Besieged: Stories from the Iron Druid Chronicles(34)
I arrived in gloves to hide my tattoos; a burgundy satin waistcoat with a gold pocket watch ticking away inside; a ridiculous tie with a sunburst pin; all covered by charcoal-gray pinstripe coat and pants and topped with a bowler. My hair was straightened and greased and combed into a reddish oil slick, and I made sure to wax my mustache and coo approvingly at my bristling sideburns. In lieu of my sword I carried a cane, which would do as a short stave if it came to fighting but which gave the appearance that I was nursing an old injury like a trick knee.
That’s what I looked like when I stepped into Pastore’s murder scene for the second time, but there were two men standing over the body, muttering about how damn strange it was. I froze in the doorway and gasped to draw their attention, but added, “Oh, bollocks,” to signal immediately that I wasn’t American. “I’m too late.”
The two men rounded on me, one of them dropping his hand to his gun. He relaxed when he saw one hand on my cane, the other clutched in a fist over my heart, as if I was shocked by the scene.
“Who are you?”
I dropped my left hand on top of my right over the handle of the cane and gave a name befitting my disguise as an English toff, voice stiff as if I’d been laundered with the queen’s own starch: “Algernon Percy, Fourth Duke of Northumberland, expert on the occult and much too late to stop Mr. Pastore there from doing something terminally stupid.” Algernon Percy really was the name of the Duke of Northumberland at the time, though I doubt he looked much like me beyond the fact that we were both rather pale, and he certainly was no expert on the occult. But should the sheriff take the trouble to verify the name of the current duke, at least he wouldn’t catch me that way. I’d lifted the name straight out of a recent history of England’s military exploits that I found in Mr. Still’s establishment, working on the theory that officers were often noblemen, and, sure enough, the good duke was an admiral or some such.
“You know this man?”
“I do. And who might you be, good sir?”
“Sheriff Jack Hays,” the man with a star on his coat said, his voice carrying a bit of a Texas drawl. He had a broad forehead and eyes like coal, which glittered with a hint of diamond in them. His hat was in his hand, and I noted a thick wave of dark hair sweeping about his ears and a square jaw to hang his beard on. He kept his neck shaven, though at this point he had a day or two’s growth on it and it looked as if it would fight with a square of sandpaper to see who was rougher. He nodded over to the other man, a clean-shaven, sunburned lad with straw-colored hair, who wore a star on his coat as well. “This here’s my deputy, Kasey Princell.”
“It’s my very good fortune to meet you both. I do hope I can be of some service to you, since I’ve traveled around the earth chasing after this fellow.”
“What can you tell us about him?” Deputy Princell asked. He wasn’t from Texas; the vowels and inflection were different, had more of a lilt than a drawl to them, and that was the beginning of my education in American Southern accents. I found out later that he was from eastern Kentucky, in the Appalachians.
“He’s an Italian occultist, and I don’t mind telling you I’ve had a devil of a time finding him—if you’ll excuse the pun.”
The lawmen squinted at me, which I supposed meant they hadn’t caught the pun at all. “I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that,” Hays said. “I’ve seen my share of dead men, y’understand, but I ain’t never seen nothin’ like this.” He looked down at the body. “Choked to death an’ then his guts pulled out. Or maybe it was t’other way around. Overkill either way. And then there’s all these things on the floor. Salt and candles and whatnot. Looks like some kinda magical fixin’s if I had to guess. I dunno. Would you know anythin’ about that?”
“I would. I would indeed. May I come in?”
“Sure. Just don’t step in any o’ this mess.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.” I moved forward and surveyed the scene, pretending to take it all in for the first time. “Hmm. Yes. A bit diabolical, eh?”
“I dunno. Who do y’think mighta had it in for Mr. Pastore?”
“Well, we are clearly looking for whoever broke the circles of binding and protection and gave the demon a free shot at the deceased.”
“What now?” Hays said.
“Did you just say ‘demon’ or—Jack, what the hell is going on?” Deputy Princell said.
“Hell is precisely what is going on here, Deputy,” I replied. “You see the evidence of it before your eyes.”
“Maybe you better explain what you’re seein’ that we’re not,” Hays said.
“These circles you see here, the Hebrew and the Greek, the black candles, the silver dagger—what you called ‘magical fixin’s’—all of it was used to summon a demon. And it was a successful summoning.”
“Are you bein’ serious right now?” Deputy Princell said. “An honest-to-God demon?”
“Typically, demons are neither honest nor of God, but, yes, Deputy, I am deadly serious. Mr. Pastore’s body can attest to how deadly serious this sort of magic is. And I would point out that I would hardly journey all the way from England at great expense for the thrill of playing a small joke on a pair of complete strangers. I am telling you the absolute truth as I know it, gentlemen. This man summoned a demon, which escaped when someone broke the circles there and there, allowing the demon to do precisely what you see before you.”