The Road to Helltown: An Urban Fantasy Thriller (Preternatural Affairs Book 9) Read online

  “I don’t want to risk parroting Fritz, but he said the slaves who live down there aren’t mining or doing any other slave stuff,” Cèsar said.

  Isobel slammed her fist on his coffee table. “They’re still slaves!”

  “You’re right,” he said quietly. “It’s bullshit. Fritz is wrong for doing what he’s doing, whatever the reason.” Cèsar raked a hand through his damp hair. “Jesus, Izzy. I had no idea about your family. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not something I’m eager to discuss normally. And normally I don’t have to. Fritz hasn’t had direct control over those lives until now.”

  “You want me to talk to him? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “You can’t talk to Fritz about the House of Belial,” Isobel said. “He’ll never speak to you about it. He’ll shut down.” She slid an inch closer to him on the couch. “I want you to be with him.”

  Cèsar stuck a pinky in his ear and twisted it, like he was trying to get water out. “Be with him?”

  “You’re his aspis, and you two have been in the same room a handful of times in the last year. Fritz hasn’t been acting like himself. Neither have you. You’re both suffering from separation sickness, and the only way to ameliorate the symptoms is to get back to doing what it is kopides and aspides are meant to do.”

  It shouldn’t have been a crazy request, but Cèsar balked. “I can’t run off to DC all the time. I’ve got too much to do here.”

  “Suzy,” she said bluntly.

  “Well, yeah.” He looked uncomfortable talking about it. “I’m kind of, you know…in love with her.”

  A lump formed in Isobel’s throat. “But you’re committed to Fritz.”

  He got off the couch. “I know you’re worried, Izzy, but this is between me and Fritz.”

  She got to her feet too. She wasn’t going to let him hide behind a locked bedroom door to end the conversation. “It’s not between you two, nor are matters of my marriage restricted to myself and Fritz. We are a threesome for the rest of your mortal life!” She grabbed his arm to make him stop. Damn it, why wouldn’t he look at her? “I will carry memories of how much I have loved both of you long after you’re dead. You’re a selfish piece of shit for even trying to shirk the responsibility, Cèsar!”

  He had been about to go into his bedroom.

  Now he had stopped moving.

  “I’m a piece of shit,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

  Sadness came over his face as he gazed down at Isobel’s hand, her skin a little darker than his, a little more ashen around the knuckles. The wall between them was beginning to crumble. “I never thought about what this means. You being a zombie. Fritz and me being mortal.”

  Isobel could have laughed if she thought she wouldn’t have started weeping.

  She spent most nights lying awake, unable to sleep because of the idea that she would one day live in a world without Fritz and Cèsar in it.

  Yet Cèsar had never given it consideration.

  “I can handle Fritz pulling away from me, and I can handle you pulling away from me. I’ve got nothing but time to wait for our family to heal.” She closed the gap between them, sliding her trembling hands around his waist. “But right now, you and Fritz need to get better. If not for your sake, then for those poor people trapped in the House of Belial.”

  Cèsar’s hand came up to cup her cheek. “We’re a family, huh?” His mouth was hovering over hers. When had they gotten like that? When had the wall disappeared, and the oxygen, and inches between them?

  “If I had my way, we would all sleep in the same bed together at night.”

  It was funny getting to watch Cèsar think about sleeping in bed with Fritz. “That’s weird.”

  “What’s weird is a kopis and aspis who avoid each other.”

  “We’re not avoiding each other. We hung out the night he came back into town.” But the argument fell flat, and they both knew it.

  Isobel spread her hands over his chest, allowing herself to feel the beat of his heart underneath. “Be with Fritz. Please. Even if you won’t be with me.”

  Cèsar seemed to have forgotten how to talk. He was just…looking at her.

  They’d gotten close enough that an inch would bring their lips together.

  The ground rumbled lightly.

  Isobel didn’t react at first. Tremors weren’t remarkable in Los Angeles.

  But that slow tremor turned to hard shaking, hard enough that the piles of crap in Cèsar’s bedroom thumped as they fell over, and hard enough that she had to grab the wall to steady herself.

