Gorgon Read online

  “When you leave, he’s here on his own with a couple of part-time kitchen staff and cleaners that I trust, plus some bored demons who are going to avoid him, given how strict the rules are for interacting with him.”

  “Is he unsafe?” David asked. Samantha shook her head.

  “No. He’s just sixteen.”

  “You want us to stay,” Jenny said. Samantha licked her lips.

  “I’d like you to consider staying here permanently.”

  David looked at Jenny.

  “We both have Rangers,” Jenny said. David nodded, waiting. “And it’s against the rules,” his wife continued. He nodded again. “The rules are there to keep everyone safe,” Jenny said, her pitch going up slightly. David nodded. She pressed her mouth, looking away. “You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”

  “Not without you,” he said.

  “But you know what you want,” Jenny said.

  “Yes.”

  “You saw this coming, and you didn’t say anything,” Jenny said.

  “It’s just math, babe,” David told her. “Didn’t think it would happen so soon, but this isn’t her fortress of solitude,” he said, indicating Samantha. “They’re going to be on the road almost as much as they were before.”

  “What about the… angel?” Jenny asked. She was still having trouble believing Kelly was what everyone asserted he was, regardless of the proof she’d seen.

  “He went with Jason,” Samantha said.

  “No kidding?” David asked. “Didn’t see that coming.”

  “No one really did,” Samantha said. “But he’s just a kid, himself, really.”

  “I see that,” David said. Samantha nodded, grateful he was making it this easy.

  “I know it’s a lot to ask…”

  “What, for us to give up our mortgage payment, get rid of the need for both of us to carry part-time jobs to feed ourselves, and for me to get to spend all my time with my brother and taking care of my Ranger? Oh, you really are a terrible person for asking me to do that,” David teased, glancing at Jenny. Jenny glared back.

  “It’s a big deal, Simon,” she said. “And you know it.”

  Samantha heard the plea to authority, there, in his Seeker name. So did David.

  “I know, babe,” he said. “But we don’t really have a better option, do we?”

  She opened and closed her mouth.

  “You shouldn’t take it so lightly,” she said.

  “And you shouldn’t make a big deal out of a foregone conclusion,” he said.

  “I need you here,” Samantha said. “He’s not allowed out of the mansion until I figure some stuff out…”

  “What do you know?” David asked, leaning fractionally forward. She shook her head.

  “Not much more than I did before. Mostly more questions. I have one idea where I could look to see if I could find out about a Child who lived in the fourteen hundreds, but it’s from a library that is at least eighty percent fabrication. I don’t know how much of it I’d be able to trust until I got my hands on it.”

  “We have friends back home,” Jenny said. “This is a monastery.”

  “One that’s full of demons,” David answered with a quirk of a smile. “I know. But we can come and go as much as we want, and we could make friends in town.” He made a little sideways motion with his head. “When we aren’t snowed in.”

  Samantha nodded. She’d thought of that. Winter was going to be interesting, up here. Vermont. Carter had picked it, and she hadn’t the foggiest idea why. She would have guessed he would either put her in the middle of a corn field in Ohio or just outside of New York City. But Vermont…

  “I know you don’t do a lot of business up here, but Sam and I have been talking about making this into a waystation for Rangers, too.”

  “Absolutely not,” Jenny said. “That’s so far over the line we can’t even see it anymore.”

  “Why?” David asked.

  “Because we’d be here,” Jenny said. “And because…” she wrinkle her nose. “They don’t know about all this stuff. There’s no way we can convince the entire establishment that…”

  She hesitated, unsure how to encapsulate all of it.

  “There’s no such thing as vampires,” Samantha offered. “Can’t tell you how many times I had that fight. I actually still think Jason believes in them.”

  David snorted.

  Jenny did not.

  “We’ll talk it through, Sam,” David said. “At the very least, we won’t go until you and Sam get back.” He looked at Jenny. “Okay?”

