by R. L. King
The ritual itself, once it was set up, didn’t take long to perform. He put the finishing touches on the circle and carefully stepped inside, setting an opened map of the area and Davis’s shoe in front of him. The thing smelled exactly like you’d expect a well-used basketball shoe to smell. Wrinkling his nose, Stone made a mental note to drive with the window open so the car didn’t end up stinking like a locker room. Then he cleared his mind, closed his eyes, and concentrated on the spell.
After a few moments, he opened his eyes and began concentrating fully on the shoe. It glowed faintly, flickering in the light of the candles he’d placed around the circle’s perimeter. He kept his focus strong, repeating Charles Davis’s name in his mind. He wished he knew what Davis looked like so he could picture that too, but this would be enough.
The shoe made a little whoosh sound, shot a puff of purplish flame about a foot into the air, and disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a smoking section of one of its laces.
“Got you!” Stone whispered in triumph, snatching up the piece of shoelace and the map. Normally, the entire tether item would be consumed in the ritual, but since he’d built the “compass” component into it, a portion remained to guide him on his way. He’d even lucked out: the bit that remained wasn’t the smelly part.
He stepped out of the circle and looked at his watch. Eight forty-five. As near as he could tell, Davis was currently somewhere close to Highway 101, which probably meant he was on the move. If Stone hurried, he hoped he might intercept Davis at his destination, so he didn’t have to follow him anywhere else. If he was lucky, Davis might just be on his way home, which would make the whole thing easy, if more than a bit absurd.
He headed upstairs and grabbed his keys and overcoat from where he’d tossed them. As he passed the hall mirror, he caught a glimpse of himself: hair wild, face pale, eyes sunken into shadowy hollows. He wasn’t at his best right now, but that didn’t matter. He could sleep when he was done with all this.
He got into the car, spread the map out on the passenger seat, and placed the shoelace on it at the last location where he’d spotted Davis. Shifting to magical sight, he examined the glowing indicator poking out from the lace. It was farther now, already. Davis was definitely moving.
He started the car and headed out. Now came the fun part: trying not to get into an accident while he followed a magical trace along a busy freeway.
Cheer up, he told himself. It’s still more fun than grading freshman essays.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The waiting room at East Palo Alto General Hospital was packed with people: parents hovering over sniffly kids, a group of teenagers with a friend who had a bloody bandage wrapped around his arm, a small clump of bums keeping to themselves in the corner, and hospital personnel constantly bustling in and out. There were no available chairs in the waiting room.
Charles cocked his head toward the desk. “You ask,” he told Jason. “They aren’t gonna take me seriously dressed like this.”
Jason nodded, hurrying over. Three nurses were seated behind a large admitting desk, two of them intent on making notes on clipboards. The third looked up. “Yes, may I help you?” Her expression clearly said, you don’t look like you’re dying. Go sit down and wait.
“Uh…we’re here to see somebody who I think just got brought in. Maybe in the last half hour or so?”
“Name?”
Uh oh. “Uh…I don’t know her name. She’s a friend of a friend. There was some kind of robbery at her friend’s house, and she got hurt. We want to see how she’s doing.”
The nurse was looking suspicious now. “Sir, I’m sorry. As you can see, we’re very busy here. I can’t spend the time to try to track down somebody if you don’t even know her name. If you want to wait, things tend to slow down in a couple of hours. I might be able to help you then.”
Jason sighed, glancing down at his watch. It was only a little after midnight. “Yeah, thanks,” he said, hurrying back to Charles. “No dice,” he told him. “You don’t know this friend’s name, do you?”
Charles shook his head.
Jason watched more people moving in and out of the waiting room, and a thought struck him. “Hey, if there are this many people here, I doubt they’d bring her into the main waiting room. She’d go straight to emergency, right? Maybe she’ll still be there!”
Without waiting for an answer, he ran out the way they’d come in, scanning the signs out front. He spotted one labeled EMERGENCY, with an arrow pointing off to the right, and took off. He heard Charles pounding along behind him, already out of breath.
