I was twelve years old, and I had just discovered the meaning of pain. Pain was knowing that you’d failed the people who needed you most. Knowing that they were suffering, you were powerless to save them, and it was all your fault.
“Do you see the trend here?” the lawyer asked, sending a jolt down my spine. I’d been sucked into the memory, reliving the past.
But the lawyer had never said that. In real life I’d gone berserk, demanding they let me go, let me save my brother, and I’d ended up hauled out in handcuffs.
“You ruin everything you touch,” he said. “It’s in your blood.”
Outside the office window, a cloud passed over the sun. The sky turned gray, darkening fast, a storm on the horizon.
“What’s going on here?” I said aloud, my young and old voices speaking in tandem.
The lawyer shrugged, standing up. “At least they took good care of you at the funny farm. And then that halfway house! Pity about what they did to you there, but you can’t say you didn’t deserve it.”
You did deserve it, I told myself. What you put Teddy through…you deserved everything that happened.
The lawyer loomed over me, his body elongating, casting a wavering shadow as the sky outside went black.
“That’s right,” he said. “Your father was an insane, abusive alcoholic. His father was an insane, abusive alcoholic. With odds like that, how could you have ever thought you had a chance at a normal life? The poison is in your blood, Daniel. Under the circumstances, don’t you think the fairest thing you can do for everyone is to just give up and die? Isn’t it the right thing to do? It’s the only way to break the cycle.”
Spengler died because of me.
The lawyer’s skin rippled, turning serpentine, a cruel shade of muddy green. “He did, you know. You tried to save him, and he suffered and died because of it. How many times has that happened? How many more times does it have to happen before you embrace the truth?”
I deserve to die, I thought, and the snake on the other side of the desk bobbed its head with gleeful approval.
#
Hands hauled me up into a world of light and pain. My skin burned, like lying under the spark-shower of an acetylene torch. Chanting voices filled my head, droning as I struggled and tried to see past the the blurred lights that scarred my vision.
“Damn it all,” a woman shouted, “he’s buckin’ like a bronco! Get over here and help me!”
“We’re losing him!”
Bony fingers touched lightly on my brow, another hand on my shoulder.
“Daniel,” a voice whispered in my ear, a soothing sound in the maelstrom, “you have to fight. Remember what we taught you, son. Remember!”
I smelled books. Musty old books, well loved and dog-eared. That smell meant sanctuary to me. I was eighteen years old and learning what the word “home” meant for the first time.
“—might not believe it,” Bentley said, standing behind the antique register at the Scrivener’s Nook, “but I was a bit of a scrapper back in my day.”
He threw some punches at the air, dancing on his feet like a prizefighter. I laughed, perched on a ladder, stocking a row of moldering hardcovers fresh from an estate sale. Corman trundled out of the back room, lugging a cardboard box, and nodded.
“It’s true, kiddo. Of course, he’s lucky I came along when I did. Damn biker nearly stomped him into a mud puddle. This was the seventies, remember. He’s talking about a two-hundred-pound outlaw, not some suburban dad with his midlife-crisis Harley.”
“I was,” Bentley mused, “a bit outclassed. Still, I knew that when I threw the first blow. The ending was a foregone conclusion.”
I looked over at him. “So why’d you start a fight if you knew you were going to lose?”
“Well, someone had to defend that girl’s honor.” Bentley paused, his smile fleeting. “I think Cormie will agree when I say this, Daniel. I’ve always felt that the mark of a man is his willingness to fight for his principles. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose. It doesn’t matter if you ever had a chance to win in the first place. Even if the deck is rigged and the game’s against you, you keep fighting until the bitter end.”
Corman chuckled, setting his box on a cluttered table. “We come into this world screaming, covered in blood and throwing punches. When all else is lost, it’s not a bad strategy.”
“Of course, we do most of our fighting at the ballot box and with strongly worded letters these days,” Bentley said, “but it’s not about violence; it’s about doing what you can, whenever you can, to stand up for what you believe. You fight and you never, ever give up. That’s what makes a man.”
