Instantly every weapon in the area aimed at him.
He disappeared a half second later. Reappeared, wearing longer hair and modern armor. Disappeared. Again. Over and over, each time in different garb and different hair. There was a break of several seconds. Then it started again. Once, he reappeared the instant he disappeared. Wherever he was coming from, he was cutting it close.
“Crap in a bucket,” I said.
“Report,” Eli demanded in my earbuds.
“Mainet,” Koun said, his tone cold and bitter. “Appearing and disappearing in the circle.”
“Backup is en route. ETA twenty. Fall back to cover,” Eli said.
“Negative on that fall-back thing,” I said. “Let’s watch a minute.”
“He’s dressed differently each time,” Jermaine said from a distance. “Look. Now he has short hair.” Mainet rematerialized and vanished again and again. Each time wearing clothing from different time periods and sporting different hairstyles. Not coming fromwherever but coming fromwhenever.
“I dig the sixties bell-bottoms and groovy fro,” Carmine said. “My kinda guy. Oopsie. Not so much the wool frock coat from the mid eighteen hundreds.” The petite African American woman positioned her body so she could defend the grounds near us, between us and the church, and also cover the circle. Fawn turned so she could cover the rest of the grounds. Both human guards were wearing low-light monocles with full tactical headgear, military armor, and weapons. So many weapons. Jermaine, vamp, wore steel blades. Alotof steel blades. My guards looked badass. But there weren’t enough of them if Mainet’s people came here too, through more mundane approaches.
I thought about standing, so I could help more, and tilted to the side. I nearly hurled. “Nope.”
Without looking at me, Tex handed me a bottle of water. “Jermaine, take up position near the east corner of the church. Take out anyone who doesn’t belong here.”
I placed my weapon across my lap and added, “Try not to shoot any dog walkers or late-night joggers.” I drank as Jermaine answered in the affirmative and trotted away, and the Heir came and went. My stomach settled some and I nodded my thanks to Koun, shoved the empty into a pocket, and picked up the weapon again. “I wonder what would happen if he landed inside himself,” I said.
“An eight-limbed body or a lot of broken bones? Both maybe,” Fawn said. The muscular woman moved into a better position across from me, providing protection from the side street.
“Hopefully really dead,” Carmine said.
Koun said something else into my earbud, in that odd language. It sounded like agreement. I didn’t ask.
I checked my load. “Next time he appears, Imma shoot him with silver-lead rounds.”
No one else changed out ammo. I figured that was telling. In the distance I heard the screaming as crotch-rockets unwound, gathering speed. Drawing closer.
“What’s happening?” Molly asked into my earbuds. “I see it on the screen from your guards’ vest cams, but it’s all fuzzy, and part tree.”
“Best guess. Mainet’s bouncing here, to this time and place, from different times,” I said, checking Fawn’s and Carmine’s positions—against trees.
Mainet reappeared. My fingers didn’t work. Three of the guards fired at the circle.
The air above the circle blazed in brilliant reds overlaying the orange green of adeath hedgeward that hadn’t shown until now. Mainet disappeared.
In Beast vision, thedeath hedgenow looked like crazed glass. None of the rounds had penetrated it. But the ward looked familiar. Like the shattered remnants of a stone amulet Gramma had used once. I felt in my pockets for the remnants of the stone. They were in a plastic baggie somewhere, shoved into pockets as I geared up for this. Found it. I put down my weapon to tip open the plastic baggie. Yeah. Gramma had worn a stone amulet to keep heru’t’lun’tastink from getting free, and the stone was both crazed and broken.
“His oldest garb appears to be from the early to mid eighteen hundreds,” Tex said. “I reckon this means this circle—and the other outlying pentagram circles—might have been placed in the city when—or even before—Algiers was first built.”
Molly said, “That might mean that the hub circle, has been in NOLA just as long. Maybe much longer.”
I thought about the image revealed by the drone camera, of the hidden lair of the vamps and their death magic witches, hidden in my city where no one would expect a lair to be. I poured the stone pieces of Hayalasti Sixmankiller’s amulet into my palm. Bounced them a little. “And the one that opened up in the clan home and hauled me off?”
“A temporary circle,” Molly said. “It closed instantly. We think it was opened by an amulet she dropped, possibly powered by a demon. There was demon smut on the walls in the room afterward, and the stench of brimstone. And we now think the circle at Soledad’s estate was an amulet circle, not one put in place long ago, but a new, temporary one.”
I grunted. I had seen something bounce as we fell and landed on it. The implications of transport circles that could be opened by an amulet and powered by a demon were scary.
The implication of old transport circles, especially the one here at the church, was that Mainet had known this night was coming and he had been trying to get to this place, this time, for nearly two hundred years, and so far he hadn’t made it.
Why not just drive here? Jog over and walk in? Hubris? Ego? False pride? The old vamp hidebound mindset, the difficulty of learning new ways of thought, new tech, new lifestyles and political structures? Or maybe the location was lost because the church hadn’t been here when they built the circle, way back whenever, and they lost the circle until they tried to use it, and then... Long-Knife told them about the church. And maybe at any moment, Mainet would figure out a better way to get here. All this because someone, sometime, trapped Hayyel here. Or the presence of the key buried in the statue forced the angel to manifest here. There were too many unknowns.
Had Immanuel set this all in motion? The skinwalker faking him? Mainet himself? Or Joses Santana when he came to NOLA and ended up pinned to the wall in HQ subbasement five, like a fangy butterfly?