  “I can live with that,” she said. David nodded and stood.

  “I’m going to go unpack.”

  “I’m going to go tell Ash you’re staying,” Samantha said. “He was worried.”

  David left with the bags as Jenny walked Samantha to the door. Samantha watched after David for just a moment.

  “I knew it the moment I laid eyes on him,” she said to Jenny with a slight smile.

  “What’s that?” Jenny asked.

  “That he and Jason Elliott were related,” Samantha said. Jenny snorted.

  “I’m going to pretend I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Samantha winked.

  “We’ll make it work.”

  Jenny nodded.

  “Thanks for taking it seriously.”

  “Always.”

  <><><>

  “You get everything sorted out?” Sam asked as she returned. Samantha’s mind was still on Ash, and she’d failed to notice Sam watching her.

  “Oh,” she said. “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Really?” he asked. “That didn’t feel true.”

  “What?” she asked. “Oh, sorry. No. I don’t know what to do about Ash.”

  “I know,” he said. “You’ll figure it out.”

  She sighed.

  “Keeping him alive is only the first little bit,” she said. Sam sat down on the bed.

  “You want to talk?”

  “Not yet,” she told him. “Are we packed?”

  “You should go through it, but I think so.”

  She gave him a quick nod, running her fingers through her hair.

  “I figure we leave tomorrow, first thing.”

  “You sure you want to wait that long?” he asked. She pulled herself away from the stuff with Ash, listening to the underlying current of things going on in Sam’s head. She couldn’t hear his literal thoughts, but she could feel what he was feeling, across the bond they’d shared for a number of years, now. At the moment, underneath the surface, where his genuine concern for her was, there was an anxiety, sort of a self-protecting feeling of impending pain.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. He shook his head.

  “Don’t be.”

  “I am,” she said. “I… I didn’t think.”

  He’d be the one to scout ahead through the hellfactory, if that’s what it was. He’d see everything in there, beyond what she would have to see or experience. Worse, he’d see it as a disembodied psychic vision, helpless to fix or prevent any of it.

  “Stop,” he said. “It is what it is. We can go in the morning. That’s fine.”

  She looked at her watch. They could get in at least four or five hours tonight, if they left now.

  Sam was watching her carefully. There was no such thing as guardedness between the two of them, but he was torn between letting her pick her own timing and knowing what they were going to find when they got there, if Jalice was right. Samantha nodded.

  “No, you’re right. We should go now. I’ll go let them know. Go ahead and load up the car.”

  “Go ahead and check what I’ve got in there,” he said. “It’s worth doing right.”

  She kissed his cheek quickly and started inventorying the bags.

  <><><>

  They met Jalice and another demon hunter named Rayray outside of New Orleans in a Walmart parking lot.

  “That’s a nice car,” Rayray said, leaning against the
beater of a black cargo van he and Jalice were in. Samantha grinned.

  “Thanks. She won’t hold up to the swamp, but she’s good on the highways.”

  “No, she surely won’t,” Rayray said, “but there ain’t nothing much around good for trawlin’ the swamps.”

  Sam unloaded the trunk, handing Samantha her backpack and shouldering the pair of duffel bags himself.

  “The ill-gotten gains of magic are their own punishment,” Jalice said.

  “Says the witch,” Samantha answered.

  “Did that even make sense?” Sam asked.

  “Jalice takes it more seriously than I do,” Rayray said. “That’s why she’s more important than me.”

  Jalice shot him a look, then motioned to the van.

  “Get in.”

  “So how do we get there?” Sam asked, opening the back doors to throw the duffels into the van. Samantha let herself in the back, sitting her backpack on the floor between her feet. She was surprised how much she’d missed it.

  “Airboat,” Rayray said. “Ain’t like Florida, round these parts, but we make our way good enough. You any good with a machete?”

  “For demons or trees?” Sam asked. Rayray laughed.