The memory shattered like a broken mirror, shards tumbling and clattering into a million glittering pieces, leaving me in darkness.
#
The serpent reared up before me, ten feet tall and twice as long now. Its cobra hood flared and its tail rattled, a hybrid monster out of a child’s nightmares.
I looked up at it. Calm, now.
“I know what you are,” I said.
“I am the manifestation of what lies within your corrupt heart,” the serpent hissed, “the truth you fear to face.”
I shook my head and smiled. “No. You’re a cheap party trick.”
The tail shook furiously. “I am your judgment, the mirror of your soul!”
“You’re the venom Lauren Carmichael spewed into my stomach,” I said, “the curse she left behind. You’re trying to make me give up, to stop fighting so you can finish me off. Let me tell you something, you piece of shit. I didn’t deserve what happened to me. No kid does. I spent years learning that. Sometimes I still forget, but it’s going to take a better class of phantom than you to make me put a noose around my own neck.”
The snake let out a rasping chuckle, swaying hypnotically from side to side.
“It doesn’t matter,” it said. “Your body is weak. Dying. I can finish you off myself.”
I held up two fingers. “You made two big mistakes invading my mind.”
“Oh? Do tell.”
Walls rose up around us, flagstones forming under my feet. We faced one another in a shadowed cathedral. Thin fingers of sunlight streamed in through towering stained-glass windows.
“Number one—you pissed me off. Number two—the inside of my mind is a seriously fucked-up place, and I’ve got home court advantage.”
The serpent glanced around, suddenly uncertain. I strolled to one of the windows. Like the others, it depicted a version of St. Patrick driving the snakes from Ireland. On this one, Patrick had a sword. I reached up and peeled it away from the image. The weapon took on depth and form in my hand.
I turned to face the serpent, brandishing a blade of stained glass in hues of ocean and bottle green.
“Let’s dance, motherfucker.”
28.
The serpent lunged with a furious roar. I dove left, hit the ground rolling, came up, and sliced into its flank. Black blood sprayed across the flagstones. Its tail whipped at me, rattling a staccato beat, ruffling my hair as I ducked underneath. I repaid the move with another wild slash, laying its tail open.
“You’ll die here!” it shrieked, coming around again with its jaws wide enough to swallow me whole. “Die, die, di—”
I crouched and brought the sword up in one swift, brutal thrust. The glass blade punched through the serpent’s lower jaw and jutted out the top of its head. Streams of black blood flooded its eyes as it screamed, its lacerated tail slamming the cathedral walls.
Light. Candlelight. Cold. Too many sensations, too many images flooded me at once, the mindscape torn away like ripping a painting from its frame.
I was awake.
Candles burned on the stainless-steel tables of a morgue. Red and white wax dripped down mirrored cabinets. I lay naked on a hospital gurney, sweating, skin covered in glyphs in flowing white paint. Unspeakable nausea seized my stomach and I rolled, the gurney tipping, sending me sprawling on all fours on the frigid tile floor
.
My throat filled, something cutting off my air. Panic rose as my stomach heaved against the blockage. Pain tore through my esophagus. I clutched my neck, trying to force it up. Then I heard the frenzied hiss of a snake.
The head was the first thing to emerge. It whipped against my teeth and tongue, squeezing its way out between my lips. Then it slid free, launching out of my throat and spilling onto the floor, a swamp-green serpent nearly a foot long and covered in a sheen of bile and slime.
It darted away, slithering across the tile toward a floor drain, intent on escape. A machete came down with a jolting clang, slicing the snake in half and spattering the morgue floor with steaming black blood.
Mama Margaux held up her blade to the light and frowned. “Never seen that happen before.”
I gasped for breath, panting, slowly coming back to my senses. I looked around the room. Bentley, Corman, and Jennifer stood around the morgue, staring at me with various looks of astonishment and relief.
“Hi guys,” I said, my throat raw and raspy. “Can I… Get some clothes, maybe?”
Jennifer handed me my shirt. The sweat and smeared body paint made it cling to my skin. My muscles ached like I’d just run a marathon.
