“Oh, gosh, no. Let’s skip three powerful weretigers, both the mature one and the younger one and the really young one. And the angels. And the psychic. And the half-demon hunk with the long black hair. And the vampire. Let’s go for the plain-vanilla human with the tragic life.” He turned away pointedly.
“If you weren’t a small animal, I’d take you down,” Fiji said. She was so angry it took her a moment to realize how ridiculous that was. Her mouth twitched.
“You could try,” Mr. Snuggly said coldly, and turned around to give her a glare. “Oh, you think that’s humorous!”
Fiji couldn’t manage to laugh, but she smiled. “You’ll definitely have to be there,” she said. “All hands on deck. It’ll be dangerous.”
Mr. Snuggly said, “The upside of this whole situation is that Rasta has been gone. I suppose they’ll bring him back afterward.”
“Sure. If there is an ‘after.’ Joe and Chuy miss Rasta.”
The cat made a sound just like hacking up a hairball. Fiji realized he was laughing. “Manfred should have let him get run over that day,” Mr. Snuggly said. “Brainless ball of fur.”
There were many things Fiji could have said in return, but she kept her mouth shut. She decided that the next day would be dedicated to looking up a spell to help her choose her deflowerer. “And that sucks,” she said, as she brushed her teeth.
28
What happens if this doesn’t work?” Diederik asked his father.
“Nothing good,” Quinn said, after a moment. He and Diederik were taking turns spray-painting a white circle. It encompassed the entire crossroad, and to be sure it was large enough they were including corners of sidewalk, edges of buildings, and one fire hydrant by the Midnight Hotel. Quinn cast an eye along the curve of the line and decided it was good. He continued, “I guess the town will disappear, or the demon will kill all the people living here and then begin to rampage, to make up for lost centuries. Diederik . . . I think it would be better if you leave town. I’d like to send you to stay with a friend of mine in Louisiana.”
“Run?” Diederik was outraged. “No, Dad, I’ll fight with you and the Rev. We are tigers!”
“I don’t think even weretigers can beat a demon, Diederik. It’s not like ordinary prey.”
“I’ve never seen a demon.” Diederik took the spray can from his father, taking his turn drawing a section of circle. As the traffic went through the stoplight, they had to wait until it was cleared either way to continue.
“I have. I fought a half-demon in the pits. Like Sylvester. And it tore me up.”
“But you won.” Diederik glanced at the center of the circle, under the stoplight. He estimated they were making the circle fairly even. Quinn had stood under the light for a moment, holding the string, and Diederik had run with it, stopping every few yards to put down a reference mark. They’d had to do it quickly, but it had worked.
“Yeah, I won. But only, I think, because she had already had a bout that day, and I was fresh.”
“Tell me about the pits.”
They’d stopped painting the circle while they talked, and Quinn glanced up at the evening sky. He was tired. It had been a busy day. “I’ll tell you if you’ll keep walking while we get this done,” he said.
“Was it like Gladiator?” Diederik asked. He’d just watched the movie on the hotel television.
“Yes, except real. My own blood. My own pain. My own fear. Every time I went in, I was not sure I would come out. Every fight might be my last. I didn’t like the person I became while I fought. But I had to fight.”
“To save your mom and your sister.”
Quinn nodded. “To save them.”
“Were they grateful?”
“I think they were, way down deep,” Quinn said. “But my mother, because of her ordeal at the hands of hunters, was crazy. And there are some obligations that are too painful to acknowledge. Some debts too big to be paid.”
“I hope I never owe anyone a debt like that,” Diederik said.
“I hope not, too, son.”
The circle was almost complete. Quinn thought it would have been better to allocate the painting to Lemuel, who could have done it at night. There were interested spectators in the windows of the hotel, but no one asked any questions or tried to stop them, which was one of the benefits of living in Midnight. Quinn looked up at the man on the upper floor, the one who rented the room with a great view of the pawnshop. Their eyes met. The man’s face stayed blank.
