Charming (36 page)

I leaned over until our eyes were only a few inches apart. “Let me explain something to you.”

And I kissed her. I don’t remember much about that kiss. I had just meant it to be a short one, but I think it lasted ten minutes and temporarily melted my brain. Somehow our lips never separated while our bodies shifted and groped and merged awkwardly over the emergency brake between the front seats. At some point Sig pulled away and gasped and said, “We can’t do this.”

“OK.” I pulled my hands out from beneath the back of her shirt, but when I tried to pull my face away from hers she grabbed me behind the neck with both hands and pulled me into another kiss.

I wasn’t the only one who had been lonely for a long time.

“We have to stop,” Sig said the next time she came up for air. By this point she was pressing me against the driver’s side of the car, one hand against the window and the other beneath my shirt, palm over my heart. I had her long hair twined in my right hand and was caressing the seat of her pants with my left.

“OK,” I said, and kissed her again. I’m not sure where we would have finally wound up if a police car hadn’t stopped
alongside us in the middle of the street. One of Sig’s hands was slipping into the back of my jeans, and I had the right side of her shirt bunched up in my hand. Even with my enhanced hearing, it still took a nightstick rapping on my window to snap us out of it.

Sig and I separated in a series of awkward lurches and bumps. The officer on the passenger’s side of the police car smirked and mimed rolling down a window. He was a plump guy with a crew cut and mustache, in his late twenties or early thirties, and he kept the nightstick dangling lazily outside his window.

Once I had obediently rolled down my window, he peered across me and said, “Sig? Is that you?”

“Hi, Brock.” Sig’s voice was resigned as she adjusted her shirt. I had forgotten that Sig had been hanging around Clayburg’s police station under the guise of being a psychic.

“What happened to your old man?” I don’t think I was imagining a cruel emphasis on
old man
in Brock’s voice.

“We just broke up,” Sig said tersely.

Brock sneered and looked over at his partner. “Well, I guess it didn’t take a psychic to see that one coming.” When he turned, I could see the edges of a green tattoo sticking out of his collar. It looked like twining snakes.

“Apparently not,” Sig said, her voice tight. “You’re holding up traffic, Brock.”

He laughed. “You’re the one stopping traffic, darlin’. Families shop at this health food store.”

I pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Sorry about that, Officer.”

He winked, then laughed and motioned lazily to his partner to drive on. “See you later, Sig.”

A few cars followed him and went by as he drove away. I looked over at Sig. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her face was closed up tight. Shopping hours were over.

“Well, I guess you made your point,” Sig said. She seemed a little short of breath. “Don’t do that again.”

I studied her. “Ever?”

There was something in her solemn, steady gaze that made my skin tingle. “I’ve wanted you ever since I saw you in that stupid bar.”

“I wanted you from the start too,” I assured her.

“Yes, but I’m good at judging people.” Her tone was arch. “You just thought I had nice boobs.”

“Well, in my own defense…” I started, and I never finished the smart-ass flirty comment that I was about to make because Sig put her index finger on my lips. It was probably just as well.

“I need to break up with Stanislav,” she said.

I unlocked my car door. “Yes, you do.”

29

I
didn’t smell the knight right away.

This was partly because Sig and I were surrounded by our own intense emotional field. I could blather on about my training and heightened senses and paranoia some more, but the truth is, there was this thing between Sig and me that seemed new and immense and fragile, and neither one of us knew what the hell we were doing, and I wasn’t really focusing on anything outside a three-foot radius of her.

Sig wasn’t saying anything. I reached my hand out and held it palm open next to hers, and after a moment’s hesitation she took my hand and squeezed it. I felt absurdly happy.

We were a couple of badass monster killers all right. Maybe on the way back to Choo’s she’d let me buy her an ice cream cone.

In regard to the knight I didn’t smell right away, it is also true that when you have a highly developed sense of smell, stepping into a health food co-op is the olfactory equivalent of a laser light show. While a lot of the merchandise is still prepackaged and franchised, many co-ops grind or pound their own herbs
on the premises, and plastic bins full of different kinds of nuts and spices are opened and closed constantly. Incense candles sit on shelves next to homemade soaps and potpourri, and all over the store handcrafted pottery holds various offerings from the local back-to-the-land types: anything from fresh-baked bread to organic produce to floral arrangements that supposedly recharge your chi.

In fact, if I were going to ambush someone like me, a health food co-op would be a great place to do it.

Finding the energy bars wasn’t hard. There was a whole display of them in front of the first aisle, bars that were mostly protein held together by chocolate and peanut butter and fructose syrup if the packages were at all accurate, a few that were trail mix held together by syrup or honey. Sig and I paused in front of the display, and it was a good thing that we did.

When I check anything out, I inhale deeply through my nose. It’s instinctive, the same way squinting and focusing the eyes is instinctive for a normal person. And I smelled frankincense and myrrh.

There was a Crusader roughly ten to thirty feet away to the north. If you’re wondering how the smell of frankincense and myrrh told me that a member of the most fanatically religious sect within the Knights Templar was around, allow me to explain.