“Let’s face it, sugar,” Jennifer drawled, “I think we’ve all seen you naked one time or another.”
“I hadn’t,” Margaux said as she wiped off her machete with a towel, then added with a mutter, “not that I’m complainin’.”
They’d pulled out all the stops. A binding circle around the gurney, etched with Celtic runes, was Jennifer’s style mixed with Corman’s ritualistic sensibilities. Bentley’s alchemy lab took up an entire run of shelves, pale steam still trickling from a neglected alembic, and the tracings on my hands were pure Haitian vodou. I only had one question.
“Why a morgue?” I finished getting dressed. A glimpse of my face and tangled hair in a stainless-steel reflection made me wince. I looked like ten miles of bad road.
“Closest place we could all get to, fast,” Margaux said. “Antoine said he’d keep everyone out of our hair while we worked. That boy stood me up on our last date. He owes me.”
“So do I,” I said, getting to my feet. “I owe all of you. I wouldn’t have survived without your help.”
“Horsefeathers,” Corman said, “you would have done the same for any of us. It’s what we do.”
“It’s who we are,” Bentley added.
My family of choice. I waved the four of them close. A morgue might be a weird place for a group hug, but it sure as hell felt good.
“They killed Spengler,” I said. “I couldn’t stop them. Tried my damnedest but—”
Corman shook his head. “We’ll get some payback. Just tell us what we’re up against, kiddo.”
I gave them the rundown, sparing the grisly details of Spengler’s murder. They got the gist of it.
“The Etruscan Box?” Bentley said. “He’d been chasing that old thing for years. A testament to the power of imagination and greed. The Box’s refusal to open is the only interesting thing about it, but that hasn’t stopped people from imagining all kinds of treasures just waiting to be found inside.”
I shook my head. “There’s something inside, but I don’t think it’s treasure. It felt sentient. Alien. Malevolent. Whatever is in that box, I think we’re all better off if it stays in there.”
“Ti moun fwonte grandi devan Baron,” Margaux said. “Some people just can’t keep themselves out of the frying pan. Baron Samedi had one eye on Spengler since the day he was born. Give that boy a nuclear bomb, he would’ve tried to sell it.”
Jennifer hopped up on a patch of open counter, her legs swinging. “These cowboys don’t seem to understand how we do things around here. Spengler was one of ours. I don’t rightly care what’s in the box or why they took it, but Spengler was one of ours, and there’s gotta be a reckonin’ for that.”
Nobody disagreed. A washbasin stood near the refrigerator racks, and I splashed handfuls of cold water across my face, trying to jump-start my exhausted brain. All the pieces of the puzzle were right in front of me. I just had to weave them together.
“Nicky’s seer said Lauren Carmichael’s been working on this for a long time,” I told them. “Whatever the Box is hiding, it’s big time, and she knows—or believes she knows—how to open it. She’s not worried about consequences or who she steps on, either. Whatever’s coming, it’ll make everything else irrelevant.”
“That sounds rather apocalyptic,” Bentley said.
I nodded. “That’s the impression I got, too. Let’s look at what we know. Lauren Carmichael has the power to bind demons, to force them into slavery without any kind of bargain—”
“That’s impossible.” Jennifer cut me off. “There’s always a price for a demon’s service. Always.”
“I thought so too, but I saw the proof. Caitlin’s contract was a hundred percent one-sided. She was forced to sign it against her will.”
“Caitlin?” Margaux said, and I caught the hard look in Bentley’s eyes.
“You’re on a first-name basis with it?” he asked, his voice tight.
“The succubus Lauren bound,” I said, pushing ahead, “and subsequently gave to Artie Kaufman for safekeeping. We know why she did it: to enslave a detective named Holt and keep him in line. Holt was doing some dirty work for Carmichael-Sterling Nevada, and the demon was there to ensure his ongoing loyalty. Artie murdered Stacy Pankow, used a soul-trap on her, and forced Holt to help him cover it up.”
“So Artie was working for Lauren?” Jennifer said.
