The Brimstone Deception Read online

  Sandra’s team was with us now. When we found the Hellpit, Roy’s team would join us. While Kitty worked, SPI’s commandos would keep the demons under control.

  At least that was the plan.

  I’d seen our guys and gals in action. They were beyond impressive. But these were demons we were talking about. Demons who had wanted our world for literal ages. They were closer than they’d ever been to having it all. If that didn’t say motivated, I didn’t know what did.

  Mortals and former mortals going up against the combined might of Hell.

  As good as they were, I really didn’t want to bet on us.

  But everyone else was.

  * * *

  The tunnel curved and turned, but there weren’t any branches off of it that the Brimstone lab techs could have used for escape.

  At four places there were ladders leading to the street above. At each, Sandra’s team “navigator” would note the position on a GPS device strapped to his forearm armor for later investigation. We wanted the Brimstone lab folks in custody for questioning at the very least, but we needed to know where the Hellpit was. Locating lab rats could wait. Finding an open Hellpit wouldn’t.

  We were just out of sight of the fourth ladder when the air began to thicken. The two commandos who had taken the lead slowed and then stopped. Sandra went up to where they were. I didn’t have to leave my spot in the center of the main group to know what was going on.

  We were getting close.

  I took calming breaths and told myself that what I sensed, what I thought I saw, none of them were there. None of them were real.

  The ceiling wasn’t closing in on us.

  This was a major-league repelling spell.

  Repelling spells were flexible; not only in composition, but in how they affected each individual who encountered it. When you got to the outer rim of the spell’s area of influence, you felt uneasy. If you went farther, you began to breathe faster and sweat, experiencing fear you couldn’t explain. A sense of “Get out!” would start ringing through your head. If you managed to go farther, the visuals would start. We were in a tunnel, so the hallucinations would contain scary things that you’d find in tunnels: rats, snakes, spiders, and, in New York, the ever-popular alligator. Whichever one you were the most afraid of would be the one that you’d see. A buffet of nightmares, so to speak. Though in this case you’d be picking what you didn’t want.

  Even though all of us knew this, what we imagined wasn’t any less terrifying.

  Being a country girl, I’d seen plenty of rats, spiders, and snakes in barns or under rocks. I’d never seen an alligator before, so my imagination wasn’t up to reconstructing one of those for me to terrify myself with.

  Having the walls and ceiling closing in on me? Now that I could imagine with no problem, and was doing a fine job of it right now.

  One of the commandos quickly moved to the front, removed her gloves, and raised her hands as if she were putting them up against a wall. She pushed against it and a rush of words in a language I didn’t understand filled our earpieces. Our commando teams dealt with the worst that the supernatural world could throw at them. They knew how to fight, but each and every member of both teams had unique skills specific to what they encountered on the job.

  As the commando’s words faded, the hallucinations stilled, and then began to fade. It took a few minutes to banish them completely, and the commando was breathing raggedly by the time she’d managed to completely disarm the repelling spell. The spell might be gone, but I was experiencing a whole new wave of uneasiness. I glanced at Ian. I wasn’t the only one. We were getting close.

  About twenty yards later, we came to an old brick wall. The corners were rounded, and the finish was smoother than modern bricks. The tunnel continued to the left and right.

  On the wall in front of me, about chest high, was what looked to be a spigot for a water hose that you’d see on the outside of any house in the suburbs—except it was missing its handle. What it did have was protection. The air rippled in front of it from the effects of a shielding spell.

  The spigot looked harmless enough, but I wasn’t about to get any closer. And considering all the protection it had, I felt safe in saying that what would come out of it wouldn’t be water. The drug lab techs had to get their supply somehow, and Martin DiMatteo did say that brimstone couldn’t be taken through portals without going from molten to useless goop.

  “Sandra, we’re here.” I pointed at the spigot. “Brimstone source, right there. Well, behind a shielding spell.”

  Sandra turned to the commando who’d taken out the repelling spell. “Deborah?”

