Honeymoon of the Dead (21 page)

The coffee shop erupted in hasty commotion. People gasped. Some suddenly found things to do in the back room. One of the baristas shouted at Sebastian, “Cool it!”

But Sebastian banged James hard against the wall and, with a sneer, said, “I should kill you for what happened to my wife. Kidnapping? Ransom? Are you out of your mind?”

James seemed completely caught in Sebastian’s menacing stare. Believe me, I’d been there. The vampire evil eye was nothing to sneeze at. However, I would have thought a guy with medieval weaponry in his trunk would be better prepared for—

Holy mackerel! James stuck a sharpened wooden stake right into Sebastian’s heart.

 

 

 

 

 

Glancing downward, Sebastian stared at his lower ab
domen where James’s fist still curled around the butt end of a wooden stake he’d jammed up under Sebastian’s rib cage to pierce his heart.

James looked too. He seemed to be expecting something dramatic to happen next, like maybe a sudden shower of dust, à la a scene from
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
. Then, noticing the fangs that had descended in Sebastian’s mouth, James, at least, had the wisdom to appear extremely nervous.

I guess those Illuminati guys knew
jack
about real vampires.

Sebastian placed his hand over James’s fist. “You, my friend,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, “have made a terrible, terrible mistake.”

Meanwhile, at least one person besides me started screaming. I hadn’t really meant to shout, but when Sebastian suddenly jerked James’s hand and the attached stake out from his gut, blood spewed everywhere.

The barista shouted for someone to call the cops. My only desire was to staunch the wild flow of blood that seemed to pour from the tear in Sebastian’s shirt, but a crowd had started to form.

I still stood at our table, gaping openmouthed.

Okay, I thought to myself, this is the moment of truth, girl. Ask yourself: What would Athena do? Athena was a warrior Goddess, strong, powerful, with a shield that had the severed head of a Gorgon that could turn people to stone. She’d start handing people their asses.

I took a steady breath and closed my eyes. All right, Athena, I said to myself. I am your vessel. Commence with the laying out the pain.

But I guess because no women were in peril, I couldn’t summon a single iota of butt-whooping. Instead, when I opened my eyes, things had taken a turn for the worse.

Everyone seemed to be yelling now, really helpful things like “Oh my God” and “Jesus Christ” and “What the fuck?”

James Something’s face paled as Sebastian’s blood continued to spatter across James’s tailored, white button-down shirt and average-looking tie.

Sebastian slammed James’s hand into the wall repeatedly until James dropped the stake with a clatter. Sebastian kicked it away, but it only clattered against the boot of one of the surrounding gawkers.

I wasn’t used to sidelining it; I really needed to do something, even if it was without divine intervention. So many people had crowded around the two combatants that trying to move from my spot by the table was impossible. I got elbowed back to the same place.

Great. I couldn’t even make forward progress. I only managed to end up back where I started.

Meanwhile, Sebastian was going to kill James in front of a million witnesses.

“You’re bleeding out, man,” said a long- haired, blond-bearded guy behind the counter.

Sebastian couldn’t really afford to lose a whole lot more blood, it was true. Somehow I managed to catch Sebastian’s eye and gave him a look that hopefully said, “Drop the stalker and run for the door,” which I indicated with a jerk of my chin.

He seemed to get it, because Sebastian released his hold on James. Taking a step back, he put a hand over the hole in his shirt. As if by magic, which I was sure it was, the bleeding slowed considerably.

The crowd parted for Sebastian as he turned to go. I started to make a move to join him near the door when out of my peripheral vision I saw James raise his hand again. This time I saw the glint of something metallic.

“Look out!” I shouted.

Someone else must have noticed the knife too, because all of a sudden the bearded guy pushed Sebastian to the ground. Someone else, a middle-aged woman with reddish curly hair, caught James in a wicked, karate-style headlock, which seemed incredibly brave and stupid all at once. In fact, it was sort of the thing I’d hoped Athena would help me do, I thought jealously. I had to say I had no love for the whole standing-around-like-some-kind-of-damsel-in-distress gig. Give me some Queen of Hell magic any day.

Using my own frustration and fear, I managed to elbow my way closer to where Sebastian was pressed to the floor. We were mostly calmed down when the cops came rushing in, brandishing nightsticks, and EMTs followed after with medical kits. The pandemonium that followed was much more suited to a biker bar or the Republican National Convention than a quiet little coffee shop on a Saturday morning.

I tried to protect my head, while trying to kneel next to Sebastian to see if he was all right. Sebastian was hungrily eyeing the bearded guy’s exposed neck, as the police helped him to his feet. Sebastian lay in a pool of blood, not moving.

Given how much blood he’d lost, Sebastian had grown so pale that if I didn’t know him I’d have thought he was dead.

“What’s going on here?” a police officer demanded.

“Damned if I know,” muttered the other barista, a dark-haired guy in a short-sleeved bowling shirt. “But this one guy,” he said, pointing to Sebastian, “started hassling this other guy”—here he pointed to James—“who like totally stabbed him in the gut!”

With the cops here, people moved away from Sebastian and James like they had the plague. I was able to kneel down next to Sebastian and gingerly put my hand on his shoulder. It, at least, was still warm. “Hey,” I said gently. “Are you okay?”

Sebastian leaned heavily on me as I helped him into an upright sitting position. The tear in his shirt was small, and the black fabric of the shirt absorbed the color of the blood. His jeans, however, had that telltale rusty stain. “I’ve been better,” he croaked. “I’m starving.”

I’ll bet. We had to solve this crisis soon; he needed to drink to regain his full strength.

The cops took one look at James’s spattered shirt and the knife still in his hand, and said, “Okay, we’ll sort this out downtown.”

