Still . . . there was Kane. The warmth that made his gray eyes glow when he smiled. His courage, the courage to go to hell and back—for me. His sense of fair play. His belief in justice. The Night Hag wanted to destroy all that, to strip away everything that made Kane who he was, leaving nothing but a shattered, empty shell.
It almost made me think it would be worth it, worth anything, to wrest Kane from her power.
For three weeks, my thoughts had circled in that endless loop: Dad . . . the prophecies . . . Kane. Over and over again. I thought I’d have time to plan a strategy. But now the full moon was approaching, and I still didn’t see any way out of this mess.
It didn’t help that Dad had made me swear to keep his return a secret. I hadn’t told a soul, not even Kane. Not even Mab, my aunt and demon-fighting mentor—and I told her everything. Mab knew I’d brought the white falcon out of the Darklands, but she didn’t know Dad had come with it.
Dad, done inspecting the coffee table for popcorn kernels, perched on the back of the sofa and preened his feathers.
“Have you told Mom yet?” I asked. When Dad wasn’t hanging out at my place watching TV, he spent most of his time staking out the suburban neighborhood of my sister, Gwen. Mom had left her retirement condo in Florida to move in with the Santini family for a while, helping Gwen’s daughter, Maria, adjust to the shapeshifting abilities she was starting to manifest. Mom and Gwen had both remarked several times on the large white falcon nesting in the area. But my promise to Dad kept me silent. As far as I could tell, Juliet was the only one besides me who knew—and I suspected that had something to do with her willingness to make popcorn.
“Of course I’ll tell your mother. I’m waiting for the right moment.”
“Dad, there is no right moment. When a bird opens his beak and starts talking, it’s bound to be a shock. When that bird says, ‘Hi, honey, I’m home. Did you miss me?’ it’s guaranteed to up the voltage.”
“I don’t see what’s so strange about a talking bird. Parrots talk.”
“But they don’t have conversations. Anyway, you’re not a parrot.”
“Damn right.” Dad puffed out his chest. “You won’t hear me begging for a cracker.” He eyed the empty popcorn bowl. “I wouldn’t mind a cheeseburger, though.”
“If I’d known you were here, I’d have brought you one.” The white falcon had a magical ability to go anywhere he wanted—locked doors and walls be damned—but hadn’t yet mastered the art of calling ahead.
Besides hanging out, getting fed, and watching TV, there was another reason my father spent time in my apartment. I asked about it now. “Dad, have you looked at the book recently?”
I didn’t have to name the title. He knew which book I meant: The Book of Utter Darkness, an ancient volume written in the language of Hell, which outlined the history of the conflict between demons and the Cerddorion—from the demons’ point of view. It contained prophecies of how that conflict would end, prophecies that were now coming to pass left and right. It was this book that mentioned the white falcon.
The book and I had a history. For years, it had fascinated me on Mab’s library shelf, the only book I was forbidden to read. When I was eighteen and considered myself a highly trained demon slayer, I took the book down and, leafing through, conjured a demon. I guess my intention was to show there was no demon I couldn’t take down. The demon that answered the call was Difethwr, the Hellion that marked me and killed my father. I’d vowed never to touch the book again, and for years I didn’t, but the times it prophesied were now upon us. At Mab’s insistence, I went from avoiding the book to studying it. We needed to find out what was coming and how we might counter it. But the book was full of tricks. You couldn’t read it the way you’d read a normal book; you had to stare at the unfathomable words until a meaning took shape in your mind. Sometimes the meaning didn’t come. Sometimes it came in riddles—riddles that tried to trip up and fool the reader into believing whatever meaning the book was pushing.
Lately, whenever I looked into the book, one of two things happened: Either I stared at its pages until I went cross-eyed, getting nothing, or else the book hit me hard with a vision of destruction so terrible and all-encompassing it left me shaking for hours. Not exactly surprising, then, that I was back to avoiding The Book of Utter Darkness. Since Dad was willing to spend time with it, I was happy to hand it over to him. He’d perch on the back of a kitchen chair, the book open before him on the table. For hours at a time, he’d stare at the book with that predator’s gaze, turning pages with his beak.
“I looked at it for a little while,” he said now, “before my show came on.”
“Anything new?”
“Hard to tell. The book doesn’t speak to me, to Evan Vaughn, I mean. Everything I get from it goes straight to the falcon part of my brain.” Mab said the book referred to the white falcon, but in all my terrible visions of a burning landscape terrorized by demons, the falcon had never appeared. “I get flashes of imagery,” Dad continued, “but they’re filtered through the falcon’s perception, so it’s hard to know what they mean.”