  “We’re gonna get on just fine, you and me.”

  “This isn’t about making friends,” Jalice said. “This is a strategic strike at a deeper darkness.”

  Rayray laughed again.

  <><><>

  The ride from the little town to the swamp was only a couple of minutes. Rayray knew where to take the van to park it, then he paid a sketchy-looking man in battered fatigues and a fishing hat, who walked them out to a dock and handed over a set of keys to a mossy platform with a giant fan. Samantha had been on an airboat once before, and she didn’t think fondly of the experience. She remembered being sloshed with soppy green water while the man driving had cackled from behind the steering column.

  Come to think of it, Carter had paid that guy.

  She wrinkled her nose, but took the seat where Rayray indicated. Jalice sat, cross-legged, on the front of the boat.

  “Does she always wear the cape?” Sam asked.

  “Mostly,” Rayray answered. “No one can figure why.”

  “It’s dramatic,” Samantha said. “I’ve worn one a few times. I like them.”

  “Not in Louisiana in July, darlin,” Rayray said. Samantha shrugged. If Jalice heard them, she ignored them.

  “Can you give me a bearing where we’re headed?” Sam asked. Rayray pointed, then started up the engine. Samantha felt Sam leave, zooming ahead of them, expanding out to take in more range with the detailed awareness he could have of that much space. His ability was still growing. The idea of being able to see that much space didn’t make sense to Samantha, and he’d stopped trying to explain it to her.

  Her awareness of him split, when he went looking around through his psychic vision, partially next to her here on the boat and partially far away, growing farther, thinner, his sensory inputs still here, but his focus out there, growing more and more intent as he took in more space.

  And then he narrowed in. Samantha closed her eyes and pointed.

  “It’s that way,” she said.

  No one heard her, but she opened her eyes to see Rayray nodding at her. Sam winced away from what he found, but burrowed in, venturing through the space he’d found with increasing horror.

  Jalice hadn’t been wrong.

  Samantha was too busy focusing on Sam to be prepared for the gunshot. She jumped, on her feet before she knew what was happening, and found Rayray putting away a shotgun. He pointed.

  “Demon,” he said. She gave him a wide-eyed look, checking with Sam, who was more jolted than she’d been.

  “Didn’t see that coming, did you?” Jalice asked without looking.

  “We’re here because we believed you,” Samantha said. “And we’re going to help you. Do you have to make this as unpleasant as possible, or am I missing something?”

  “It’s in her job description somewhere,” Rayray said, starting the engine back up. “Or so I heard it.”

  “This one’s at least as bad as the last one,” Sam said to Samantha over the sound of the fan blades. “They’ve been there a lot longer, I think.”

  Samantha shook her head.

  She needed to find out whose idea this was and convince them that it was a bad one. She was already tired of cleaning out these holes.

  The first time, she hadn’t had her full powers and she’d had to rely on Jason to kill most of the pitlords that were running it while she left Sam on his own to deal with a horde of squish demons. He’d done fine, but it had been by luck. The second time, she’d found a much more elegant setup where demons had kidnapped a host of pain specialists and had forced them to inflict continuing pain on a number of other people. Fear, pain, and blood. The three principle pleasures of demons. That had been… She didn’t like to think about it. Demons were as intellectual as people were - some were smarter than others, and some were frighteningly capable. Add to that the time rate difference, hellside, and they could take as long as they wanted to plan something. Samantha had been dead for fifteen minutes, but she’d spent eighty-five years on the paradise plane. Give a demon a year of earth time to come up with an idea, there was no reason to expect it wouldn’t be well-considered.

  The thing was, they had habits. Patterns. And they tended to be afraid of Samantha and her people enough to keep them from doing anything really, really stupid.

  This was really, really stupid. And somehow the traditional threat wasn’t working as a deterrent the way it always had.