  Cèsar grabbed Isobel by the waist to steady her, too. His gaze shot over her head to the window.

  “Fuck,” he said.

  Isobel turned. Through the crack in Cèsar’s curtains, she saw that the morning sunlight had vanished.

  It wasn’t until later that she’d realize that it was the last time she’d see the sun for the next few years.

  That the shadow marked the beginning of the end.

  “Wait here,” Cèsar said.

  He crossed the rolling floor to look through the curtains. Isobel felt safe knowing that Cèsar was looking out for her—foolish, because even a man like Cèsar couldn’t protect her from what was happening.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Cèsar took a long moment to respond, and when he did, his voice was hollow. “It’s bad.”

  She came to his side. Smoke clogged the sky. Plumes and plumes of it. “What is that? Is something on fire?” And then she realized that was a very stupid question and yanked out her cell phone to call for firefighters. For her to see that much smoke, the fire must have been close.

  But Cèsar put a hand on her shoulder, shook his head. “It’s not our house that’s on fire. It’s the world.”

  Chapter 8

  As enormously interesting as the angst back at the Friederling mansion was, Suzy spent the same morning doing something much more interesting and useful. Namely, building a bomb with her mother.

  She wouldn’t have listed bomb-making as an activity that could bring a family together, but she’d never felt closer to May than while they were wrist-deep in the magical equivalents of red and blue wires. May forgot to be emotionally remote when they were enchanting yet another crystal. Her black eyes lit up with excitement, her voice got loud, and she became very animated.

  “Look at this!” She tilted a ruby to show its facets to Suzy. “You did perfectly! The cuts, the anointments… It’s incredible, Suzume. I’ve never seen spellwork so delicate!”

  Suzy’s face got all hot. “Thanks,” she said gruffly. She didn’t owe her mom thanks for a compliment. She knew that she was good at magic, dammit, and a little parental praise shouldn’t have gotten Suzy folding in on herself with delight.

  But there she was, trying to suppress a squeal of happiness that she’d met her brilliant mother’s standards.

  Suzy rested her chin on her hands as her mom navigated the ruby into position. The bomb didn’t look like a bomb. It was disarmingly pretty, like a Fabergé egg shivering with deadly potential.

  Not that this pretty thing was deadly. Suzy had asked May if they could use it to render the Genesis Convention unconscious rather than dead, and May found that idea even more exciting.

  “It’s the nuance of it,” May had told her. “It’s easy to kill people. I am very good at killing people.” She was matter-of-fact about it, as she always had been. “But this…this is a real challenge!”

  May was now too buried in her work to keep chatting. That made her praise extra special.

  She didn’t even look up from the table when the Batcave’s alarms went off.

  The alarms got Suzy’s attention. They were linked to the Batcave’s wards, and the wards were linked to Suzy, so the alert felt like a hard slap in the face. “That can’t be right.”

  “Hmm?” May asked, her nose a half-inch from her magical bomb.

  “Nothing.” Suzy wasn’t going to attempt to distract her mom
from crafting when she looked so happy.

  But those alarms were structural. They suggested that something was wrong with the integrity of Suzy’s pocket dimension, which was impossible, because she was a really fucking good witch.

  They were sitting in the middle of the main island, so Suzy could see most of the dimension from where she sat. The walls and roof were fine. The occupant quarters were fine too. The only difference was that the moat looked a little more turbulent than usual.

  Those alarms wouldn’t have gone off without reason.

  “I’ll be right back,” Suzy said.

  Her mom hummed with disinterested agreement.

  Suzy was halfway to her bedroom, where she kept diagnostics for the pocket dimension, when she was interrupted by Gary Zettel.

  “We have to talk,” he said.

  Suzy didn’t stop walking. She sped her pace. “Sure, if you want the pocket dimension to collapse on us.”

  “It’s not going to collapse. Yet.”

  “Don’t act like you know my wards better than I do.” Suzy didn’t bother trying to keep the venom out of her voice. She fucking hated Zettel. Always had, always would.