  “On it, ma’am.”

  It must have been a tough nut to crack because it took her nearly ten minutes to get rid of those ripples concealing the brimstone spigot.

  By that time, Sandra had dispatched scouts down both side tunnels, and both had returned to report that there was no sign of anyone—human or demon. We dispensed with our night vision and had flashlights trained on that wall where one of Sandra’s people was now scanning the pipe with some kind of device, while another scrapped a sample of the blackened and pitted concrete floor directly below the spigot. For me, what would come out of that spigot was a foregone conclusion. The water in the Hudson River was known to be nasty, but even that water wouldn’t burn and eat holes in concrete.

  The commando with the scanner glanced up from his display. “Ma’am, some of these elements I recognize, but the rest . . . Your guess would be as good as mine as to where they came from. And the handle that fits this thing would be just as exotic. It’d function as much like a key as anything else.”

  “Would the metal stand up to high temperatures?”

  He nodded. “Judging from the elements that came from our world, that’s exactly what it was made to do.”

  We had no intention of confirming that by finding a way to turn on that spigot. None of us wanted to go down in what’d be left of history as the modern-day Pandora if we released the next plague or an even worse disaster.

  “What’s on the other side?” Ian asked.

  Sandra studied her wrist-mounted GPS. “We’re below Ninth Avenue. Nearest cross street is West Thirteenth. We’re about mid-block, directly below number thirteen.”

  “Why does that sound familiar?” I asked Ian.

  “Because it’s Bacchanalia.”

  29

  WHETHER building a successful business or opening a Hellpit, it was all about location, location, location.

  This situation was more like setup, setup, setup—and I could smell the stink of it from here.

  Rake had wanted to open a business; Isidor wanted to open a Hellpit.

  Isidor Silvanus had opened a Hellpit directly beneath Bacchanalia. When the pit was fully open, the center of the goblin intelligence spy network would be the first to fall in.

  We hauled ass back to the Brimstone lab and got back on the surface in record time.

  Sandra got her team to the two trucks that’d brought them there. They looked like the thousands of other slightly dinged-up delivery, transport, or construction trucks that filled New York’s streets every day. SPI had signage for both of them that would be appropriate for any situation or destination. Inside of the trucks was essentially a SWAT command center.

  Ian and I had come with Sandra and her team. Yasha had stayed at SPI, ready to bring Kitty to the location of the Hellpit once we found it.

  Ian called Vivienne Sagadraco and told her where we were, and what we’d found.

  The boss then talked for at least a minute, and Ian listened.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he finally said. “I understand.” Then he hung up.

  “Well?” I asked, my patience long gone.

  “Kitty’s on her way here now with Alain Moreau.”

  “Not Yasha?” Though the way Yasha drove, and how emotional he was bound to be right now because of danger to Kitty, having a cool vampire behind the wheel might be the best thing.


  “She didn’t say, just that Kitty had left with Moreau.”

  Mid-afternoon traffic would put her here in around twenty minutes.

  “Is she going to call Rake?”

  Ian nodded once.

  That was going to be a fun phone call. Ms. Sagadraco spoke goblin, so she’d know every word Rake blistered the phone lines with. An elf dark mage had opened a door from Hell directly into Rake’s pride and joy.

  One of the trucks carrying Sandra’s team had gone around behind Bacchanalia to the loading dock area to wait. The other had by all miracles of nature found a parking place across the street and slightly down the block. They’d let us out two blocks before Bacchanalia so I could scout around.

  Ian and I walked down the street, holding hands, just a couple on an afternoon stroll on a sunny but unseasonably cold day.

  He lowered his head to my ear. “See anything?”

  We were both wearing sunglasses to scan the people around us and up ahead without being too obvious about it. I was looking for glamoured lookouts. A villain wouldn’t go to the trouble to open a Hellpit that would be unclosable in the very near future and not have people—or not-people—keeping an eye on his special project.

