Bones and Bagger (Waldlust Series Book 1) (28 page)

Of course I didn’t mean betrothed.  I’ve already said I don’t roll that way.  I meant I’d been promised to No Face as part of the deal.  His payment.  I didn’t believe No Face would walk away from his fee.  Demons don’t do that.

“It was a side deal,” said No Face.

“Come again?”

“Not structured in the contract,” said Val.

And that made sense.  I couldn’t imagine a demon commander caring whether No Face ended up with me.  They’d focus on one thing—the reason for entering into a bargain with humans in the first place.  And whatever the reason for wanting Chucky’s bones, it must have been one good story.

“Not structured,” said No Face, and I detected a note of disappointment.

“Where does that leave us?” I said.

Val began to answer but I held up my hand.  Best for me, and for the Polizei later, if I limited my contact with humans. 

“It means,” said No Face.  “That you were going to be my tip.”

Cute. Maybe I should have shown more sensitivity to No Face.  I mean, I haul groceries for tips and everything.  But no, I didn’t give a rat’s butt whether No Face got paid or not.  Especially considering they intended to use my warm body as currency.

So I would set Chucky on the ground and walk out the door.  Simple as that.  Oh, there’d be hell to pay with the Gestapo on the other side.  You’ve got to think a thief returning to the crime while the investigation is in full swing would be the thing a detective’s dreams are made of.

“Deal,” I said to No Face.

My blood lust roared in protest and the struggle raging inside my brain threatened to crack through my skull. I’d need to focus on one moment to the next.  Get free of the cathedral and satisfy the blood lust with minimal damage to the living world.  I’d burst through the police without much difficulty.  Just execute Bernard’s original plan in reverse order—on the way out instead of on the way in. 

It wouldn’t take long for me to discover the fate of my bagger gang.  I hoped they lived and that they came through unharmed.  Really. But whether or not the four of them survived wouldn’t change what I planned on doing.

And that would be angry vampire all over Val and Prince One Way.  I’d make finding those two and imposing my own brand of justice my lifelong science project.  I had the resources to chase them anywhere they thought they could hide.  I’d consider my life a failure if those two died natural deaths. They’d made it personal. They would pay.

Sparky?  I’d give him a chance to explain and then I’d decide.  If he could talk it all away then I might be OK.  If Sparky couldn’t lay things out to my satisfaction? I didn’t see myself killing him, but I also knew I was done with his shenanigans. We’d both cross that bridge when it appeared.

As far as Soyla?  I couldn’t hold anything against her because she acted true to form.  Treachery, lies, misdirection, and sexy photos.  Nice to know you can always count on some things remaining constant.

“Just a moment,” said Prince One Way. “We can’t release the vampire.”

Seemed my Arab prince figured things the way I did.  He knew I’d be coming after him.

“You have no power here,” said No Face.  “I am giving up more than anyone.  Do you prefer I remove all the cages and you take your chances?”

So No Face would miss me after all.  And it was only our third unofficial date.  Prince One Way returned to his sulking.  I could see Val calculating the benefits of leaving with the bones versus having to watch his back until one of his men reported my untimely death.  I think the old hyena decided his people could take me because he didn’t say yea or nay to No Face’s proposal.

I put Chucky on the ground and backed away as No Face instructed.  My hellfire cage disappeared and reformed as a barrier in front of No Face, Prince One Way, Val, and now Chucky.  It’s important to note the portal ended up on my side of the wall.

Val rushed to the bag.  It took all my remaining willpower to stop myself from smashing through the hellfire wall for the slight opportunity of getting my hands on Val. Slight, because I instinctively knew that smashing through hellfire wouldn’t happen.  On the bright side, I was sure we were at the end of two of the craziest days of my life.  And I still didn’t understand the why side of the equation. 

I stopped three quarters of the way to the portal and turned back to watch them.  Prince One Way just stood there with a sick look on his face. Guess he’d lost his will when he lost his soldiers.  I saw Val rummaging through the plastic bag and No Face standing a few feet back observing everything.

