The Brimstone Deception Read online

  I knocked. I’d called Ord as soon as I’d left the morgue, so he was expecting me.

  The gnome opened the door and I was treated to a vision in a green velour bathrobe.

  His feet were bare, his chest was exposed, and I think the only thing he had on underneath was his ever-present gold chains.

  Yikes.

  Maybe I would have been better off spending more time with Al the Crispy Lawyer.

  Ord’s little face lit up. “Makenna, darling! I had begun to despair of ever seeing your lovely face again.”

  Okay, Ord might be naked as a jaybird under that robe, but he had Al beat on the charm scale.

  “Come in, come in!”

  I did, and Ord closed the door.

  The gnome grabbed the TV remote and muted the slaughter on Game of Thrones. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “First, my apologies if you’ve felt neglected. We’ve had several emergencies that had to be dealt with.”

  “More murders?”

  I nodded toward the now silent slaughter. It looked like the “Red Wedding” episode. “Not quite at that quantity, but it’s getting there.”

  Ord considered that comparison for a moment, and that he’d narrowly escaped being one of the slaughterees. “I haven’t had the opportunity to express my appreciation for allowing me to stay here until all this unpleasantness blows over. Thank you. And should you see Miz Sagadraco, please extend my heartfelt appreciation to her as well.”

  Yep, when properly motivated, Ord could definitely tip the top on the charm scale.

  “You’re most welcome. We’re glad we can do it.”

  Actually, we weren’t, and Ord knew it, but we were Southerners trading pleasantries before getting down to business. We both knew the game and the rules. It was older than the family pound cake recipe and just as revered.

  Ord hurried to clear a tumble of newspapers out of a chair. “Please, make yourself comfortable. Could I order something for you?”

  I waved a hand. “No, no, I’m fine.”

  Ord took his seat and arranged his robe modestly over his lap.

  Thank God for the decency of a Southern gentleman.

  “Do you really think I know something worth being killed for?”

  “I sure hope so.” I cringed. “Wait, that didn’t come out right.”

  The gnome reached out and patted my arm. “I’m here, safe and sound, so don’t you worry yourself about it.”

  The job of the agent assigned to Ord had been to basically keep him out of trouble until either Ian or I had time to question him further. The guest rooms had occasionally functioned as fancy jail cells, so the TVs had Netflix, HBO, Showtime, etc., but that was it. There was no contact with the outside world, and even if a guest had managed to smuggle in a phone, it wouldn’t work unless we wanted it to. Kitty and I had full outside communication; Ord Larcwyde did not. Until we knew who he knew that might want to kill him, cutting the gnome off from the rest of the world was a prudent security measure.

  The long and short of it was that Ord didn’t know diddly squat about what had been going on since our people had picked him up and brought him here.

  I brought Ord up to speed on the case, namely who had been killed, and who we suspected of doing the deeds. However, I left out the part about his unsuccessful assassin being a squid demon. I didn’t think it had any connection to the information I needed to know, but most of all, I’d heard enough shrieking from Alastor Malvolia; I didn’t want to have to listen to Ord’s screams, too. My ears had had enough for one day.

  “Do you know any of those people?” I asked when I’d finished. “Living or dead, victims or suspected killers?”

  “I’ve heard of most of them, but am glad to say I don’t know any of them personally.”

  “So your pixies haven’t brought you information on any of them worth killing you for?”

  “None.”

  “You’re sure? This is really important. Like fate-of-the-world important.”

  “I sincerely wish I could help you, Makenna, but I’ve got nothing other than what I told you at my office. Between that gunman trying to kill me, and my pixies raising their prices, I’m considering an early retirement.”

  Huh? “Your pixies want a raise?”

  “Two weeks ago, they come to me and say that they’re no longer comfortable in the neighborhood; and that if I insist on remaining there, they’ll continue to work for me, but they’ll be forced to increase their rates.”

