by J. R. Rain
Ominously, I might add. Again.
***
The dock segued into a sandy beach, as if this weren’t the middle of the desert. Our host, who still hadn’t uttered a word, and who didn’t even have the good decency to turn his head away from the driving rain, stomped through the dampening sand and straight for, well, the cliff face.
I looked at Kingsley. He looked at me, shrugged, and stomped right behind our guide. Both, I noted, completely lacked an aura. I lacked one, too, which was a damn shame. I was willing to bet my aura had, at one time, been bright and fairly cheery.
Although I didn’t stomp, I followed along, ducking my head away from the rain, and wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.
***
It was an elevator.
Although I can see easily into the night, I wasn’t entirely prepared for an elevator door opened at the base of the cliff. Neither was Kingsley. In fact, after the man-thing had pressed something in the cliff, and the door hissed open, Kingsley jumped. Straight into Lichtenstein’s mute monster. The monster only grunted and brushed Kingsley off and stepped into the dimly lit elevator.
Kingsley, once again composed, motioned toward the open elevator. “Ladies first and all that.”
“How chivalrous,” I said. “And cowardly, too.”
I headed inside and he followed behind, grinning from ear to ear. You would have thought that the big ogre was heading up to the penthouse suite at the Luxor in Vegas.
The elevator itself wasn’t very big. In fact, I was fairly certain Kingsley and the monster were rubbing shoulders. Yeah, awkward and silent and weird. This “monster” was of average size and build. Not like the thing that had beaten me into vampire mush. Certainly not all of Lichtenstein’s creations were going to be hulking. Undoubtedly, he took the bodies as they came, and mixed and matched parts as he saw fit.
Meanwhile, the elevator creaked and rumbled up through the sandstone cliff. The structure was ancient and probably not very well kept, either. I saw no inspection stickers or safety certificates. I tried reminding myself that I was an intrepid vampire mama who laughed in the face of death. Then again, getting stuck in an elevator in the middle of a forgotten cliff, with two monsters—a werewolf and a Frankenstein, no less—was anything but funny. Especially when one of the monsters—I’m looking at you, Kingsley—took up more than half of the elevator.
Not a word was spoken. The silence, if possible, only seemed to deepen as the rickety cage climbed up, up—perhaps twenty-feet or more. The mushroomy smell also seemed to deepen, too, or enrichen. It was the smell of death, of course. And it was coming off the dude at the other end of the elevator. The dude who didn’t seem to care that he smelled like wide-open ass. Then again, he didn’t seem to care about anything, let alone small talk.
Probably for the best. I remembered the thing screaming at me that night, his voice barely intelligible. I really, really didn’t want to hear that voice again.
And then, mercifully, the elevator dinged open. Yes, dinged.
The man-thing waited, and so did Kingsley. I didn’t need to be told twice. I stepped out of the elevator and into the castle’s courtyard.
Chapter Forty-nine
The courtyard belonged in another time and place. Certainly not here in present-day Lake Elsinore.
High stone walls surrounded us, all lined with small windows flickering with candlelight. Before us, cobblestone paths, interspersed with thick grass, wound through perfectly trimmed hedges and gardens of flowers. Along the base of the inner walls were stone walkways, complete with interspersed walkways. This could have been a Scottish castle. Or a monastery high in the Himalayas. The people milling about could have been monks deep in silent worship or prayer, or on their way to meditations. But we were in the deserts of Southern California, and the people moving through this courtyard weren’t people at all. They were Lichtenstein’s monsters. Every last one of them.
“They look like zombies,” I whispered to Kingsley. I didn’t have to whisper loud. The big guy had pretty good hearing.
And it was true, too. For every Lichtenstein monster who walked normally, two others lurched or limped or lumbered. I counted nine total. Most seemed to wander aimlessly, although some moved purposefully through hallways and under archways, disappearing into the various entryways deeper inside the castle.
We followed our guide, who ambled smoothly enough, and seemed to be of one body—which, I think, would be preferable. I gave Lichtenstein credit for creating what he created. It couldn’t have been easy re-building a human being—or giving life to the dead. I knew the dark masters had helped him at some point. Still, the man was devoted to his craft. As evidenced by the walking dead around me.
Some of the hedges, I saw, actually formed a central labyrinth. We passed the opening to one, and I spied a Lichtenstein monster seemingly stuck in one corner, his face pressed into the dense brush, his feet walking, walking. I wondered how long the poor bastard had been stuck there.