I’d say I saw interest on the demon’s face.  But of course, the guy had no face on which to read emotion.  Might be an advantage in hell’s next poker tournament.  Val ripped through the plastic like the thing really contained trash and not the bones of the most legendary emperor in history.  The old man nearly had his head all the way into the bag.

A combination of bone dust and filth residue from a thousand years covered Val when he stood up.

“Deceit!” Val yelled at me.  And then to No Face, “He double-crossed us, you ugly fiend.”

“Shut up,” I said, and I meant it.  “Before I find a way through that fence and give you what you sent your boys to.”

Val didn’t look impressed.

“You brought us trash,” he said.  “You knew the terms and you brought us trash.”

“Not at all,” I said, and Val’s math error regarding the age of Charlemagne’s bones began to make sense.  Soyla got excited when I mentioned dry bones. And dry bones must have been some sort of secret handshake.  A kind of password that let everyone else know you understood. But maybe Soyla didn’t know the whole story any more than I did.

“You tricked us,” and Val was spitting.

Somebody
had a little too much faith in my genius. And I couldn’t tell for sure because of the poor lighting and my infrared vampire night vision, but I thought I saw tears dotting Prince One Way’s cheeks.  Had I pulled a fast one on Soyla’s handlers?  On No Face and the butts up his chain that he regularly smooched?

“Vampire,” Val said.  “Where’s the Egyptian?”

“The what?” But then it hit me.

The purple leather bag with the painted graffiti. It must have contained another set of bones.  But how could any of them possibly know that?  Better yet, how was I supposed to know?

No Face’s booming, wheezy-sounding laughter filled the room.  Once again it not only shook the physical surroundings of this alternate dimension but also rattled every organ in my body.

“Well played, vampire,” he said.  “Well played.”

Yeah, I’m a Grandmaster.

“Are you going to stand there and congratulate him or will you do something?” Val said. 

I could see Val’s face cycling through shades of green.  I think sunlight would have shown it as red because the deeper the shade, the nearer his blood smelled.  Lovely blood.  No Face looked from me to Val.

“As you wish,” he said.

No Face’s tone should have alerted Val, but who could blame the old goat for being a bit distracted? He’d just lost whatever he hoped to gain from some Egyptian’s bones.  All because of a bumbling vampire.  That would be me.  His own fault though, because Val overlooked the seminal warning in dealing with demons.  Come to think of it, the same warning works quite well with the infinitely more dangerous female.  Take great care in what you request.

I thought I saw No Face tip his head in my direction and it came across as a bowing gesture.

“I offer you the sands of a single minute, vampire,” he said.

And then No Face disappeared, and with him went the hellfire fence and all the minor decorations that made the place a space where a demon could feel at home.

Val showed no fear.  Not at first.

“How much?” he said.

“Time is short,” I said.  “Let’s start with everything.”

“I have more money than you can imagine,” Val said.

“I do too,” I said.

I moved like lightning.  It would need to happen quickly because I’d hate to be there when No Face and his buddies returned to find me drunk on blood. Especially since I headlined their evening menu.

Should I tell how I went for Val first because I understood Prince One Way had withdrawn in his mind to the point of paralysis?  Is it worth describing the fear that blossomed in Val’s face once he accepted the certainty of what would happen to him?  Shall I go on about that sublime first bite, and how I tore away Val’s flesh to access the plumbing below?  Do you want to hear how Val died so that the innocent policemen outside the portal could live?  How about the final moments of Prince One Way?  Any interest in that?

I completed the task and wiped my face on Val’s white cotton shirt.  I needed to move and move fast if I were to clear the portal before it collapsed.  I considered taking Chucky—or whoever I had most of in the bag—but decided not to.  A fool’s errand.  I did notice something sitting beside the trash bag and almost didn’t take the time to investigate. 

Crumpled in a heap beside Chucky’s new resting place was the black monk’s robe I’d found in the casket.  I paused, threw it on over my bloody clothes, and sprinted for the portal.  The door to my where shimmered, and for an instant I feared I would hit solid wall as the portal shrunk into nothing.  If that happened I’m certain No Face and company would have turned the black robe into my burial shroud.  Or maybe a tablecloth. And there my mortal remains would have spent eternity, eventually drying to dust and mixing with remnants of the great Emperor Charlemagne.