  She’d let the first one go, thinking it was a one-off, and that she’d killed the upstart pitlords who were trying to take in territory where they wouldn’t have to compete with the big boys on the hell plane.

  The second one, she reflected, she’d just been too busy. She was trying to save someone named Ashley without knowing who Ashley was, and she’d just moved on without really thinking about what it meant that she’d found another hellfactory on the earth plane.

  This was one too far. She was going to have to end this, if they had any hope of keeping control over how far the demons in Carter’s dominion were willing to go.

  “We’re going to get them,” she said to Sam. He nodded.

  “I know.”

  She leaned against his shoulder, feeling the vibration of the boat through her body and listening to the muted sound of the water.

  “Damn,” Rayray said after a while. “This is where we start cutting.”

  Samantha blinked, taking in the space around them again. She should be paying better attention, she knew, but she felt Sam out around them, looking for anything that she needed to know about.

  “The place is swarming with goblins,” he said as Rayray cut the engine again and walked to the front of the boat with a machete. Samantha got hers out and stood as well, going to help cut vines and saplings out of the way of the boat.

  “How much further?” Samantha asked Sam. He shrugged, eyes still vacant.

  “Maybe a quarter mile,” he said. “We aren’t that far from the van.”

  “Distance gets a lot bigger when there’s this much crap in front of you,” Rayray said. “Can you really see it?”

  “All of it,” Sam said. “It isn’t pretty.”

  “Damn,” Rayray said.

  “Don’t be impressed,” Jalice said. “He sold his soul to do it.”

  “All right, you can talk about me like that all you want, but psychicism is a natural condition,” Samantha said.

  “One that you cultivate,” Jalice said. Samantha looked down at her, still cross-legged there at the front edge of the platform.

  “You could be helping,” she said.

  “Too many machetes and too little space,” Jalice said. Samantha had to concede that it was probably the most rational thing the woman had said since she’d shown up at Eloin.

  She and Rayray hacked for a bit, dragging the boat alo
ng through the thick growth rather than using the engine again.

  “Demon,” Sam said, dragging Samantha’s attention to the grimy little creature swimming past them. She watched it for a minute, then drew a handgun and shot it.

  “Not like them to take to water,” she said.

  “No, it ain’t,” Rayray said.

  “Never let the disguises of the enemy fool you,” Jalice said.

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them,” Samantha said. “There’s a difference between investigating and being fooled.”

  Jalice glanced at her, but said nothing, returning to face forward as Samantha put her gun away.

  “What are they doing out here?” Samantha asked.

  “Secluded,” Sam said. “Looking around, I bet no one’s been out here in ten years.”

  “Sounds about right,” Rayray said. Samantha shook her head.

  “No, it’s bigger than that. Demons abhor water. That’s why New Orleans is so… weird. There’s so much human magic here, compared to the population of demons.”

  “A demon’s a demon,” Jalice said. Samantha sighed. Ignored her.

  “Swimming,” she said. She looked at Rayray. “How often do you get rain here?”

  “Most days,” he said. She shook her head again. Light and water, rain in particular, repelled demons. They’d put up with it if they had to, but they preferred darkness and drier climates, when they could get them. She looked down at the water and frowned.

  “Is it just me, or is the water black?”

  “Just swamp water,” Rayray said.

  “There’s a clearing off that way,” Sam said. “Don’t think it’s worth turning the engine back on, but it would save you some effort.”

  Samantha went back to her backpack, getting out a vial and taking a sample of the water while Rayray kept working. She held it up to the light, rolling the closed vial back and forth between her fingers.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I’d believe it if it were full of sediment, but this is just… black.”

  She showed it to Rayray, who shrugged. She looked harder at it, looking for any sign of what would have made it black, then shook her head and went back into her backpack. She found the things she was looking for, power testers, touching the dove feather ash to her tongue to make sure it was still in date. It sparkled like touching a live wire. She mixed the oil, the ash, and the fibers, then poured them in with the black water.