We followed a cobblestone path past a small pond where, you guessed it, I spied a man-thing just emerging out of the water. Rather than going around the pond, the creature had walked through it. He didn’t seem to care. Hey, if he didn’t care, I didn’t care. I watched him cut across the grass, his shoulder knocking into a small tree. I found myself holding Kingsley’s hand, tightly. I might be a bit of a badass myself, but this—well, this was just too damned freaky.
It was at that moment my cell phone vibrated. I keep said cell phone in my front pocket—never understood people who kept it in their back pockets—and saw immediately that it was a text from Allison.
Tam Tam is on the move.
My heart wanted to skip a beat, but it didn’t, couldn’t. Instead, I instantly felt sick to my stomach. My fingers flew over the keyboard.
Stay close, keep me updated.
Will do, babes, came her response.
We crossed the courtyard and up some stone steps, where we were led along an exterior tunnel. Archways dotted the tunnel every ten feet or so. I didn’t see the point of such archways, but I guessed rich people had to spend their money somehow.
Lurch opened a heavy-looking double door and stepped aside. I let Kingsley go in first and then followed behind. Our escort continued down a darkened hallway, and we followed like the idiots we were. A vampire, a werewolf, and Frankenstein—all together in one creepy castle at the edge of a lake with a real live lake monster. Where were Abbott and Costello when you needed them?
That there were ghosts flitting through walls and drifting languidly down the corridor was a given. I knew Kingsley could see them, too, because we both stepped out of the way of one such specter who appeared up out of the floor and just stood there, staring at us. I quickly noticed a trend.
“Most of the spirits are men,” I whispered to Kingsley.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” he whispered back, although his whisper might have sounded more like a guttural growl.
“You just said that because I did,” I said. “Admit it.”
He grinned and pretended to whistle. Once again, I wished I could slip inside his thick skull and see what the devil was going on there. But, alas, his thoughts were closed off to me.
We passed many doors, some with light flickering under the heavy wooden doors. In some I heard speaking. In others I heard screaming. In still others, I heard moaning and weeping. Some a combination of all of the above. Kingsley could undoubtedly hear more of what was going behind the closed doors than me. Then again, I’d heard enough. I didn’t want to know what was going on. I didn’t like this place. Not at all. Not one fucking bit.
We came to another door, set into another arch. If I never saw another arch again, that would be great. Our fearless and mute guide turned the lever, pushed it open, and what I saw inside was enough for even the demoness within me to squeal.
It was, I was certain, the laboratory from hell.
Chapter Fifty
The lab resembled a m
orgue; that is, if a morgue was in the monster-making business.
I counted no less than fourteen corpses stacked around the room. All men. All pale and stiff. Some had fabulous wounds: missing limbs, missing sections of skulls, concaved chests. There had been, I recalled, a mining accident not too long ago, and not too far from here, either. An underground explosion at a clay and shale mine that had resulted in a tunnel collapsing and nine miners being killed. Rescue efforts took days. Big news. Some of these fourteen corpses showed signs of an explosion, while many had been clearly crushed. The remaining bodies had no discernible markings. Correction, the closest body to me, lying prostrate on a metal table, had a smallish bullet wound directly over his heart.
Some of the dead were stacked ingloriously upon each other, arms hanging to their sides, looking miserable even in death. Most notable was what I didn’t see: the boy, Luke, was nowhere to be found, which, I think, was a good thing, considering that this room seemed reserved for the dead.
The recessed center of the room, accessed by a four-step descent, featured only a single, metal table. Upon the table was a dead man. Standing next to the table was a living man wearing a surgeon’s magnifying goggles and holding a scalpel. Oh, and he was also holding a severed hand, which he casually dropped into a metal bin. As he did so, he looked up at us, smiling, his big fish eyes bright behind the goggles.
“Am I really seeing this?” I asked Kingsley.
“I’m afraid so.”
I really wanted to freak out, knowing to do so was the proper reaction. But the more I saw of the bodies, the wounds, the cutting instruments, the splatters and pools of blood everywhere, the more interested I became. So very interested...
By all counts, I should run screaming from the room. But there I stood in the doorway, transfixed. My stomach, curse it to hell, growled.
“Jesus, Sam, was that you?” whispered Kingsley.
“Don’t judge me, mister. I’ve seen what you eat when the moon is full.”
“That will be all, Rufus, thank you,” said the man in the goggles. He carefully set aside his scalpel, pulled free his gloves and pushed up his goggles which, admittedly, made him look less like a homicidal maniac.
Our ferryman guide—apparently named Rufus—nodded once and exited, and never once, from the boat ride to the elevator ride to here, looked our way or acknowledged us. The door shut quietly behind him, leaving us alone with the mad scientist.
