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“Where is my big dumb baby boy? Who took him? I’m going to rip their – oh. Oh no.”
She looked out onto the city, her breath catching in her throat, shoulders visibly slumping.
“Yeah,” Artemis said. “This is definitely a problem.”
23
My lungs struggled for air as I sprinted through the streets, the goddess of the moon and the hunt at my side. By that point we were well past caring about the Veil, and besides, California? No one really bats an eyelash if you see a woman walking the streets in a toga and sandals with a bow and arrow strapped to her back. Chances are, there’s a fantasy convention in town.
Box was a different matter entirely, though. We needed all the help we could get, and if that meant having backup in the form of a sentient little treasure chest with the personality of a loyal dog and the appetite of a half-starved dinosaur, then so be it. Chips of asphalt flew as Box’s wooden undercarriage smashed at the street with every bounding leap. If we survived this, maybe I could teach him a thing or two about growing a pair of legs.
Where we were headed to, though, was anybody’s guess. There was no sign of Belphegor and his three hags – worse, no sign of Florian. But the slow, creeping spread of the carpet of flowers had to mean that they were at the center of it all, and as completely dangerous as it sounded, the center was where we needed to go. That was starting to look very much like Central Square, of all places, the city’s geographic heart, and incidentally, the stomping grounds for the Valero chapter of the Lorica.
That, at least, explained the clutch of mages already actively patrolling the streets. Hands attacked the overgrowth of crimson flowers, blasting magic from their bare fingers. Scions barked commands and instructions as they contributed their own powerful magics. Yet even with twenty or so mages at work, there was no stopping the tide of flowers. They kept on growing, and growing, and growing.
I skidded to a halt, just at the same time that Artemis did. She looked down at her feet, trampling a bunch of the blooms under one sandaled foot, then glowering at the ground as she found them multiplying again. I could have been imagining things, but it looked to me as if three more flowers blossomed for every one that she’d stomped. Nearby, Box snuffled as he snapped and chomped at every petal in reach. I couldn’t tell if he was helping or hurting.
“This is a nightmare,” I muttered, my chest heaving as my body strained to recover from our run. “The Lorica’s out in full force and they’re barely getting anything under control. This is a damn nightmare.”
“Oh, really? You think so?” Artemis snarled as she kicked at another cluster of flowers, cursing under her breath as those, too, grew and multiplied with the deaths of their forebears. “Let’s forget that I’m a totally vulnerable actual goddess out in your reality for a second and think about this. How the hell are we supposed to fight this – whatever the hell all this garbage is?”
My hand shook as I ran it through my hair, as I searched Central Square wildly for any sign of the Prince of Sloth. Where the hell could he be hiding?
I had to thank the last of my fraying nerves for keeping my limbs in control, at least, because a hand tapped me on the shoulder just then. If I’d been a tad more unhinged, a little more impulsive, just like the sword in my hand kept telling me to be, I would have spun around in an arc and drawn a circle through the air with its edge.
Instead I whirled on my feet, eyes huge and mad, looking fully insane, I assumed, when I came face to face with Maharani.
“Mr. Albrecht. You’ve come.”
I nodded hurriedly. “My friend. Florian, you met him at Beatrice’s place. He’s hurt, and he’s being used for this. Belphegor corrupted him somehow, controlled his mind, and together they’re making all this happen.”
“We put together as much,” she said, nodding.
“You have to help him. Couldn’t you, I don’t know, stop time?”
Maharani shook her head. “Not on this scale, no. The strain would simply kill me.” She clasped me by the shoulder, her fingers delicate, but stro
ng as they pressed reassuringly. “It’s all right, Mason. Florian, we’re going to find him, and we’re going to help him.” Her eyes flitted past me just then, and it was just the kind of pithy, noncommittal expression that told me she was probably only saying what I was hoping to hear.
Carefully, I took her hand off my shoulder, then shook my head. “I know what you’re thinking, that we’re going to have to kill him if it comes down to it. I’ll tell you right now that I’m not going to let that happen.”
Rani’s eyes kept focusing on a point just past my shoulder, long enough that I knew she was trying to communicate something with her gaze. I spun on my feet again, this time even more surprised to come face to chest with another of their number, a tall, scruffy man in a brown trench coat who clearly smoked too many cigarettes and didn’t get enough sleep.
“You know how this works, Mason,” the man said. “The Lorica is about saving both the mundane and magical communities at large, and if that means nipping the problem in the bud – pardon the pun – then that’s exactly what we’ll have to do.”
I gritted my teeth as I forced out as polite an answer as I could muster. “Hello, Royce. Good to see you again.”
Royce was also a Scion, someone I’d met through my friends at the Boneyard, as hard an ass as hard-asses came in the arcane underground. He was a Mouth and a Wing, which meant he wielded the powers of both telepathy and teleportation. It made him the ideal candidate for heading the Lorica’s PR department. Royce was all about damage control. Unfortunately, he was also all about taking the most direct route. If that meant smashing the problem to smithereens with a blunt instrument, then so be it.
He shook his head. “I wish we could have met again under more casual circumstances, but this is life in the underground, eh? One fucking disaster after the other.” He ran his fingers through his hair, his other hand already fumbling in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. “Christ. Cleaning this up and making the normals forget it ever happened is going to be a nightmare.”
Maharani tutted as she swatted at his hand. “This is no time for smoking. And those things are terrible for you, anyway. But I appreciate that you’ve thought ahead to cleaning up the scene. It means you are at least hopeful that we’ll survive this.”
“We’d goddamn better,” Artemis brayed, poking her head into the conversation, physically shunting her body into the circle. “Hi, I’m Artemis, goddess of the hunt, mistress of the moon, etcetera. Can we just get this over with? Have any of you Lorica goons located a target? Point me at it. Show me Belphegor and I’ll put an arrow through his face. Done and done. Game over.”
I wasn’t expecting Royce to look so flustered. He immediately put away his cigarettes when Artemis stared at him when he wouldn’t even listen to Maharani about them in the first place. “It’s – it’s not that simple,” he stammered. “We’ve got our Eyes working on it, scrying the scene, but we’re talking a demon prince here. One of the Seven. If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”
“Interesting, isn’t it, sister?” A hand snaked across Artemis’s shoulders, draping along her back with familiarity and just a hint of filth. The grin Loki offered us was sticky, sweet enough to make my skin crawl. “How much the humans bleat when one among us thinks to overstep their silly little laws.”
