There was a pause, as if Erika was hoping Balz would leave. Then she cleared her throat. “Did the man say where he got it from?”
“He told me he’d found the book in an alley, as if someone had thrown it away. Can you imagine?” The old man glanced at Balz. “Is this the reason you have come as well? The book you were looking for?”
As Balz’s instincts prickled, he looked past the shop owner again, to the darkened storage room.
“I’m afraid it’s rather a mess back there.” The old guy turned away from the register and creaked over to shut the door. “I’m going to get to cleaning it, however. Very soon.”
As the shop owner returned, he linked his gnarled fingers and leaned into the chipped counter. At his elbow, a series of handwritten receipts had been stabbed onto a nail stand, and given the fine coating of dust over the flimsy slips, it seemed like they were a record from a year ago. A decade ago.
“What was the title,” Balz asked in a low voice. “Of this book.”
“It did not have one.”
“So what was the content?”
“It was in a language I do not speak.”
“But you paid a hundred dollars for the thing.”
The shop owner smiled, revealing a broken picket fence of stained teeth. “The inking was quite extraordinary.”
Erika spoke up. “All right, thanks for the—”
“You couldn’t read a single page,” Balz cut in, “but you knew to call a collector of gothic and ghoulish shit to buy it?”
“Why, yes.” The old man smiled again, as casual as anything in spite of the curse word used in his presence. “As soon as I held it in my hands, I knew it was perfect for Mr. Cambourg’s collection.”
With a frown, Erika stepped between the pair of them and put one of her arms out. Like she could sense the aggression. “That’s all I wanted to know—”
Balz took out his gun and pointed it over her shoulder at the old man’s head. “You’re full of shit.”
“What the hell are you doing,” she demanded.
As Erika tried to grab his arm, Balz shuffled her around behind him and held her in place. “We’re leaving—”
“I’m not going anywhere with you! What the—”
“Back in my day,” the shop owner said in a clipped voice, “men knew how to control their women. And people were not rude.”
That was when the shadow came out of nowhere. The damn thing popped up from the floor, or maybe it came around one of the shelves—but like that mattered? As Erika continued yelling at him and yanking at his hold on her, Balz swung his gun to the right. The entity was the size of a fighter, broad in the shoulders, narrow at the waist, thick in the leg, but it had no facial features and no true corporeality. Translucent, but capable of wielding weapons and throwing punches, Balz didn’t need to stare into any kind of eyes to know it was soulless, dangerous, and out for blood.
Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger three times in a row. The shadow was hit once, twice, three times in the chest, its dark cloud-body taking the bullets as if it were solid, an unholy screeching exploding into the air as it was driven back.
Except that retreat wasn’t going to last, even with the special ammo he had. To truly eliminate the thing, he was going to have to pump it full of lead, and he had something else he needed to worry about first.
Then again, two birds with one stone.
Two evils with one trigger.
Balz pointed his weapon at the old man—
And blew the bastard’s head clean off.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Everything went into slow motion as the suspect Erika had been looking for, and not able to forget, and feeling really bizarre about, started shooting into the shelves of dusty books. Three discharges popped off, one after the other, at a victim she couldn’t see because he was holding her in place against his bulk.
And then he swung his gun back around at the shopkeeper.
And pulled the trigger.
As Erika shouted, the old man was blown off his feet, his hands breaking free of their grip on the counter, his arms flopping wide open as he stumbled and fell to the floor. For a split second, shock rendered her utterly frozen—but she got over that quick. A heartbeat later, she unholstered her service weapon and jammed her muzzle into the man’s side.
“Drop your weapon!” Her voice was loud as she yelled up at him. “Drop your fucking weapon!”
“Stay behind me,” he hollered back, his free arm flailing around, batting at her. “Stay back!”
“I will shoot you—”
“Do you want to die!”
As he twisted to the side to glare at her, she—
Stopped moving. Stopped breathing.
Across the shop, about twenty feet away… silhouetted against a stack of books… something was rising off the floor. For a split second, she thought it was a man and that what she was seeing was the shadow he was throwing. But then she realized there was no man.