“How are we going to keep people out of the circle that night?” Diederik said, after they’d worked for a while in silence. “Regular people?”
“Considering only five cars have gone through the light while we’ve been trying to get the circle sprayed, and it’s evening now, I’m not too worried about that. I’m more concerned that some of the hotel people might look out their windows and get alarmed at seeing a couple having ritual sex in the middle of the road. If they call the police, the consequences will be really bad. But I expect defense of the circle will be up to Joe and Chuy. And maybe Sylvester can conceal us. I don’t know how good a shaman he is. I think it was a late calling of his.”
“Joe and Chuy aren’t anything like I thought they were when I met them,” Diederik said. “There’s something cold and scary about them, when you go below the surface.”
“They’re way more than they seem. And it’s a deep difference. They’re very good at acting like regular guys.” Quinn looked down at the section he’d just painted. The circle was now complete.
“I think of Joe and Chuy like they were my uncles. But they kind of scared me at the meeting.” It cost Diederik something to confess this, Quinn could see.
“That’s a reasonable reaction, Son,” Quinn said. “You don’t mess with angels, even fallen ones.”
“The demon . . . was he a fallen angel, too?”
“Good question. And they don’t always tell you the whole story. This is . . . God stuff. But my understanding is that demons, and devils, used to be angels, too, yes. But God, whatever name he or she wears, can read hearts and minds, and know the degree of evil and rebellion in each. The lust for power can corrupt even the best. So some got banished utterly and early to a different realm, and some were thrown to earth after the New Coming, like Joe and Chuy. But . . . maybe that’s all bullshit. I know some half-demons who are really good people.”
Diederik made a face. “Doesn’t that make you feel weird?”
“Talking about gods and demons? Yes, it does. I should spend more time thinking about it than I do.”
“I don’t like to think about a god looking at me and judging me.”
“I don’t think anyone enjoys that idea. The love part, yes, but the being-found-wanting part . . . we’re all worried about that.”
Diederik gave Quinn a startled look, as if he’d supposed his father wouldn’t venture into such deep waters. “Not you,” he said. “Not you, Dad.”
Quinn laughed and put his arm around Diederik’s shoulders. They’d been standing outside the hotel, and now they went in. Marina, behind the desk, smiled at Diederik in a very womanly way, and Quinn tried not to sigh. He’d had “The Talk” with Diederik when Diederik was a little tyke, because he’d known all too soon Diederik would need to know the facts. Diederik was good-natured and charming, and also outstandingly handsome, but there was a touch of feral about him that made the boy truly magnetic.
Quinn didn’t think he himself had ever been as attractive as his son, so he was really proud of Diederik’s lack of conceit. That was where the Rev had proved to be a good guardian. Vanity didn’t stand a chance with the Rev around.
Quinn ran up the stairs to his room, as Diederik and Marina exchanged a few words before Diederik went back to his job of dusting, vacuuming, and mopping the lobby and the bathroom off of it.
The apocalypse might be coming, but w
ork had to go on. Quinn called up the diagram of the venue of the next wedding he was hired to produce, in this case a true production—almost a three-ring circus, he thought. Velda and Ramon, both true shapeshifters, would be tying the knot in two weeks.
He paused for a moment when he pictured the bride and groom. He wondered if he’d ever get to have his own conventional marriage. His mate, Tijgerin, hadn’t survived, and his mother, too, was dead; they’d been the only two full-blooded female weretigers he’d ever known. But he had a son, which was all he could ask for. Quinn decided he’d be glad to find a woman of any heritage.
I’m a little old to be making such a resolution, he thought. But he was smiling. It was doable.
29
Nothing the next day went as planned. Nothing.
While the inhabitants of Midnight were preparing themselves for one crisis, which would fall in one more day, another presented itself without any of them seeing it coming—even Manfred, the psychic.
Just at eight o’clock in the morning, a big vehicle rumbled into town from the east. Joe and Chuy were running the water (the shower and the sink respectively), and they didn’t hear the sound as anything special. It roused Teacher, though, because he’d driven a vehicle that sounded like that at one point in his life. He pulled on his shoes and hurried out of his trailer.
