Even if Skulick was all right, he probably couldn’t hear me from all the way up here. I stumbled toward the elevator and waited. The lift took forever to arrive. Or at least it seemed that way. Once the doors split open to reveal the floor below, my eyes combed our living area. They found my partner’s motorized wheelchair with Skulick slumped in it, unconscious. I rushed over and shook his prone body, checking for any visible injuries. There was no sign of trauma, so I let out a sigh of relief. I hadn’t experienced such panic since the day Skulick broke his back.
“Hey, old buddy, talk to me. You okay?”
My partner’s eyes fluttered open, and he regarded me for a disoriented beat. Reality was slowly slipping back into focus for my old friend.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Good question,” Skulick said, still groggy and blinking away the cobwebs. “One moment Celeste’s telling me about growing up without a father, the next I’m out for the count. There was no physical violence…”
Skulick’s voice trailed off, the implication clear.
“Magic,” I said.
“A low-level sleeping spell, as far as I can gather,” Skulick said.
“Are you saying our client is a spell slinger?” I asked, my surprise growing.
“It appears that way,” Skulick said.
“Why would she taze me…”
As soon as I asked the question, the answer hit me. “Celeste must’ve known about my protective ring. This was all one big setup.”
Skulick’s features filled with grim understanding. “She stole something from the vault, didn’t she?”
I nodded.
“Besides the Medal of the Saints, she helped herself to a dagger. And she marked me with some of her blood, too.”
Skulick’s mind churned behind those intense eyes, processing this new information. I was still playing catch up here, but the pieces seemed to be coming together for him.
“What the hell is going on here?” I asked.
Somehow I knew I wouldn’t be happy with the answer.
***
Neither Skulick nor I got much sleep that night. While my partner combed through obscure texts and occult databases, I was left with the fun job of securing the warehouse. First order of business was to wash Celeste’s blood from my face. Next up was making sure all our wards and surveillance systems remained in perfect working order.
We’d done an excellent job securing the facility, but the wards were designed to stop agents of darkness, not human thieves. Especially not when I invited them inside. Our own carelessness and softhearted approach to the case had enabled this fiasco. I was furious at myself.
Inspecting the garage soured my mood further. The Ducati was missing. Once I assured myself that Celeste hadn’t done any more damage, I returned to the loft’s main floor.
Only now that the morning sunlight slashed through the warehouse’s oversized windows did sleep threaten to overwhelm me. I let out a yawn and fought the temptation to close my eyes.
I held no illusions about getting any rest today. As long as Celeste was at large with the stolen dagger, I couldn’t afford to sleep. Resigning myself to a long day, I brewed a pot of strong coffee and poured two cups, one for myself and one for Skulick, whose attention remained glued to his bank of monitors and books.
I approached my partner’s desk, steaming mugs in hand, and offered him a cup. Skulick didn’t avert his gaze from the thick tome he was leafing through as he accepted the fiery hot brew. When Skulick tackled a problem, he did so with the ferocious, single-minded tenacity of a terrier. I blew on my coffee and hazarded a sip. “Any luck?”
“Perhaps. Take a look at our surveillance footage.”
Onscreen, I watched myself pulling into the underground garage, getting out of the Equus Bass with Celeste, and then heading for the elevators. At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary about the footage. That all changed when the camera zoomed in on Celeste’s face. The closer view revealed features that appeared blurred and distorted.
“What does it mean?” I asked, leaning closer to the screen.
“It means our thief was telling us the truth, at least to a degree. The electronic distortion of her image suggests that a dark force was targeting her.”
In other words, her soul was indeed hellbound. That much hadn’t been a lie.
“Okay, so why turn on us? And what about the dagger?”
“It’s called the Soul Dagger. Used by the Berlin Ripper, a serial killer, occultist and amateur mage. Your father and I managed to bring his reign of terror to an end in the early ‘90s.”
Good old dad, I thought. How many monsters had he and Skulick dispatched while I was growing up? Too many to count. The man had been a real hero, and Skulick and I were the only two people in the whole goddamn world who knew his story. I wished I’d known the man better.
“What’s the magical significance of this dagger?” I asked.
“The name says it all. It absorbs and traps the souls of its victims.”
I thought this over for a moment, recalling the way Celeste let some of her own blood dribble on my face. Almost as if Skulick had read my mind, he said, “You must be wondering why she used the dagger on herself. Those drops of blood held a trace amount of her soul.”
Understanding hit me. “She marked me with her life force.”
Skulick nodded grimly. “The Medal of the Saints has made Celeste invisible to the Hellhounds’ senses. The only scent they’ll be able to pick up-“