  I saw a lot of people, real people and a smattering of supernaturals, hurrying to get where they were going and out of the cold, but I didn’t see any loitering evil minions.

  “Nothing yet.”

  Bacchanalia occupied what looked like just any other four-story, brick-fronted building in the Meatpacking District. Unless you were a member, or the guest of a member, you didn’t know what was beyond its doors.

  On each side, flush up against Bacchanalia’s walls was a six-story building filled with high-end condominiums, and a four-story, mixed-use office/restaurant/retail space. Across the street were two more restaurants and a coffee shop, with what appeared to be lofts on the three floors above.

  It was three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon.

  “People are gonna die.”

  “That’s why we’re here,” Ian said, “to keep that from happening.”

  I gave my partner a double take.

  “You said, ‘People are gonna die.’”

  “I thought I just thought it.”

  “Unless I can suddenly read minds . . . ? No, you said it.”

  Crap. I really needed a vacation.

  “What about the people inside those buildings?” I asked. “If that Hellpit gets bigger than Bacchanalia’s walls—”

  “Those buildings are still standing, so it’s obviously not that large yet. And Kenji’s working on getting those buildings cleared now.”

  That made me stop in my tracks. “Okay, Kenji’s good, but—”

  “It’s a procedure we have in place.” One corner of Ian’s mouth curved into a brief smile. “One of his superpowers is tapping into the monitoring system of any commercial or residential building and setting off his choice of alarms: fire, smoke, or gas. He’s also good at calling in suspicious packages. I’m thinking in this situation, he’ll go with gas. If he tripped a fire alarm, the people would evacuate, but after ten minutes of not seeing any fire or smoke, they’d start grumbling and want to go back inside. Especially when it’s this cold.”

  “What about when the Con Edison guys show up?” I asked.

  “Kenji would make sure the call went in to one of Con Ed’s clued-in or supernatural shift managers. The boss ensures that there are plenty of those in positions qualified to smooth over anything that needs to be covered up.”

  I nodded at the simple brilliance of it. “With gas, you can’t see it or smell it unless you’re in the room with it, so people could whine all they wanted to.”

  “Right. And not one of them would want to set foot back in those three buildings until the police and Con Ed gave the all clear to go back in. We’ll be getting some NYPD crowd control, too. An open Hellpit couldn’t be a more perfect fit for a fake gas leak. Natural gas is scented so that if there is a leak, people would know by the rotten egg smell.”

  “And brimstone smells like rotten eggs.”

  Ian flashed a smile. “Like I said, perfect.” His phone beeped with an incoming text. Ian took it out of his pocket. “Fred says he’s on his way to the party.”

  I knew the elf detective wouldn’t be working crowd control. I had to admit I liked the thought of him going in with us.

  A cab pulled up to the curb a few feet in front of us and Martin DiMatteo got out dressed like he was going on another rock-finding field trip to Hell, either that or a safari, complete with an old-fashioned camera hanging around his neck.

  Humor and sarcasm weren’t all that he didn’t get, apparently so was the need to blend in.

  On the other hand, his priorities were in perfect order. If Isidor Silvanus didn’t already know we were here, he would as soon as we crossed Bacchanalia’s threshold. And if that Hellpit got out of control, no one was going to care how anyone was dressed.

  Thanks to Kenji, those buildings would be evacuated and stay evacuated until the job was done.

  If we didn’t get that Hellpit closed, an explosion would be the nicest thing that would come out of those buildings.

  All we could do now was wait for the rest of the team to arrive.

  * * *

  I wasn’t worried about Kitty and Moreau getting in. The delay was probably due to the combination zoo and circus happening in a five block radius around Bacchanalia. Once Moreau got to the police barricade, he’d just do his vampire Jedi-mind-trick thing, and the two of them would be able to walk right through.

  Meanwhile, Kenji’s gas leak story had taken on a life of its own. As people hurriedly left the buildings, I’d heard the word “terrorists” more than once, though since 9/11 that probably happened every time something moderately big went wrong.