Chapter 38

The portal collapsed after I buffeted through at the speed of heat.  Momentum carried me face-first into the wall opposite my exit point and I made a dull thud as I cleverly employed my face and the stone wall to go from however many miles per hour I’d reached to zero in less than a nanosecond.  Despite the pain involved in sprinting into an immovable manmade object, I kept my feet.  Green men clamored over every inch of the Aachen Cathedral and, for a horrible instant, I thought maybe No Face and his sick sense of humor played another trick and landed me in some third dimension.

Blurry eyes?  Yes.  But I’d like to see you take a clean punch from a heavyweight boxer and be able to distinguish a butterfly from a parrot.  A few moments of staggering and I saw my worries about Mars were premature.  Uniforms.  Green uniforms.  The Polizei had arrived.

Two that looked more like models than cops were first among the three dozen or so to notice me.  A young man and a chick that pegged the hot-meter.  Barbs-Hilda and Ken-gang gaped at me in amazement for a few seconds and then walked over to where I stood.  Wobbly, yes.  But I’ll repeat, the man still stood.  And that’s after taking on some thick masonry.

They babbled a few questions at me.  I don’t know how official I looked in my bone dust-encrusted monk’s gear, but any kind of uniform tends to calm the savage and suspicious beast that lurks inside the German heart.  I think they asked me for identification papers but I just pointed to the sky.  God knows who I am, take his word for it.  I shook my head a few times to any other sentence sounding like a question—didn’t say word one.  It seemed to satisfy them because instead of slapping on the handcuffs they walked away to speak with an older cop.

He listened to them for a moment and then smiled at me and waved.  He went back to the chore of finding the people who’d just smashed and grabbed one of the most sacred relics of German history.  Vague thoughts of Barbs and me alone with her handcuffs and baton floated through my brain as the two poster-cops returned.

A monk under the vow of silence.  Made perfect sense to Barbs and Kenneth.  Made perfect sense to Herr Prefect of Police. Modern day Germans retain little of the church-knowledge so dear to their ancestors.  Their loss was my gain.  Quiet monk?  It’s the way things are done. 

Alles Klar Herr Kommissar.

Living museum to the mysterious bygone days of Christianity or not, Barbs and Kenneth decided I should take my religious crap and leave because they escorted me out of the cathedral.  Perhaps they thought my stomping around might compromise the crime scene with DNA and fingerprints that belonged to a monk rather than one of the thieves.  WunderCops took me to the side door—the one I’d used to enter the cathedral earlier in the evening.  Where the demon portal had stood.

Perhaps Barbs and Kenneth mistook my slight hesitance at stepping through the door as a desire to return to the altar and pray for creation of a Fourth Reich or something.  Wrong.  My stupid feet didn’t trust the orders my brain issued and they’d quit obeying.  Twice bitten made them shy.  So I flexed my legs and did one, long bunny-hop out of the cathedral.  I don’t know what Barbs and Kenneth thought about that because I didn’t look back to find out.  Probably thought it was the way things are done in my particular order.  The proper procedures.

I decided not to head for the train station. I’d seen my share of WWII movies and I knew how the Gestapo always nabbed the escaped POWs as they boarded a train.  It would be a long walk back to Bad Homburg, but I thought the dark night would cover for my warp-speed dash home. 

I couldn’t hoof it on the Autobahn—a sure way to get stopped for walking—or galloping—on the freeway.  I’d need to follow the older roads that lay along the paths the Legions used when Rome invaded my homeland back in the days of my youth.

After a few kilometers a car pulled up from behind and honked.  I didn’t feel like turning around so I responded with the international, “You’re Number One” sign.  I heard a door open.  The Germans outlawed flipping the bird between drivers several years ago.  But I was walking.  It would be keeping with my recent run of luck if I’d just saluted Barbs and Kenneth on their way back to the beer garden.

“I say,” came a voice in an Oxford accent, “Jolly good night for a walk.”

Bernard. 