No one in the hotel, except the man who lived in the front room overlooking the pawnshop, gave it a second’s thought. And he only thought how out of place it seemed.
The rumble gradually subsided into silence in front of Midnight Pawn. Lemuel’s shift was over and Bobo hadn’t come down yet, so no one came out of the shop to see what was happening.
“This vehicle is an abomination,” the Rev whispered, when he heard the noise of the motor. He was kneeling in prayer before the bare altar in his church.
The Rev liked to start the day with prayer. Diederik lived with the Rev, so his attendance was obligatory, and that morning Quinn had joined them, too. The Rev had spent the previous day reducing a chunk of hawthorn tree to ash, and Quinn had to put the ash in a bucket. But all that was on hold as the Rev cut short his prayer and the three men came out of the church to look at the abomination.
“That’s a stretch Hummer,” Quinn told Diederik, who had never seen one before. Since Quinn was an event planner, he was well versed in ostentatious vehicles.
Diederik was impressed, but Quinn saw that the Rev was having a bad reaction to the Hummer. The older man’s eyes went golden. He was sensing a threat, so his tiger was getting close to the surface. At his age, the Rev could change any time he wanted, as could Quinn. But Diederik still had to have the moon’s help, so if it came to fighting . . . Quinn laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. “You have a key, I think. Run. Wake Olivia. Tell Bobo to get out of the shop. Hurry.”
Diederik streaked across the road to unlock the side door of the pawnshop. He disappeared inside. Standing on that landing, he could yell upstairs for Bobo and downstairs for Olivia.
There were men getting out of the Hummer, now, men as unlike the Rev and himself as it was possible to get. They wore suits but with gun belts underneath. They had rifles in their hands. They looked in all directions. They might as well have had “HIGH-CLASS HOODS” tattooed on their foreheads. There were five of them, plus the driver, who got out but remained by the vehicle.
This looked a lot like a small invasion.
Quinn didn’t want to transform in public in broad daylight, but he didn’t have a weapon, and he was certain he was going to need one. He wished he hadn’t sent Diederik into the pawnshop, a wish that was confirmed when he saw all the armed men turning toward it.
The pawnshop was the target.
The newcomers began to move in the direction of the front door. They walked spread out, not in a clump; they knew what they were doing, Quinn thought. The men were watchful, glancing from side to side, but they seemed not to fear the Rev or Quinn, maybe because the two stayed still.
Quinn couldn’t risk making a move, though, not until Diederik reappeared. Every second made him tenser. Just as he was about to run across the street to put himself between the invaders and the pawnshop, the Rev took an unexpected step.
“Fiji!” the Rev bellowed in his deep voice, and out of her front door the witch popped. Fiji looked like a fluffy puppet in her nightgown and rose-colored bathrobe. Her eyes widened as she took in the armed men and their approach to the pawnshop. Then she came off her porch and down the path to the sidewalk, her hands held ready as if she were about to perform surgery. Her zebra-striped slippers thwacked against the concrete in the eerie silence.
Not too surprisingly, the invaders did not recognize Fiji as a threat until she got halfway across the road. And then she froze them.
“I feel like a one-trick pony,” Fiji said. The Rev ran to stand by her. Quinn was right on his heels. Quinn stopped to examine the closest gunman, as still as a department store dummy. He was so overwhelmed with relief that he couldn’t find the voice to tell Fiji how grateful he was.
“No shame in that, if the trick works,” the Rev said practically. He began going from man to man, divesting each one of weapons and telephones. The telephones were Quinn’s suggestion, and Quinn helped.
Bobo unlocked the front door of the pawnshop as if he were opening for business on an ordinary day. But he stepped out with a shotgun in his hands.
Fiji, who had set the spell firmly, was going from man to man in the Rev’s wake, looking into each face to make sure the man was good and frozen.
“They all seem good for ten more minutes,” she pronounced. “Enough time for Olivia to come check ’em out.”