  “Are they getting mugged by fairies for their lunch money or something?”

  The gnome drew himself up in righteous indignation. “They said my office stinks, if you can imagine such a thing.”

  I remembered the boxes of garlic falling on top of Ian. “That garlic was a bit much. He must do a heck of a restaurant business.”

  “Some. But mostly it just sits there.”

  That was more than odd. “So he stocks it, but doesn’t sell it?”

  “I don’t mind. I like garlic.”

  “When did he start stockpiling garlic?”

  “About a month ago. Pixies have extremely sensitive noses, though I’ve never heard of garlic bothering them—or even bothering vampires for that matter. That only happens in the movies. It is such an annoyance when Hollywood doesn’t even bother to get the details right. The industry is positively rife with supernaturals, so there’s simply no excuse. All the vampires I know love Italian food. Well, at least smelling it. And many of my pixie employees are Italian-American. You wouldn’t think they’d mind garlic in the least.” The gnome finished with a dramatic sigh. “I still may be forced to take the building’s owner up on his offers of alternative accommodations. The noise the past few weeks has become tiresome.”

  Odd just turned into a waving red flag—two of them. “The building’s owner wants you to move, and there’s been noise?”

  “He offered last month, and again last week. As to the noise, it’s mostly vibrations coming up through the floor.” He waved a hand. “There’s a subway line running somewhere below. They must be using that track more often now.”

  Nervous pixies, stinking office, the owner wanted him out, plus noises—all starting within the last month. And I’d be willing to bet the farm that the squid-demon gunman sent to kill Ord had been a last, desperate measure to get him out of there. As to the stockpiled garlic, was it meant to cover the stench of occasional wafts of brimstone coming from a brand-spanking-new drug lab below?

  I got my phone out and called Ian. “Ord, honey, when this is over, I need to talk you out of retiring. You’re a treasure.”

  28

  SO much for our theory of Hart Pharmaceuticals owning the building housing the Brimstone lab. Hart didn’t own the building the grocery store was in; the Balmorlan family did.

  The store owner was a veritable gold mine of information once Ian and I walked through his front door—and a SPI commando team silently came through the back and appeared directly behind him like supernatural ninjas.

  The grocer hadn’t been a willing accomplice. A Balmorlan family representative came to him a month ago and said that they required a few favors. In exchange, he would no longer need to make monthly protection payments. The grocer said the favors were simple, they weren’t illegal, and weren’t hurting anyone—at least not until two days ago when the gunman paid the store a visit.

  Keep fresh garlic in stock at all times, and report who came to see Ord Larcwyde.

  Two seemingly innocent favors, plus no more protection payments.

  The grocer jumped at the chance.

  If I’d been in his place, I would’ve done the same thing.

  If he hadn’t cooperated, another of Kitty’s ovens might have had an occupant.

  Vivienne Sagadraco had approved me leaving headquarters in case the lab was concealed in a pocket dimension. The reality turned out to be not nearly that fancy. In addition to the old walk-in freezer that served as Ord’s office, the store had a trapdoor in the flo
or. The grocer knew about it. It’d been used in the past to store illegal liquor for a local speakeasy during Prohibition.

  It had been expanded considerably since then.

  The original storage room had been converted to house air treatment equipment. Brimstone stank, and regardless of how careful the lab folks in the even older chamber below had been with their main ingredient, stink had a way of getting out. That was where the garlic had come into play. One strong smell to hide the occasional whiff of another. And if Ord had ever gotten suspicious, rotten garlic didn’t smell too good, either.

  There could only be one reason why the drug lab had been under the store Ord Larcwyde used as an office.

  It was close to the Hellpit.

  “It’s all clear below.” Commander Sandra Niles was in full body armor. Yes, our target was a lab, but it was a drug lab, and one of the ingredients was being brought in fresh daily from your friendly neighborhood Hellpit—neighborhood as in nearby. All that considered, I thought body armor was a simply wonderful idea.