Nobody bothered them when they busted through the double swinging doors and hurried down the hall, dodging gurneys both empty and occupied. If possible, this place was even more chaotic than the front desk area. At the end of the hall was a large, open area filled with more people on gurneys, people sitting around moaning in pain along with worried-looking friends or family, and even more scurrying hospital personnel. It smelled like the faint scents of blood and vomit, overlaid with a heavy, sharp tang of antiseptic.
As he and Charles stood there trying to figure out where to start, a loud voice called, “On your left!” They leaped out of the way as a gurney bearing a blood-soaked male figure hurtled by, propelled by two ambulance attendants and a nurse.
“Busy place,” Jason muttered.
“Yeah. Sad thing is, some of these people are probably gonna die waiting to get seen.” Again, Charles couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice.
Jason didn’t have time to worry about the socioeconomic implications of inner-city emergency care right now. He tried to spot any women on gurneys, but so far all of the patients were men or teenage boys. Then he noticed an area to their left that had been blocked off by movable dividers. “Let’s try over there,” he said, and hurried off.
He pushed aside one of the dividers just far enough for him and Charles to get through, and found himself in a another open area that had been compartmentalized into a series of semi-private cubicles with more dividers. Each of the sections contained a hospital bed, and from what he could see, most were occupied by patients. There were aisles between them, with doctors, nurses, EMTs, and the occasional civilian hurrying back and forth. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention to Jason and Charles, as long as they stayed out of the way.
“Come on,” Jason muttered. “If we hurry, we might find her before they chuck us out.”
The area was like a maze of misery, filled with moans and beeps and the occasional scream of pain. Every once in a while an opening would present itself to veer off left or right, and once the whole thing opened out into a central area with a large desk and a lot of medical equipment. Jason realized that the makeshift “rooms” were arrayed in a square pattern around the central monitoring area, giving the hospital people the quickest access to all four sides.
“Hey, I think I found her!” came Charles’s low voice over the moaning and beeping. Jason rushed back toward his voice, peering into openings, and found him standing next to a bed two cubicles down.
Jason stared down at its occupant. It was a woman in her mid-thirties, chubby and pale, with wildly curly, dyed-blonde hair and garish, almost theatrical-looking makeup. Her eyes were closed, and an IV line snaked from her left arm up to a bag of clear liquid on a stand. On the other side of the bed, a monitor beeped steadily. The bedcovers were pulled down a bit to reveal a blue hospital gown and a bulky bandage that appeared to be wrapped around her right shoulder and the upper part of her chest. “You think this is her?” he whispered.
“Yeah,” Charles said, looking down at her too. “She looks like the type Mel would hang around with. Hurry up, though—if it’s not, we have to keep looking.”
Jason’s reluctance to try to wake the woman was overcome by his compulsion to find Verity. Gently, he reached out and shook her uninjured shoulder. “Uh…you awake?”
“Willow,” Charles said suddenly.
“Huh?”
“T
hat’s her name. Says here on the chart. Willow Meadows.” Charles stood at the foot of the bed, peering at a metal clipboard hanging there.
Jason let his breath out and nodded. “Willow?” he asked, a little louder, with a glance at the opening of the makeshift cubicle. “Willow, can you hear me?”
The woman moaned and shifted position. That might have been a bad idea, as she grimaced in pain. Her eyes opened. They were green and bloodshot. “Mmm?”
“Willow, can you hear me?” Jason asked, a little louder. “Are you a friend of Melody Barnes?”
That seemed to solidify her gaze a bit. “Mel…?” she mumbled. “Is Mel okay? Is she—?”
“I’m really sorry, Willow,” Jason said patiently, “but we need to ask you some questions. It’s really important. Can you help us out?”
“Mel? She’s—she’s dead.” Tears formed in the corners of Willow’s eyes. “Dead…they…they killed her.”