  Rake arrived in a justifiably foul mood, and he quickly led me, Ian, and Martin to one of Bacchanalia’s fire exits, conveniently hidden by a Dumpster, which I suspect was illegal in ten different ways.

  Ian’s phone rang and he stuck a finger in his ear and tried in vain to find a quiet place to take the call. I recognized the ring. It was Vivienne Sagadraco. After a few moments, he spat a word I didn’t need to hear to recognize, and he sharply gestured Rake over. After Ian’s first few words, Rake looked even more pissed than my partner.

  Even Martin picked up on the fact that something was very wrong.

  I sprinted over to where they were.

  “Isidor Silvanus has Kitty,” Ian snapped.

  “But she left with Moreau—”

  “Not Moreau,” Rake said. “Silvanus, glamoured.”

  I forgot how to breathe. “How the hell did he get into headquarters?”

  “He didn’t,” Ian said. “He was just outside the complex. He called in and Kitty came right out to him.”

  My heart leapt into my throat. “Yasha?”

  “Is fine. If damned near shredding the motor pool when he found out is fine. Silvanus called him using Moreau’s voice and told him to stand down, he’d bring Kitty here.”

  My shoulders sagged. “And Moreau’s the voice of the boss.”

  “Exactly.”

  Isidor Silvanus couldn’t scare Kitty out of helping us, so instead he . . .

  “I’m not getting this,” I said. “He kidnapped her. He couldn’t scare her out of helping us, so he glamoured as Moreau so she’d go with him. Wouldn’t he want to kill her? Why would—”

  “It’s me,” Rake said.

  Ian grabbed the front of Rake’s leather jacket in his fist and slammed him up against the Dumpster, dark mage power be damned.

  “What are you not telling us now, goblin?” he snarled. “Another spy secret to play with? Kitty’s life is not yours to—”

  A slender packet of papers fell out of the inner pocket of Rake’s coat.

  “That,” Rake told him, eyes blazing, but making no other move against Ian. “Was just delivered to me. It’s the contract Alastor Malvolia wrote between Isidor a
nd Hell.”

  Ian’s breaths came in ragged gasps. He let Rake go, but he didn’t step back.

  “Isidor will want to use Kitty to bargain with,” Rake continued. “He wants the contract; we need Kitty.”

  “How did you get it?” Ian asked.

  “Remember when Alastor told me in the morgue that the contract was safe? When I asked him where, he told me that I would see. Well, it took him being dead to keep a promise. He knew either Isidor or Phaon Silvanus would try to kill him. If that happened, he’d left several documents in a safe deposit box. They were to go immediately to me. I got them an hour ago.”

  I bent to pick up the papers, but I didn’t hand them back to Rake. “You said he hates you, and it’s mutual.”

  “I said I strongly disagreed with his methods. For goblins, hate is a personal emotion. I didn’t care to get to know Alastor well enough to hate him.” Rake glanced down at the packet of papers in my hand. “We both feel the same about Isidor Silvanus. That we agreed on. Alastor may not have liked me, but he trusts me to see to it that his last wish is carried out.”

  Ian took one step back, which in manspeak said he wasn’t going to kill Rake now, but he reserved the right to do it later. “And what would that be?”

  Rake bared his teeth in a sleek, vulpine smile. “Use the contents of that contract to ensure Isidor Silvanus burns in Hell. Today.”

  I handed him the papers.

  30

  WITHIN five minutes, our people had managed to get through the police perimeter.

  The last time I’d been in Bacchanalia had been my first night at SPI. Ian and I had been undercover as a couple on a date. I’d really been there as a seer to locate a leprechaun prince and his four aristocrat buddies out for a night on the town before the prince’s wedding the next day. The boys were drunk, they were danger junkies, and they’d intentionally gone to an upscale and highly exclusive sex club owned by a known, dangerous, and evil dark mage.