“Only to babysit Cai—the succubus, and report on Holt. I get the impression that Artie was never in the inner circle and never would be. They just patted him on the head and fed him cookies to shut him up. Sheldon, Artie’s brother, gave him a soul-trap but didn’t seem to care that he botched the job. At the golf game, Meadow Brand said they didn’t need Stacy’s soul in the first place.”
“Implying they needed other souls,” Corman rumbled.
“I think that was why they needed Detective Holt,” I said. “He made sure the case jackets on everyone they murdered ended up on his desk so he could stall the investigation, just like he did with Stacy Pankow. As long as he stayed happy and addicted, he was their get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Bentley paced, thinking aloud. “The natural connection is the souls and the Box. One opens the other, somehow.”
“They had almost everything they needed, just one—” I paused, grimacing as I remembered. “Damn it, we have to move. The guy they called Tony, he was going to claim the last soul they needed, and it was all set to go down tomorrow night. That doesn’t give us a lot of time.”
I frowned, catching the looks on their faces. “What?”
“Daniel,” Bentley said, “you were unconscious for over sixteen hours. It is tomorrow.”
#
Trying to organize a group of magicians was usually a battle akin to herding cats. When times were dire, though, we managed to get things done. Jennifer and Corman stayed behind to clean up the morgue, wiping away any sign we’d ever been there, while Margaux went to find her sometime-boyfriend and sweet-talk him into twenty minutes of unfettered Internet access. Before long, Bentley and I sat side by side at a pair of computer desks, alone in a dimly lit staff lounge. A Closed for Cleaning sign hung on the outside of the glass door.
I scoured Carmichael-Sterling’s website while Bentley hit the online newspaper archives, trying to track down the mysterious Tony. Outside, the sun dripped behind the city skyline, dyeing the clouds blood orange.
“He talked about construction permits,” I said, clicking furiously. “Maybe he’s a contractor of some kind.”
Bentley slipped a pair of silver-rimmed reading glasses from his vest pocket. “But highly placed. An architect, perhaps?”
Sifting through the archive of press releases, I struck gold.
“Not an architect,” I said, “the architect. Tony Vance, golden boy of the
Berlin neo-deco movement and sole designer of the Enclave Resort and Casino. The whole damn thing’s his baby from the ground up.”
Bentley looked over at me. “Curious. You made it sound like he wasn’t an enthusiastic participant.”
“He wasn’t. Meadow Brand tore him a new one for dragging his heels on the soul-collection thing. When we fought at Spengler’s place, he didn’t even get involved. He just stood on the sidelines and watched. I’m hoping I might be able to talk some sense into the guy, get him to come over to our side.”
“It wouldn’t hurt. Oh. Oh dear.”
I peered over his shoulder to get a look at the screen. “What is it?”
“Two months ago, Lauren Carmichael’s husband and son were murdered in a home invasion. She was conveniently working late that night. Sheldon Kaufman’s sister died two weeks later, casualty of a convenience store robbery. Just a day after that, Meadow Brand’s father was stabbed to death in what’s being reported as a mugging gone wrong.”
Why don’t you just kill your wife? Sheldon had asked Tony back at the golf course.
Because I don’t love my wife.
“Christ,” I breathed. “It’s not just any souls they need. Family members. Blood relations, maybe. Someone they have a personal bond with.”
“An intimate sacrifice,” Bentley said.
It’s Amber, Tony had said. It has to be Amber—she’s the only one who qualifies.
“A sacrifice to the Box. Or just to the lock that seals it shut. All right, see if you can dig up a home address for Tony Vance. I’m going to find out who Amber is. We’ve got to get to her before he does.”
My head swirled with maybes. Maybe Tony would lose his nerve. Maybe he’d drag his heels just a little longer. Maybe he’d show his hand too soon, and Amber would fight him off or get away from him in time. There was still a chance.
I love social media and the people who are careless with it. Tony had an open Facebook profile. I rummaged through his pictures and posts, looking for a clue. Then I found one, and wished I hadn’t.
The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels Page 239