  “I know all about wards of all kinds,” he said, following her to the bedroom. There was a desk in the corner where she kept a lot of carefully arranged crystals to support the pocket dimension. “Allyson was good with that stuff.”

  “Yeah, and you’re not Allyson. What the fuck just happened?” Suzy asked. Her hands traveled over the crystals. The information they reported was limited. “How can the Batcave be on the brink of collapse without visual change?”

  “A Fissure opened in Las Vegas,” Zettel said. “A Fissure to Hell.”

  She turned on him, hands balling into fists. “Hodgins said that the OPA had Las Vegas in hand. They stopped the demon assault.”

  “Seems like our intel was no good,” Zettel said.

  “It’s almost like using enhanced interrogation methods doesn’t produce reliable information,” Suzy said. “Wow. Crazy.”

  “Cut the sarcasm, Takeuchi.”

  “Sorry, I can’t. It’s a medical disorder. I have a diagnosis.” Suzy pressed her hands to the sensors on her desk, looking through her wards again. They had taken a huge hit. They were magically cracked down the middle. “How did a Fissure in Las Vegas inflict this much fuckery on my wards when the anchor’s in Los Angeles?”

  “Because the Fissure’s stretched between the two of them,” said Sentaro Takeuchi. He’d arrived in the doorway, a solid man with a lofty aura and a face that looked like it never smiled. It did, occasionally. Sentaro was secretly hilarious, even if he spent most of his time resembling a dour piece of shoe leather.

  “That’s hundreds of miles,” Suzy said.

  “And there’s hundreds more stretching in the other direction,” he said grimly. “It’s going to cross the whole continent at this rate.”

  Suzy stared at her dad, hoping he’d start laughing, tell her that he was just joking around. Ha-fucking-ha. The United States wasn’t actually carved in half by a hole that led into Hell.

  Sentaro didn’t crack a smile.

  She swung around to look at Zettel, and he wasn’t smiling either.

  “I have to go,” Suzy said suddenly. Cèsar was out there somewhere. Knowing his stupid ass, he’d be running straight toward that Fissure to see if he could close it using the power of love.

  Sentaro didn’t budge from the doorway. “Mom told me that you changed the plans for the bomb.”

  “Making the bomb was always my responsibility, which means that how it’s made is my choice,” Suzy said. “I didn’t change anything. I’m doing my job.”

  “How you execute the order doesn’t matter as long as you do execute the order,” Zettel said. “The order’s to prepare to kill the entire Genesis Convention.”

  Suzy laughed in disbelief, looking between the men again. They still looked humorless. She was cornered. “I’m not sending Cèsar into a meeting with a kill bomb that would murder his kopis. Don’t worry. We’ll still knock out Makael so we can stab him to death or whatever.”

  She tried to push past Sentaro. It was like trying to push through a wall.

  “Sit, Suzume,” he said.

  “You first, Dad.”

  Sentaro’s wrinkles deepened at either side of his mouth. He touched her chin with a soft, wrinkled hand that smelled like coconut oil. “The bomb must kill the angel Makael. We can’t risk a mistake. He’s accessed ethereal magic, and would obliterate all of us—including Cèsar and his kopis—at the first sign of attack.”

  Suzy’s jaw dropped. “Ethereal magic? But…how?”

  “We don’t know, and we can’t risk finding out,” Sentaro said. “It needs to be a kill bomb. I’m going to tell your mother to restart with the original plans while there’s still time.”

  She scoffed again, more uneasily than before. “But if the bomb kills Fritz, Cèsar’s not even going to plant it. It’ll never reach its target. It’s not going to work.”

  “Then don’t tell him that the bomb will kill Friederling too,” Zettel said. “Makael and his cohort need to die in this bomb, or they’ll kill us for trying. Do you want to die, Suzume?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yes, dying is my favorite thing, you stupid fuck.”

  Sentaro gave Suzy a brief hug. “I’m sorry, Suzume.”

  He left, and Suzy punched the doorway. It hurt a lot. She immediately regretted it.

  “Blow off that anger later,” Zettel said. “Right now you need to send Cèsar to Helltown. They’ve got the most advanced ward artifacts in California, and you’ll need them to repair the pocket dimension.”