When a small group within a larger group feels like it is special and elite, it inevitably starts coming up with ways to assert its individual identity. Usually this is done with specific garments, like the Scots and their kilts, or tattoos like those worn by triad gang members, or weird haircuts or jewelry or uniforms. One of the ways that Crusaders assert their uniqueness within a larger order of knights the Crusaders think are soft and hell-bound is to wear a cologne whose base is frankincense
and myrrh—the gifts that the wise men brought to the baby Jesus. Frankincense and myrrh are valuable for the same reason that most knights avoid them—because they have very distinct and powerful odors. Pragmatic knights like my old confanonier think the Crusaders are wack jobs. What kind of idiots would associate themselves with a signature scent and then broadcast it to every supernatural creature with a sensitive nose, for no tactical advantage?

Well, as it turns out, fanatically religious idiots. Although, to be fair, Crusaders want monsters to attack them: it releases them from the restraints of the geas.

The one good piece of news was this: the Crusader wouldn’t have been wearing that particular cologne while specifically looking for me. Generally inviting attack is one thing—alerting a specific target so that he has a better chance of getting away is something else entirely. The most likely explanation for the Crusader’s presence was that while Steve Ellison had been running around pulling God only knows how many stupid vampire tricks, he had sent up a red flag somewhere, and this Crusader had been sent to Clayburg to look around.

Avoiding any sudden movements, I tried to use my hearing to get a better fix on the bastard. He definitely wasn’t the person in aisle three. That individual stepped too heavily and breathed too hard. The Crusader was somewhere in the next two aisles, then, and staying still. Probably aisle four, the one that would have been my next stop. The herb section.

Releasing Sig’s hand, I grabbed a double handful of energy bars and turned around and walked back toward the cash register by the entrance, not rushing it. When he’s not being distracted by six-foot blondes, a knight’s situational awareness tends to be pretty high. If my footsteps became too hesitant or forceful, there was a chance the Crusader might hear them
and pick up on their irregularity. Ditto if Sig and I spoke and our voices were forced or strained. Fortunately Sig was still wrapped up in her own thoughts and just followed me without saying anything.

I paid for the bars, watching the area behind me in the reflection of the front store window. Nobody emerged from the aisles except for a young girl with more tattoos and jewelry than actual clothes.

Sig and I left the store.

When there’s more than one of them, Crusaders generally divide themselves into groups of three, five, ten, or twelve: the Christian holy numbers. If their mission requires really high numbers, they group themselves in multiples thereof. I tried to be subtle about scanning the outside of the store, but Sig finally came out of her cocoon and noticed something odd about my behavior.

“What’s wrong?” She kept her voice low and didn’t look around.

I spotted the knight’s vehicle across the street, a Dodge Charger with North Carolina license plates. There were other parking spaces closer to the health food store, but the car was parked next to the intersection so that no other cars could pull in front of it. The co-op was on a corner, and the knight would have been able to check out the adjacent street before exiting the car. It was the spot I would have taken if it had been available.

“There’s a knight in the co-op,” I said, walking toward my own car while committing the knight’s license plate to memory.

“Nobody said anything to Stanis—” Sig began, and then stopped. The thought that had just hit her like a ton of bricks was the realization that Stanislav might not have told her if any knights had contacted him. In fact, what if Stanislav had contacted…

“The guy I just smelled is a Crusader,” I told her. “He wouldn’t trust some foreign kresnik who’s shacking up with a monster. He might check up on Stanislav, but he won’t check in with him.”

I opened Sig’s car door first. A trained killer who has sworn to eradicate you lurking in the vicinity is no reason to forget your manners. Or maybe it is if the way Sig was eyeing me was any indication. By the time I circled the front of my car and climbed in, she was holding a gun—one of the Glocks that Choo had showed me instead of her SIG Sauer—beneath the dashboard.

“How do you want to handle this?” she asked.

Sig was ready to risk pissing off what amounted to a large organization of professional assassins if I asked her to, just like that.

“Wow, you are really stupid,” I said.

She looked at me, followed my eyes, which were staring at the gun in her hand, and suddenly grinned.

“I just want to see him,” I said, removing my own gun. “He’s not looking for me in particular or I wouldn’t have smelled him. He’s just poking around.”

Sig did not seem reassured. “Will he recognize you if he sees you?”

“The last time a knight saw me I had shoulder-length blond hair and a full beard, and it’s dark and this is a pretty well-concealed spot,” I said. “The car parked in front of us smells like the guy who was working the cash register.”

“It’s not that well concealed,” she argued while I cracked my window open so I could listen to the store entrance better. “Won’t he wonder why we’re staying in the car?”

“No,” I said, and kissed her.

After a moment Sig mumbled against my mouth, “If you’re
making all of this up just so you can make out with me some more, I’m going to shoot you.”

“I’m not,” I assured her, and caught her tongue between my lips.

Eventually she pulled her lips a slight distance from mine and observed, “You’re not acting like someone being hunted.”

“I’m listening for him,” I assured her. “And smelling.”

“Still,” she said.

“I don’t want to bring other knights down on us by making him disappear,” I said, caressing her cheek. “But if he identifies me, I’ll take him out. I will not let you wind up on the knight’s things-to-kill list because of me.”