“You sure she needs to be here?” Bobo said. “She might want to start getting in some licks. Olivia’s not going to turn down an advantage. Why can’t we just call Arthur Smith? Any reason why we wouldn’t?” He looked hopeful.
“I think this is about Olivia,” Fiji said with conviction.
Quinn thought so, too. Then he expelled a lungful of relief, because Diederik exploded through the front door with Olivia at his heels.
Olivia strode down to the loose cluster of men, gun in her hand and an incredulous look on her face. “You did this?” she asked Fiji.
“I did,” Fiji replied, her hands held ready at her sides. Olivia spared a second look for Fiji’s bathrobe and slippers.
“Good work,” Olivia said, with a straight face.
“Looks like the word of your marriage really did stir something up,” Fiji said to Olivia in tones of the deepest sarcasm.
Quinn saw Teacher Reed running across the road. Teacher was carrying a shotgun, too.
“You coming to help these men out?” the Rev called, and his voice hung over them like the reverberation of a bell. All the Midnighters turned to look at Teacher.
“No! I’m coming to protect Olivia!” Teacher yelled back.
“Protect. Huh!” Olivia said. “I wish Lem were awake. He’d love this.” She walked over to the front door of the limo. “Let’s see who rented this baby.” The driver was one of the men with guns. She glanced inside the driver’s seat, but evidently she saw no paperwork, so she went to the back. Fiji had reached the fourth gunman, but she caught Olivia’s movement from the corner of her eye.
“Olivia! I didn’t check inside!” Fiji yelled at the same moment the Rev bellowed, “Wait!” But Olivia flung open the limo door, and there was a loud crack of noise. Olivia seemed to be pushed back a step, and then she folded to her knees.
Olivia fell over sideways, still trying to raise her own gun.
And Fiji, with a wide-eyed intensity, dropped to her knees by Olivia, but she did not look down at her friend. Instead, she looked inside the Hummer. Her face was like nothing Quinn had ever seen. It shone with power and determination and a complete lack of pity. Fiji extended her hand, and she concentrated.
The man inside began
screaming. And he didn’t stop until he was dead.
After it was over, Fiji sagged to one side, exhausted. She couldn’t say a word or stand. But by then the ambulances were there, because the Midnight luck had run out. A passerby who’d stopped for gas at the convenience store had seen the shooting. He’d run inside Gas N Go to get away from the bullets, and he’d called the police.
Within seven minutes of the call, the approaching sirens split the morning air. But in that seven minutes, the Midnighters worked hard. Teacher was positioned with his (perfectly legal, he assured them) shotgun pointing at the invaders, who were sort of walked into a close formation by Quinn. He found it was like moving department store dummies, too, but they were quite a bit heavier.
The Rev put the guns and telephones in a heap in the pawnshop parking area. Bobo and Teacher stood guard. Diederik was sent into Fiji’s house to keep out of sight, since he had no official existence. Sylvester simply stayed in Gas N Go, Madonna and Grady stayed in their trailer, and Chuy and Joe in their shop. Manfred, who’d poked his head out just in time to see Fiji take action, closed his front curtains and laid low. The hotel people were all out on the sidewalk, craning and marveling.
Fiji released the imported gunmen from her spell just at the right moment as the police arrived. They all swung around belligerently, confused and angry at having been disarmed and corralled, which they didn’t remember at all. The police asked Teacher and Bobo to put down their weapons, which they did instantly and with every sign of being glad the police were there to take over the bad guys . . . one of whom was unwise enough to take a swing at Deputy Garcia. She cuffed him in the blink of an eye.
As the police got the situation sorted out, and EMTs began to work on Olivia and Fiji, who was unconscious, Lemuel slept the sleep of the dead. Diederik sat in the Inquiring Mind looking out the window as his dad had ordered him to do. The boy was distraught at the sight of Fiji and Olivia being strapped onto gurneys and lifted into the ambulances. But he could see Quinn was not in handcuffs and the police were listening to him, so Diederik knew at least that part of it would be all right.