animals, then burned to slag, a few nights before they died. You leave town and the murders stop.” He held up his hands in puzzlement. “If I found a guy who swore he saw you working as a lion tamer, I might have something that made half a lick of sense.”