Jason nodded. “Yeah…” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice gentle. “I’m sorry, she is. I’m really sorry. But we need your help, Willow. I need to know if there was another person at the house. A teenage girl.”
Willow nodded, looking pained and weary.
“She was there?” Jason glanced at Charles, then back. “She was at the house with you?”
“Girl…V…Vivian…? Violet?”
“Verity?”
Again, Willow nodded. “Yeah…that’s it…Pretty name. Odd…but pretty. Girl was…odd too. She was there…and Su…Susanna…”
“Susanna? Who’s that?” Jason looked at Charles again, but the other man shrugged and shook his head.
“Friend…We…went to visit…Mel. Then…they came. Susanna…sensed it. Sensed…them coming. Mel…didn’t believe her…”
Jason was barely breathing now, leaning close to catch her every word. “So…what happened? Did Susanna leave?”
Willow nodded. Her already pale face was growing even paler under her makeup, and her breathing was becoming harsh and rasping. Next to her, the steady beep of the monitor became a little more erratic. “Susanna…said we had to go. She…she grabbed the girl…and they tried to get Mel to go, too. She…wouldn’t. Then they were there…” Tears flowed freely now. “Poor Mel…”
Jason nodded. “Please, Willow. Do you know where they might have gone? Verity’s my sister, and I’m really worried about her. She’s not used to being on the streets. I’m afraid somebody’s gonna hurt her if I don’t find her. Do you know where Susanna lives?”
Amazingly, Willow chuckled at that. “Susanna…don’t live anywhere. But…I think her group…might be hanging out at an…abandoned…fruit packing plant over on Broadway St. in Redwood City these days. You…know it?”
Jason looked at Charles, raising a questioning eyebrow. “That whole area’s industrial,” the other man said, surprised. “Most of it’s abandoned now. Warehouses and manufacturing, I think.”
“That’s where she’d be?” Jason asked Willow. “That’s where she’d take my sister?”
Willow shrugged, then her face screwed up with pain and the beeps became even more erratic. “Yeah…unless they got her.” She reached out and gripped Jason’s arm; her grip had almost no strength. “Listen…watch out for DMW. They’re…bad news.”
Jason’s eyes widened. “That’s who did this to you? DMW?”
Willow didn’t answer. “Bad…news,” she repeated. “Worse…than you know.” For several moments she closed her eyes, and Jason thought she might have passed out. Then she opened them again. “Give me…pencil…paper…”
For a moment Jason didn’t process what she’d said. Then he scrambled to pull the pencil stub out of his pocket and darted his gaze around looking for another scrap of paper—he’d given his last one to the kids at the house.
Charles pressed his little notebook into Jason’s hand. He quickly turned to an empty page and handed it to Willow. “What do you want to write?” he asked. “You can tell me, and I can—”
Willow shook her head, taking the pencil and notebook. Laboriously she wrote something on it, then let it and the pencil drop on the bedcovers.
Jason picked it up and stared at it. There were no words, just a single symbol:
“What is this?” he asked her.
“Look…for that,” she said. “And…if you see Susanna…or anybody…show that paper to ’em.”
“I don’t get it,” Jason said. “Show them this paper? Why?” He ripped the page out of the notebook, put it in his pocket, and handed the notebook back to Charles.
He didn’t get an answer, though. Suddenly Willow looked stricken, her body jerking once and then settling back on the bed. The slightly erratic beeping grew even more erratic, and her breathing quickened and became labored. Jason stared, wide-eyed for a few seconds, then yelled, “Help! Somebody get over here!”
A few seconds later a nurse clad in green scrubs hurried in, followed by an orderly. “What are you doing here?” the nurse demanded, moving quickly to Willow’s side and beginning to check her out.
“We’re—we’re friends of hers,” Jason said quickly. “We heard she was here, and—”
“Get out,” the nurse ordered. “Both of you, now!” She wasn’t even looking at them, instead focused completely on Willow. She barked an order at the orderly, who hurried off. “Move!” she said to Jason and Charles, and then, a little more kindly, “Go back to the waiting room. We’ll let you know when we know anything.”