“No,” I said desperately. “We can’t go to jail. This is my husband. We’re on our honeymoon.”

The cop, who had a classically craggy face and streaks of gray in his black hair, said, “I’m sorry, lady. But your husband may need medical attention, and some kind of assault just happened here.” With that, he slapped on purple gloves.

Cradling his midsection, Sebastian sat with his knees up. “I’m not pressing any charges,” Sebastian said, though his voice sounded very weak.

“Not sure that matters when a weapon is involved,” the officer said.

Which was the Minnesota way of saying, “it doesn’t” so “forgetaboutit.” Sometimes you needed a handbook to understand the sideways, overly politeness of Minnesotan vernacular.

Curly-haired woman handed over James to another purple-gloved cop, who muttered something about how it was safer to let the police handle criminals like this.

I was fairly horrified to hear Sebastian discussed as though he was some kind of degenerate, though of all the days to wear leather and Harley Davidson . . . Compared to suit-and-tie James, Sebastian
did
look like the roughneck.

If only I hadn’t stood off to the side like an idiot, I seethed. I wished that Lilith had interceded. It might have been mayhem, but at least I would have done something to help. I hated feeling so helpless. As if waiting for an invitation, Lilith heated my skin.

But even as She started to rise, I smelled cinnamon and baking bread. The scent of Sebastian’s glamour instantly calmed the beast within. I felt Lilith settle with a rush that left me a bit woozy.

Though it worked to calm Lilith, I could tell that I wasn’t Sebastian’s intended target with his glamour. He seemed to be sending out a broad “suggestion” to everyone in the room.

“You don’t need to arrest us,” he told the lead police officer. I could see the amber star glowing around his pupils.

But Sebastian had been drained of a large quantity of blood. His glamour was weak.

“Yeah, that’s what they all say, buddy,” the lead cop said.

I placed my hand on Sebastian’s shoulder lightly. Into his ear, I whispered, “Try it again.” Closing my eyes, I sent a mental, magical call for Lilith’s help.

And that’s when everything went to hell.

A tremor rumbled from my guts, and my muscles started jerking spasmodically as though I were having a seizure. Somewhere, far outside of myself, I thought I heard someone call for medical assistance, but where I was there was a war going down.

My inner vision swam with images of an owl dive-bombing a hoard of cobras and a warrior woman raising a sword to strike a seductress singing an ancient enchanting desert tune. My brain refused to focus on a single image and instead tumbled randomly through tumultuous pictures. I felt sick to my stomach.

The worst part was that my consciousness seemed unstuck in reality. I shifted in flashes from the present, where a nice, far-too-young-looking ambulance driver flashed a light in my eye, to some alternate reality where I alternatively took swipes at a woman with my short sword and attempted to charm snakes with a song. It was as though I didn’t know who or what I was. Was I Garnet? Lilith? Athena?

My stomach churned as I floated in a space that was everywhere and nowhere. Finally, I realized that I could return to the real now, if I just let go of the magic I’d been trying to harness.

I came to in the back of an ambulance. What, I thought. Again? This whole waking-up-in-the-emergency-room thing was getting old, fast.

The far-too-young-but-kind-of-pretty-in-a-super-cleancutsort-of-way ambulance driver knelt by the gurney I lay on, checking my blood pressure. Oh, Special Agent Francine said I should have that done! Bonus. “How am I, Doc?” I asked groggily. I felt a little sluggish, like I’d had a night full of restless dreams.

“Oh, you’re back, then?”

I gave a little, weak wave with the arm that was not currently being squeezed. “I hate to be cliché, but where am I? What’s going on? Where’s Sebastian?”

“I don’t know which guy Sebastian was,” he said, “but I can tell you that you’re in the back of an ambulance. I’m probably going to ask that you come with me to the hospital to be checked out. You seem to have suffered a seizure. Does your family have a history of epilepsy?”

I shook my head. My vision still blurred between here and the astral plane. From the looks of things, it seemed my body was still up for grabs. I held up my free arm and examined it with magical sight. Armor sheathed my forearm one minute and the next it wore a purple, silken robe.

The ambulance driver gave me a strange look. “Everything okay there?” he asked with a glance at the way I held my hand in front of my face. “Got all your digits?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said, though really I seemed to be carrying a few extra sets these days, metaphysically speaking.

The ambulance driver undid the blood pressure cuff with an abrupt rip of Velcro.

With his assistance, I managed to sit upright. “Sebastian was the long- haired guy in the Harley shirt who got stabbed. Did you see if they arrested him or sent him to the hospital?”

“Sorry,” he said, tucking the blood pressure kit into a storage unit under the gurney. “I lost track of everything in all the chaos. The police will know. And I’m sure they’ll be talking to you.” At my look of sudden fear, he added, “They’re talking to everyone. We should get you to the hospital.”

“You know, I think I’m okay,” I said with a hopeful smile. Just then a wave rippled through me, as something happened on the magical plane. The air escaped my lungs as an invisible sucker punch landed in my gut. I grabbed protectively at my abdomen and clenched my teeth.

When I got ahold of myself, the ambulance driver looked mighty skeptical. “I’d feel better if you went to the hospital,” he insisted.

I’d just escaped the hospital. There was no way I was going back!

“No,” I said, swinging my feet around to stand up. For the moment, the Goddesses warring inside my body had quieted enough that I could make an attempt at looking in control.

The ambulance driver did not, however, seem impressed. So I went for the pity factor. “I need to find Sebastian. You know, this was supposed to be our honeymoon.”

The ambulance driver gave me a you-poor-thing look. “You came to Saint Paul to honeymoon? Where are you from?”