  Ian and I were in dark street clothes. We’d needed to come in through the front of the store, and body armor or fatigues would have attracted attention to say the least. Sandra had brought everything we’d need if all this panned out and we’d be going underground.

  She showed us the surprisingly clear image on her tablet. Considering the combustibility of Brimstone’s ingredients, she’d taken the prudent precaution of snaking a camera in through an air duct.

  I swore. “There’s no one down there.”

  “The store has security cameras, but there aren’t any monitors up here,” Sandra said. “I have a feeling we’ll find monitors when we go below.”

  “They knew when we got here,” Ian said.

  The commander smiled. “And they ran like rats when you turn the lights on. Don’t worry, it’s an active lab.” She swiped a finger across the screen, and it went from full color to infrared. Heat signatures flared on two of the chairs, four of the lab stools, and all of the equipment.

  Ian’s grin joined hers. “Bingo.”

  “Where did they go?” I asked. “I don’t see a door.”

  “We’re hoping it’s flush against a wall and just not visible on screen,” Sandra said. “As with the monitor, we’ll find out when we get down there.”

  Dr. Claire Cheban and four of her team had suited up in biohazard suits in preparation for going into the lab, complete with gas masks and air tanks, and they were bristling with enough shielding spells to make my teeth hurt.

  Chances were good that the air was breathable and there weren’t any booby traps of the fatal kind waiting for them when they got there. The Brimstone techs had fled when we’d arrived in case we found the lab. That didn’t mean they hadn’t expected us to find it. They’d probably done this drill before. You wouldn’t want to contaminate a lab you fully planned to return to.

  But, just in case, Sandra’s team would go in first with sealed body armor and full helmets with small oxygen tanks built into the back. The lab crew was probably waiting nearby, and you’d think at least a few of them would be armed, but regardless of what they were packing, they were nowhere near armed enough. If Lady Luck had finally decided to start talking to us again, the lab crew would have enough sense to not come back.

  The trapdoor entrance wasn’t the main way in or out. It functioned as an emergency exit only. They’d just had an emergency, and it hadn’t done them a bit of good. As I’d found out the not-fun way on New Year’s Eve, the underside of Manhattan was filled with tunnels and chambers. Most were for subway, sewer, water, and power—both used now and abandoned. However, some of those tunnels and chambers hadn’t been dug out by human hands.

  Somewhere down there was the way to the Hellpit. Martin DiMatteo had told us that the Hellpit would need to be no more than an hour away from the site of the lab, closer would be even better. Molten brimstone was unstable, so the quicker you could get it to where it needed to be, the fewer accidents of the “boom” variety you’d be likely to have. Since you couldn’t exactly walk down the street in New York casually swinging a bucket of molten brimstone from Hellpit A to Drug Lab B, the tunnel leading to the Hellpit began somewhere beneath our feet.

  The thought made my skin crawl and gave me a nearly overwhelming urge to find a chair and stand on it.

  What I wanted even more was about two weeks of sleep. Then to go on a vacation somewhere exotic and sleep there for two more weeks.

  * * *

  Minutes later, Sandra found the door from the lab out into the tunnel. It hadn’t been hidden, simply set into the wall and out of sight of the camera. The other side of the door was camouflaged so well that you could have been standing in the tunnel right in front of it and you’d have never found it. Though the Brimstone lab techs must have had a way to get to work every day.

  The tunnel beyond had been used at one time for sewer and rain drainage overflow. Fortunately for us and the AWOL Brimstone lab techs, it wasn’t used for either anymore. Once the lab—and its contents—had been secured, it was my turn.

  Dr. Cheban and her staff had taken over the lab and were working on documenting everything as well as downloading computer hard drives and securing ingredients. Because of the possibility of accidents, even when being handled by professionals, Ian and I had to suit up in hazmat suits, at least until we were through the lab and into the tunnel.