  He really did know a lot about wards. Most people weren’t aware of the artifacts that separated Helltown from the rest of Los Angeles. Zettel knew, and he also knew Suzy could use one of them to fix the Batcave.

  “If I take the Focus from their wards, Helltown will spill its guts all over the city,” Suzy said.

  “Its guts are already spilled. We need our sanctuary.” Zettel pointed one of those thick fingers at Suzy, fixing her with a serious look. “Call Cèsar.”

  “And send him into Helltown,” Suzy said.

  “You know what you need to do if you want us to survive.” Zettel turned and left Suzy gawking at his back.

  Chapter 9

  Fritz and Cèsar’s paths converged at the OPA campus—an array of austere white squares dotting a patchy lawn. Cèsar sucked down the last bite of a cruller as he fell into step alongside Fritz, heading into the Magical Violations department.

  “What’s happening?” Cèsar asked. An obvious question with a deceptively complicated answer.

  Fritz’s chauffeur had been taking him into the office when the sky changed. It hadn’t taken long for everything else to begin changing, too.

  The world had grown darker. Clouds billowed on the horizon. Brownouts rolled through the city, visible in the morning dimness from the freeway.

  Fritz had been on the phone with members of the Genesis Convention at the time, but he’d hung up on Lady Tresor to contact his OPA underlings. The directors’ reports had been unanimous: the incident Las Vegas had taken a turn for the apocalyptic.

  “I fucked up.” Fritz pushed his way into the first-floor armory past a long line of agents, and Cèsar followed him. “We thought we had everything under control in Vegas. I should have known better.”

  “What happened after you left?” Cèsar asked, helping Fritz shrug into a ballistics vest.

  “Our information is patchy, but I believe this is the fault of rogue kopides local to the area,” Fritz said. “They’re an independent group called the Hunting Club. They tore open the dimension while, I believe, clumsily attempting to defend it from demons.”

  “Should have left it to the professionals,” Cèsar said.

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  Cèsar followed Fritz back out of the armory. Outside the narrow windows, Los Angeles looked like it was on fire.
The black smoke and red flames had the exact same colors as in Hell.

  “If they tore it open, there’s gotta be a way to close it…right?” Cèsar asked.

  “Not necessarily. The universe has been fragile since the Treaty of Dis was destroyed. It’s like our world is a rubber band being stretched and released and stretched again. The band snapped this time. Even if we put it back together, another Breaking is inevitable.”

  That was what they were calling this.

  The Breaking.

  Cèsar mulled over Fritz’s pronouncement. “There’s gotta be something we can do, right?”

  “Several, but closing the Fissure isn’t one of those things. I’m leaving Las Vegas in the hands of Director Hekekia.” Fritz grabbed an MP5 and a couple of magazines. “We have a bigger problem.”

  The main lights turned off, and the emergency lights came on, bathing the hallway in crimson.

  After a moment, those lights also flickered and died.

  Cèsar clutched his chest like it hurt. Fritz knew the feeling. It was the crushing weight of dread settling into their bones, pushed into them by the encroaching demons.

  “What’s a bigger problem than this Breaking thing?” Cèsar asked.

  “The Fissure cracked open Helltown’s wards,” Fritz said.

  “Fuck. Fuck.”

  An appropriate reaction.

  Helltown was a hidden neighborhood in Los Angeles. Normally, its wards kept innumerable nightmares contained within. The OPA didn’t have surveillance within Helltown, but they monitored its external boundaries. The instant the wards had gone down, Fritz’s phone—almost every phone in the organization—had started ringing and hadn’t stopped.

  Cèsar put on his own ballistic vest. “That means all those demons in Helltown who hate the OPA…”

  “Yes, we’re likely to have visitors.” Fritz could feel them coming. Kopides had a sixth sense for demons, and his head throbbed from exposure.

  The wall beside them shook. There were only two warning thuds before a fist bigger than Fritz’s head broke through. It tore away at the drywall, exposing a bulging-eyed face on the other side.