“What kind of imagery?”
“Darkness, mostly. But it’s not the kind of darkness that makes the falcon want to return to his nest. I guess that means it’s not night. It’s a darkness that grows thicker and thinner, that burns my lungs.”
“Smoke.” There was plenty of smoke in my visions. They showed the entire East Coast in flames.
“Yeah, smoke. It must be that. But it’s damn frustrating, Vic. The falcon doesn’t have any words for anything. He’s driven by instinct. He knows hunger, hunting, sleeping, danger.” His head turned almost all the way around, toward the TV. “That’s another reason I was watching the nature show. I was hoping it would give me some insight into how this body’s brain works. So I can interpret its images and feelings better.”
I nodded. “So this darkness, or smoke—does it come with a feeling of danger?”
The falcon cocked his head as Dad considered. “Yes. The burning feeling in the bird’s lungs makes him want to fly higher. But he doesn’t want to flee. He’s not afraid. Instead he’s . . . excited. And hungry. But . . .” For a moment, I could almost see Dad’s face—his real face—superimposed on the falcon’s, frowning as he struggled to express his meaning. “But not like the kind of hunger that wants a cheeseburger or, you know, a rat. The feeling isn’t in the bird’s stomach; it’s . . . I don’t know where it is. But the only way I can describe it is hunger.”
“Weird.” I understood how hard it was, trying to use the human mind to interpret an animal’s perceptions. When I came out of a shift, I had exactly the same problem. “In your visions, is the falcon’s hunger ever satisfied? Does it feed?”
“That’s a good question. The short answer is no, it doesn’t. But there’s a jolt of attention, followed by excitement. The feeling a falcon gets when its vision locks onto a mouse or a rabbit or whatever moving in a field below.”
“When it spots its prey.”
“Exactly. Then everything blacks out. The book drops the curtain, so to speak, and I can’t see what caught the bird’s attention. I’ll tell you one thing, though. When I come back to myself, I’m ravenous.” His hooked beak opened and closed. “In fact, I think I’ll go out and get that cheeseburger now. Maybe a couple.”
“Munchies?” Dad may have been stuck in a falcon’s body, but he didn’t share his host’s taste for raw, still-squirming meat. Dad’s favorite hunting ground was Munchies, a fast-food restaurant in Deadtown, where one of the zombie short-order cooks had taken a liking to him. Dad hadn’t spoken or anything, but whenever the white falcon appeared, the cook would toss a cheeseburger upward and watch admiringly as the bird caught the food in his talons and climbed into the sky.
The falcon glanced at the clock. “Shoot, I missed Munchies. They close an hour before dawn.”
“They might be open today. Half of Deadtown’s zombies are milling around out there.” And when zombies mill, they get hungry.
“I noticed that when I flew into town. What’s going on?”
I filled him in. “Daniel, he’s a homicide detective, thinks the Morfran is somehow involved. From what I saw at the scene, I suspect he’s right. But from witness accounts, it doesn’t sound like a straightforward Morfran attack. So I’m going to interview the witnesses tonight. Maybe that will help us understand what happened.”
His falcon eyes bright, Dad nodded. “You should take another look at the book, Vic. New Morfran activity might be an omen.”
“You’re right.” A wave of weariness washed over me, and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed. “I will. But later.” I needed to sleep. If I even glanced at the book right now, while I was tired and weak, it would attack. Once my mind was clear, I’d try again.
Dad left, hoping to scrounge a cheeseburger or two, and I got ready for bed. I thought about contacting Mab at her home in Wales to tell her about the zombie attack and its possible Morfran connection. She’d want to know. But I decided to wait. It would make more sense to talk to the witnesses first. That way, I’d have a better idea of what we were dealing with.
Right now, the only thing I knew for sure was this: Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.
5
I WOKE UP AROUND FOUR IN THE AFTERNOON, AFTER A long sleep blessedly free of dreams. No zombies rioting in the Zone. No visions of Boston burning. No flashbacks to the sheet-covered bodies or stinking black slime of Daniel’s crime scene. Those images decided to wait until I opened my eyes, when they all came rushing back, reminding me of the problems crowding around and clamoring for my attention.
Rolling over and clamping a pillow on top of my head wouldn’t do anything to make them go away. I know. I tried.