  As we went single file down the narrow stairs that led from the air treatment room under the store and into the lab itself, the sound of my respirator was ridiculously loud in my ears.

  “‘Luke, I am your father,’” I rasped.

  No response from Ian.

  “Really?” I asked through the communicator. “Nothing?”

  “It was only funny the first fifty times I ever heard it.”

  “It’s my first time in a getup like this. It’s new—and funny—to me.”

  Once down in the lab, there were glass-front storage cabinets with cylindrical stainless steel containers. Considering that the largest container said “brimstone” I half expected the others to be labeled like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale. I was disappointed.

  “What? No eye-of-newt?”

  That earned me a snicker from one of Dr. Cheban’s techs.

  “That gets a laugh, but Darth doesn’t.”

  “Eye-of-newt’s funny,” Ian said.

  “But Darth’s a classic.”

  We passed through the lab and into the tunnel beyond. For the first time, I was glad to be in one of New York’s old drainage tunnels. It meant I could ditch the biohazard suit. If we stumbled onto the Hellpit, the suit wasn’t intended for prolonged exposure to high temperature, and “stumbled” would be the first perfect description for what I’d do if I needed to run away from anything while wearing it; the second would be “fall.” So in the interest of self-preservation, Ian and I left the suits just outside the lab. Hopefully they wouldn’t be needed by the time we came back.

  Hopefully we’d be coming back.

  A few of Sandra’s commandos would stay behind to guard the techs while they worked. Sandra and the rest of her team would be coming with us.

  I had a Hellpit to find.

  * * *

  The tunnel stank, though not of brimstone.

  That was both good and bad. Okay, mostly just bad. We needed to find the Hellpit yesterday. It wasn’t something we could pretend didn’t exist just because we couldn’t smell it.

  The tunnel’s natural aroma wasn’t strong enough to mask something as pungent as brimstone. The tunnel smelled like what it was coated in: damp and mold. I was allergic to mold and glad I’d taken my meds and done my spray this morning. A sneeze down here would echo forever. If we were going to be ambushed by demons, I’d rather it not be my fault.

  No brimstone smell didn’t mean there wasn’t a Hellpit.

  It simply meant there could be a portal between us and it.

  If there was a portal, it could empty out next to t
he Hellpit, or into one of Hell’s anterooms filled with demons just waiting for the dumb mortals (that would be us) to come bumbling through.

  “Let’s go to night vision, people.” Sandra gestured and we silently moved out.

  * * *

  Just because there hadn’t been any booby traps in the lab didn’t mean the tunnel presumably leading to the Hellpit wasn’t going to be thick with them.

  I could see through glamours and now portals. Half of the people on our commando teams could see wards, illusions, and magical traps of every known kind—and a few that’d never been known before they’d seen them. They were the best. If Isidor Silvanus had left any surprises on the path to the pit, they’d find them before we tripped them. I had the utmost confidence in their skills.

  I had nearly none in the job I was being expected to do.

  Find the portal hiding the Hellpit.

  Isidor Silvanus may or may not have wanted me to see those two portals. But I couldn’t imagine any scenario where he’d want me to find the Hellpit.

  But you’re not the one who has to close it, said the little voice inside my head. Normally it was the voice of reason; right now it was the voice of shame—as in “Shame on you, Makenna Fraser.”

  My job was over when I found the Hellpit.

  Kitty Poertner’s job was to close it.

  Alain Moreau was working to find an anchor mage who would help her. Last I heard, there’d been nothing to hear.

  Kitty would be alone, facing not only closing the largest portal there was, but one that had been opened by a mage who Rake described as so powerful he could open a Hellpit in his sleep.

  Kitty had to close that.

  In addition to any traps Silvanus may have built into the magical mechanisms holding the pit open, Kitty would have to contend with demons determined not to lose access to our world. They wouldn’t like a human and a mortal slamming the door on their eternal beach vacation.