He’d found me—and quickly.  No surprise.  I hadn’t expected it all to be over when I stepped out of the cathedral, though I’d thought I’d find horror pygmy waiting at my flat.  I planned on using the hours of walking to strategize.  But who was I fooling?  Not myself.  Better to face Bernard and to get on with whatever would happen.

I felt my teeth extend for the umpteenth time in two days and my muscles strengthen with that special adrenaline that runs in vampire veins. I would fight Bernard to the death and I’d make it one for him to remember.  No fear in me at all, what would come would come.  More than anything, I felt a desire to close the books on the multi-day nightmare.  A growl carried my warning.

“Back off, little guy,” I said.

“No worries at all,” said Bernard.  “Everything is OK. Decorum, Gaius. Be civilized.”

That coming from a pygmy born in some undiscovered jungle and raised on his neighbor’s flesh.  Uncivilized?  When did I lose the respect of the entire world?  Bernard sweetened the pot.

“You can sit up front,” he said.

I looked through the open car door at Bernie.  He of the ancient coke bottle glasses and wheezy giggling.  I remembered the private jokes between the two “B’s.”

“You can have it,” I said.

I did my yoga routine and folded myself into the back seat.  Bernard closed the door.

Once Bernard situated himself up front he faced me and said,

“One thing, old chap.”

“What’s that?”

“If you ever call me little guy again, I will reach through your touchhole to rip out your tongue.”

A pygmy with a Napoleon complex.  Now who was being uncivilized?

Bernie engaged the boosters and we rocketed in the direction of Bad Homburg.  I thought Bernard might give me the ride to decompress and gather my thoughts.  And he did.  For about five seconds.  After that, his incessant chatter.

I did pan one nugget out of all the noise I endured on the short ride back to Bad Homburg.  They’d spotted my bagger friends at a pub in downtown Wiesbaden.  Bernard wouldn’t specify what “they” he referred to, but I suspected The Seven had a long reach when it came to monitoring things.  It sounded a bit incongruous that the baggers would head for the bar after escaping hell, but hey, never underestimate the siren’s call of German beer.

The story would come later.  My friends were safe, and something convinced Bernard none of the four represented a threat to the vampire world.  Good thing.  The little guy—I’m thinking he’s not going to read this so my tongue remains safe and my butthole pristine—wanted every detail from the time the alarm erupted in the Aachen Cathedral until he found me jogging down the road.

I gave him the abridged version and it seemed to satisfy him. 

“Wrong bones?” he said when I got to the part where Val accused me of treachery.

“Yeah,” I said.  “It’s what the Russian said.”

That resulted in twenty minutes of Bernard pontifications. His words lost form in my mind to the point I heard a low droning buzz rather than sentences. After several minutes of noise by Bernard I thought I’d go nuts.  That’s when a thought struck me with so much power that I had to fight to restrain myself from sitting bolt upright and putting my head through the roof of the car.

Nuts
, I thought.  And then, Sparky.  He’d gotten his nuts removed how many times to get to within an inch of the forbidden fruit languishing in the harems of how many different kings?  Sparky.  Willing to trade temporary pain for lasting pleasure.  Though “temporary pain” sounds a bit too clinical when you’re talking about the family jewels.

Would he willingly endure getting his arm ripped off by a mildly-insane Hungarian warrior woman?  Of course he would.  I mean, we’re talking about the same guy who’d willingly gotten his eggs cracked by some other beefy, sweaty human gelding.  More than once.

Sparky. A temporary member of Charlemagne’s court and man on the spot for knowing what really happened those centuries ago.  My guess was that Chucky acquired something of incredible value.  A bauble of some sort that never made it into the history books.  It wouldn’t be the first time a secretive man died with secrets intact. The purple leather bag.

I’d stuck it in my belt but then lost it on my way through the portal. Just whose dry bones where in that bag?  Hadn’t Val mentioned it during his rant? It was safe to assume Sparky knew exactly what that bag held and the reason it was buried with Chucky.  And was it really Chuck buried there?  With a monk’s robe? 
Doubtful
. The Catholic Church involved in some epic charade? No disrespect to the Friday fish crowd, but it wouldn’t be the first time.  Or the last one either.

