From the buoy, I could see the silhouette of the old Babylon lighthouse about a mile away. The full moon overhead illuminated the steel cage around the darkened light. The lighthouse had fallen into disuse years ago after the GPS technology that most of the freighters and fishing boats were now equipped with made it obsolete.
The water patrol cop I’d shadowed as a rookie was named Lieutenant Fred Harris, but he’d insisted I call him Cap’n. Anyway, the old coot had spent most of our time patrolling the Steel River telling me about the history of many of the fourteen hundred shipwrecks littering the bottom of Lake Erie.
I guess I needed to send Cap’n a thank-you note because some of what he’d told me stuck. That’s how I knew the buoy we tied the raft to had been installed by an organization that tracked Lake Erie’s shipwreck sites. They’d installed the moored buoys so that dive groups didn’t have to drop anchor and risk harming the wreck sites far below. From our position, I guessed that the site we were above was the Cuyahoga, a barge that went down during a storm in the 1920s.
The wooden platform on the water’s surface was dominated by two large metal brackets, a mechanical catapult, and a big glass sphere containing two chambers, one filled with iridescent red liquid and the other with shimmering blue. Beyond the bomb, the bastard moon mocked us from its perch high above the Babylon skyline. Judging from its position in the sky by the time we reached the bomb, I knew we were reaching that deadly hour when the orb achieved its apex and became an officially full Blue Moon.
Once we’d all disembarked from the raft, Morales handed the gun over without a word. The GSW on his leg was bleeding freely. His complexion was pale, and he’d had trouble climbing out of the raft without my help. Considering the concussion, the hangover from the potion, and the bullet wound, I was amazed the guy was even upright.
“How much time until it goes off?” I asked Dionysus.
He glanced at the moon. “The bomb is set to deploy once the moon hits its apex.”
“What time will that be?”
“Four twenty-seven a.m.”
Morales glanced at his watch. “It’s four ten right now.” We exchanged a heavy look.
The thing was, the bomb didn’t look all that complicated. It wasn’t like the movies where there were different-colored wires sticking out of the damned thing. Near as I could tell, once the timer counted down, a charge would activate the catapult. Then it would fling the orb toward the city.
“It’s too far,” I said. “The catapult can’t project the bomb that distance.”
“Even if it doesn’t reach all the way when it explodes, it will be high enough for the wind to carry the potion cloud over the city.”
Eyeing the water, I cursed its lack of salt. If I’d been on an ocean, I could have tossed the entire damned thing into the water and interrupted the magic’s ability to activate. But Lake Erie was infuriatingly free of salt, which meant we were fucked. In addition, the catapult was bolted to the platform, which meant throwing it overboard to sink to the bottom of the lake was also impossible.
“What happens once it’s deployed?” I asked the asshole.
“Once the catapult flings the orb, the potions will mix, creating a chain reaction that will end in an explosion.” He smiled a cocky smirk. “A trick and a treat just in time for Halloween.” He raised his arms and looked up at the moon. “Between the fucking and the fighting, the entire city should be on fire before sundown.”
My pulse had had so many shocks that night that it jumped for a couple of beats before settling back into its normal rhythm. “I’m going to give you one chance to tell us how to disarm it. If you fail, I will make you bleed. Do you understand me?”
“Why would I build the perfect weapon with the option of disarming it?”
I tilted my head. “You’re lying.” What I wouldn’t have given for an extra dose of Volos’s truth serum right then.
His eyes danced with manic glee. “Once it’s set in motion, there is no stopping chaos.”
My gun crashed into his jaw with a satisfying crunch. Blood splattered from his mouth. A few cool drops hit my own skin, but I didn’t care.
“Tell me how to stop this,” I yelled.
His head swiveled slowly back toward me. His pink tongue jutted from his lips to lick away the blood. “You can’t stop it.” That smile again. Those red teeth, like a demon. “Surrender, Kate.”
The moon mocked me over the wizard’s shoulder. My right hand clenched into a fist. My teeth clenched.
“Surrender isn’t an option.”
“It’s the only option,” he countered.
In an instant the rage boiling in my chest parted to reveal a calm spot in the middle. And in the eye of that storm, a deadly calm cut through me like ceremonial athame.
I didn’t hear the laugh escape Dionysus as he realized my intent. I didn’t hear the gun discharge. But I saw his left hand explode and felt grim satisfaction.
His laughter turned into a scream.
Blood everywhere. Dionysus collapsed on the platform and rolled to protect his destroyed hand.
Morales’s face was a mask of shock—mouth hanging open, face pale. “What the fuck, Kate?”
I licked my lips and tasted that bastard’s blood. “Trust me.”
“You shot an unarmed man.”
Anger flared in my gut, the fire fueled by desperation and fear. “Don’t judge me. You fucking covered up a cop’s murder!”
His face hardened. “And you protected your uncle.”
My stomach dropped to the bottom of the lake. “I never said—”
“You think I’m an idiot? Who else could it have been?”
I shoved the gun in the rear waistband of my jeans. “All right, look,” I snapped. “We’re both assholes, okay? But we’re also the only two assholes who can save the city.”
“You… won’t… succeed,” panted Dionysus.
“Shut the fuck up,” Morales snapped.
I grabbed the whimpering madman by the toga and dragged him toward the bomb. Reaching back for my cuffs, I remembered too late I didn’t have them anymore. I looked around, my eyes zeroing in on Morales’s waist. I snapped my fingers. “Bring me your belt.”
He frowned. “What, you’re going to beat him, too?”
“No, wise guy, I’m gonna strap him to his own bomb.”
Morales’s frown cracked into a crooked smile. “I like it.” He limped across the platform to bring me the strip of leather. Judging from the grimace on his face that deepened with each step, that leg of his was giving him a world of hurt.