Death Masks

I jerked my fingers away from the tube.

"Again you have altered our agreement," Marcone said. He said it in a voice as smooth and cold as the inside wall of a refrigerator.

"It does seem to be a seller’s market."

"There are very few people able to speak about taking advantage of me."

Valmont let out a quiet, bitter little laugh. "Come, now. This is nothing more than an entirely reasonable piece of insurance," Valmont said. "Be a good boy and your precious cloth is in no danger. Attempt to betray me, and you’ll have nothing."

"And if the authorities find you on their own?" Marcone asked.

"You’ll need a broom and a dustpan when you come for the article. I should think you would be wise to do whatever you can to clear the path for me." She turned the radio off.

I bit my lip, thinking furiously. Even if I took the Shroud now, Marcone would be upset when he didn’t get his hands on it. If he didn’t have Valmont killed, he’d at least tip off the police to her. Valmont, in turn, would destroy the Shroud. If I took it, I would have to move fast to get the Shroud away from the device. I couldn’t count on simply blowing the device out with magic. It was as likely to malfunction and explode as it was to just go dead.

I would need the transmitter too, and there was only one way to get it.

I stepped up behind Valmont and pressed the bill of the plastic duck against her spine. "Don’t move," I said. "I’ll shoot."

She stiffened. "Dresden?"

"Let me see your hands," I said. She held them up, the green light of the palmtop showing columns of numbers. "Where’s the transmitter?"

"What transmitter?"

I pushed the duck against her a little harder. "I’ve had a long day too, Miss Valmont. The one you just told Marcone about."

She let out a small sound of discomfort. "If you take it, Marcone will kill me."

"Yeah, he takes his image seriously. You’d be smart to come with me and get protection from the authorities. Now where is the transmitter?"

Her shoulders slumped and she bowed her head forward for a moment. I felt a twinge of guilt. She had planned on being here with friends. They’d been killed. She was a young woman, alone in a strange land, and regardless of what happened, she wasn’t likely to come out of this situation ahead of the game. And here I was holding a duck to her back. I felt like a bully.

"My left jacket pocket," Valmont said, her tone quiet. I reminded myself that I was a professional and reached into her pocket to get the transmitter.

She clobbered me.

One second, I was holding the duck to her back and reaching into her pocket. The next, I was falling to the ground with a bruise shaped like one of her elbows forming on my jaw. The light from the palmtop clicked out. A small red-tinted flashlight came on, and Valmont kicked the duck out of my hand. The beam of the flashlight followed the duck for a silent second, and then she laughed.

"A duck," she said. She dipped a hand into her pocket and came out with a small silver semiautomatic. "I was fairly certain you wouldn’t shoot, but that goes a step beyond ridiculous."

I’ve got to get a concealed-carry permit. "You won’t shoot either," I said, and started to get up. "So you might as well put the gun d-"

She pointed the gun at my leg and pulled the trigger. Pain flashed through my leg and I let out an involuntary shout. I grabbed at my thigh as the red flashlight settled on me.

I pawed at my leg. I had a couple of smallish cuts, but I hadn’t been shot. The bullet had hit the concrete floor next to me and gouged a bite out of the concrete. A flying chip or two must have cut my leg.

"Terribly sorry," Valmont said. "Were you saying something?"

"Nothing important," I responded.

"Ah," Valmont said. "Well, it would be bad etiquette to leave a corpse here for my buyer to clean up, so it seems as though I’ll be hand-delivering to Marcone after all. We can’t have you running off with what everyone is so excited over."

"Marcone is the least of your worries," I said.

"No, actually, he’s quite prominent among them."

"Marcone isn’t going to sprout horns and claws and start tearing you apart," I said. "Or at least, I don’t think he is. There’s another group after that Shroud. Like the thing from the ship this morning."

I couldn’t see her face from the other end of the red flashlight, but her voice sounded a little shaky. "What was it?"

"A demon."

"A real demon?" There was a strained tone in her voice, as though she couldn’t decide whether to laugh or sob. I’d heard it before. "You expect me to believe it was a literal demon?"

"Yeah."

"And you’re some sort of angel, I suppose."

"Hell, no," I said. "I’m just working for them. Sort of. Look, I know people who can protect you from those things. People who won’t hurt you. They’ll help."

"I don’t need help," Valmont said. "They’re dead, they’re both dead. Gaston, Francisca. My friends. Whoever these people, these things are, they can’t hurt me any more."

The locked door of the storeroom screamed as something tore it off its hinges and out into the hall. The hallway lights poured in through the gap in a blinding flood, and I had to shield my eyes against them for a second.

I could see dim shapes, shadows in front of the light. One was lean and crouched, with shadowy tendrils of razor-edged hair slithering around it in a writhing cloud. One was sinuous and strong-looking, like a man who had traded its legs in on the scaled body of an enormous snake. Between them stood a shape that looked human, like a man in an overcoat, his hands in his pockets-but the shadows the shape cast writhed and boiled madly, making the lights flicker and swim in a nauseating fashion.

"Cannot hurt you any more," said the central shape in a quietly amused, male voice. "No matter how many times I hear that one, it’s always a fresh challenge."

Chapter Twenty

My eyes adjusted enough to make out some details. The demonic female with the Joan Jett hair, two sets of eyes, a glowing sigil, and vicious claws was the same Denarian who had attacked at the harbor that morning. The second demonic being was covered in dark grey scales flecked with bits of rust red. From shoulders to waist, he looked more or less human. From the neck up and the waist down, he looked like some kind of flattened serpent. No legs. Coils slithered out behind him, scales rasping over the floor. He too had the double pair of eyes, one set golden and serpentine, the other, inside the first, glowing faintly blue-green, matching the pulsing symbol of the same light that seemed to dance in the gleam of the scales of the snake’s head.