Sparcius might even have been among the mob interring Charlemagne for the second time back in the 1200’s. My old pal used to cycle through the same places every hundred and fifty years or so.  Especially those locations with hot chicks and stupid rich guys.

Something must have awakened his memory of that purple bag hibernating like a skinny bear over the past millennium.  Maybe he ran into Val in a Moscow bar.  I doubt it was Prince One Way because I got the feeling Val brought the Arab in on the deal to cut the project’s financial risk by half.

Somehow old Sparcius convinced two powerful men to throw in what was probably tens of millions of dollars for a wild goose chase.  It could have been more.  All the three of them needed was a lamb to shear.  Me.  They’d used Soyla to draw me in.  Rip an arm off Sparky.  Play on my sympathy.  He’d sacrificed his balls in the past, how much less to donate an arm?  And they’d kept my brain addled with Soyla’s photos. 

So Sparky brought in Soyla and the two decided to run me like a bloodhound until I retrieved the prize or I disappeared into the hell of the German prison system or the hell of…hell.  Either of those two knuckleheads might have pulled it off, but why should they risk themselves with old Gaius on the bench?  Prince One Way probably arranged the demon part of the deal.  So why risk damnation when you had Gaius “Patsy” Teutoberg pitching in the bullpen?

“That boy isn’t right in the head,” my father said at least a thousand times.  He meant Sparky, BTW, not me.  I’d spent double the number of Dad’s warnings wishing I’d listened to him.  And if the cannibal pygmy leader of The Seven sitting in front of me ever caught on to even half my suspicions?  Nobody would need to worry about Sparky again.  Would that be all bad?

Bernard continued to drone on about how nothing happened after the alarm went off and the fuzz showed up…how he thought I’d died an idiot’s death in hell.  More yada, yada until Bernie guided the rocket ship through a semi-safe re-entry into Bad Homburg. We said our goodbyes and Bernard promised to keep in touch. 
Wonderful
.

Unless you speak the strange English of a Brit, you never know for sure what they mean by the word promise.  I hoped the little devil meant it as irony.  But just in case, I’ll never check the mailbox.  Once again, I flipped a two Euro coin into Bernie’s lap and told him to stay away from the hookers in Frankfurt.  The codger vented his wheezy sound from the correct end of his body.

I didn’t look back as I heard them drive away.  I detected the cigarette smoke but lost my appetite for dealing with Herr Doktor. Just too much for one day. He and the Frau would nod at my date that appeared to start so promising with the hand-holding and then fizzled to leave me walking back to the room solo.  They’d find comfort in knowing it’s the way things were done with a crazy Americans.

I’d seen no need for locking my door when I left, so I didn’t fish out my keys.  Karl waited on the other side, and within a second of my walking in he’d already kicked off the homecoming celebration with two fresh piles and a ghost-squirt that arced more than five feet.  With fireworks like that
inside
my flat who needs a window?

Helmet waited for me beside the computer. I gave him the 1-minute hand signal and grabbed a beer from the kitchen. Beats me why I feel compelled to give him hand signals.  The ghost can’t speak.  He never claimed he couldn’t hear.  It’s nice to feel like an idiot even when you’re at home alone.

I popped the top and took a long draw.  Beer never tastes as good as the first time you take a sip after you thought you’ve had your last.  Try and figure that one out.  So I walked over to the computer desk and sat down in the chair.

My previous description of Helmet might make him sound like a chronic pain in the butt, but that’s only because he is.  Still though, he’s my friend.  And after what Sparky did on his summer vacation, I’d say Helmet moved up the ladder to the BFF level.

My smartphone sat on one side of the keyboard and a German newspaper on the other.  Someone folded it open to the puzzle page.  A quick glance and I saw all the Sudoku and two-thirds the German-language crossword completed.  Someone had placed a ballpoint pen in the center of the page.  It lined up perfectly with the down rows of the crossword puzzle. Military precision.

I threw an accusing look at Helmet, and couldn’t get him to meet my eyes. 
Can’t move anything, my fanny
.  There were at least three piles of Karl’s artwork that needed moving right away.  If I let my anger get away with me then I wouldn’t do what I intended to do.  What Helmet deserved from me.