They took that opportunity to get out before anybody else showed up and punched holes in their flimsy cover story. Nobody bothered them, or even appeared to notice them at all, as they hurried back out through the waiting room to the parking lot.
Jason was breathing hard, keyed up and overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the last hour. He and Charles just stood by the bike for a few seconds and caught their breath.
“You don’t know this Susanna person, right?” Jason asked at last.
Charles shook his head. “No, man. This is getting way out of my league now.”
Jason pondered. “Listen—like you said, this isn’t really your problem anymore. I’m really sorry about your friend. I don’t know what else to say. But you got no dog in this fight anymore. I know you gotta get back to work tomorrow, and it’s already late. Let me take you back to your place, and then I’ll head over and look for V at this building she mentioned.” He wasn’t in a hurry to part company with Charles, but he had to admit that there was no reason for him to still be involved.
“No.” Charles shook his head. “I’ll see this through with you, at least for tonight. Like I said—I like V. She’s a good kid, and I’d hate to see her get caught up in any bad shit. I’m on call tomorrow, so I can’t help then, but I got a couple more hours before I gotta get some sleep. And I know the area a lot better than you do. Let’s go. Maybe she’ll be there, and we can just get her back and call it a night.”
Jason nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s get going.” He paused, then pulled the paper Willow had given him from his pocket. He smoothed it out and showed it to Charles. “You ever seen anything like this?”
Charles stared at it for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. There’s weird graffiti all over the place anymore, but most of it’s gang tags. That doesn’t look like a gang tag.”
Jason decided against telling Charles about the weird symbol he’d seen at the rest stop and at the motel he’d almost stayed at. He was convinced that those and the one he held now were related somehow, but he didn’t know how. He’d hoped to ask Willow, but that hadn’t been possible—they’d been lucky to get what she had told them. Instead, he swung a leg over the Harley and started it up. “Tell me where we’re going,” he told Charles as the other man climbed on behind him. “Is it far?”
“Not too far. Few miles.”
Jason nodded and pulled out of the parking lot. After a quick stop to gas up they were on the road again, keeping to city streets. “Did you hear what she said?” h
e called back over his shoulder. “About this Dead Men Walking gang being worse than we knew? Wonder what she meant by that.”
“No idea. I just know they’re real bad news. When I used to run with the South Bay Boyz, DMW were small potatoes—even smaller than we were. Used to be called the Zombies. They’ve been growing fast, though, over the past few years. That’s hard to do. Usually smaller gangs that step out of line get knocked down fast.”
“What do you think happened with these guys, then?”
“Nobody knows. Word on the street says they got themselves a new leader and he was able to pull things together for them. A lot of people got killed back then. It was a bloodbath for a while.”
“And it isn’t now?” Jason yelled without turning his head.
“That’s when it started, is all I’m sayin’. Before that, the gangs mostly just fought among themselves over turf and biz. DMW just likes causin’ trouble, and like I said, even the cops are scared of ’em.”
Jason just nodded, returning his attention to steering. They’d moved out of residential territory now and were entering an area that looked more like what Willow had described: light industrial and warehouses. There weren’t many streetlights: most of the ones that weren’t broken were out, and the few functional ones flickered crazily, as if they might give up at any moment. It didn’t help that they were all yellow, and made the whole area look even more menacing than it already did.
“Should be around here somewhere,” Charles told him. “Broadway’s somewhere around here, but I’m not sure exactly where. Drive around, and I’ll watch signs.”
Jason did as instructed. This whole situation was weirding him out and raising all kinds of red flags in the back of his mind. They hadn’t gone that far from the hospital, but he was finding it hard to believe that two weaponless women could have made it this far from Melody’s house on foot without being attacked by some street predator. From the look of things, buses didn’t come anywhere near this area, at least not at night, and he doubted they had the cash necessary to convince even the bravest cab driver to venture over here. Maybe they had a car, he reminded himself. Nobody ever said they didn’t.