“Samantha Moon and Kingsley Fulcrum, welcome to my house of horrors. Or, perhaps, my castle of corpses.” He chuckled at this, speaking in a surprisingly strong French accent.
I nearly said “domicile of the dead,” but held my tongue, reminding myself this was no time for my sometimes adorable wit.
He made his way up the steps and greeted us with firm handshakes. He did not sport an aura, always a sure sign of strangeness. His hand, I noted, was warm. I would kill to be warm again.
He bowed slightly. “Victor Lichtenstein, at your service.”
Lichtenstein was not very tall, which ruled out werewolves, who tend to creep up in size over the decades and centuries. He did, however, look like a reject from The Big Bang Theory. Nerdy, off-putting, awkward. He said to Kingsley, “Franklin is one of my better creations.”
“He doesn’t take kindly to being called a creation.”
“Which is exactly why he is such a success. Most of these brutes you see lumbering through this castle, or wailing in their cells, are incapable of caring what they are or why they are here.”
“You’re creating more.”
Lichtenstein chuckled. It was the chuckle of a proud and modest father. And, perhaps, that of someone who had completely lost his mind, too. Hard to say for sure, as the bastard presented himself fairly well. “I’m always tinkering, looking for better and better ways to bring my children into the world.”
“Children?”
“Do not scoff, Mr. Fulcrum. Some of us hunger for companionship.”
“And some of us make friends and get married or join online chat groups.”
He might have glanced my way. “And for some of us, none of those are easy. Some of us suffer tragic, overwhelming shyness. And some of us have loved and lost, and have decided to never love again.”
“You are speaking of Mary Shelley,” said Kingsley.
“Mary Wollstonecraft to me, but yes. I loved her and she betrayed me.”
“Frankenstein.”
“An atrocious book, and wildly inaccurate. Fiction at its best. She had, after all, seen but a glimpse of my experiments.” He took in some air, which seemed to be his first breath since joining us. “But where are my manners? Would either of you care for a nightcap?”
I looked at Kingsley. He looked at me. Of one thing I was certain: we had obviously seen too much here in Castle Lichtenstein. I doubted the good doctor had any intention of allowing us to leave.
So, hell, I might as well enjoy a stiff drink.
Chapter Fifty-one
We were in a smallish room.
A massive tapestry hung before us. The tapestry looked old enough to belong in a real castle. The scene woven into it was that of a fox hunt, with dozens of hunting dogs, horsemen, and one solo fox legging it out. I hoped the little guy made it.
The sitting room wasn’t quite a library, but almost. A number of books filled some shelves on one side. Most of the books were, predictably, ancient-looking, but I did spot one or two Stephen Kings and Michael Crichtons. No surprise there.
A lush carpet was underfoot, so deep and comfortable that I nearly removed my sneakers. What I would give to run my toes through it. Big picture, Sam. We sat in high-back chairs made of the softest velvet I’d ever had the pleasure to rub up against. Each of us had a glass of wine, a French syrah and the deepest red I’d ever seen. I enjoyed the crap out of it. A dry wine, I tasted hints of blackberry and maybe even cherry. That it also looked like blood was something I was trying to ignore.
“You were hired to find a lake monster, am I correct, Ms. Moon?” asked the doctor. This was the first time Lichtenstein had addressed me.
I blinked and set the glass down on a claw-foot side table. There was no coaster, just a richly embroidered doily. “I was, yes.”
“And how is your investigation proceeding?”
“It’s ongoing,” I said.
“Any leads?” he asked.
“There appears to be something there.”
“I imagine so. That poor boy. Those fishermen. Terrible.”
“I’m surprised I didn’t see the fishermen in your laboratory,” I said.
“Oh, they were far too gone to be of any use to me, although I suppose I could have parted them out.”
“Jesus,” said Kingsley, shaking his head and taking a healthy chug from his wine.
“It is a dark business, Mr. Fulcrum, I agree. But a rewarding one, nonetheless.”
“Rewarding, how?”
Lichtenstein stared blankly at Kingsley. “I create life, Mr. Fulcrum. What could be more rewarding than that?”
“You create monsters.”
“Say that to Franklin. Say that to my other successful creations. You met one such creation at Ravioli’s. Pierre is a world-class chef, and I couldn’t be more proud of him. For every ten simpletons I create, there is one monumental success.”
“And what do you do with the, ah, simpletons?” I asked, rather enjoying my own wine. It had a hearty, earthy, slightly metallic taste.
“You see them here, on the grounds. I have use for them, obviously. Some are strong as oxen. And I apologize, Ms. Moon, that you had to experience that firsthand. Gunther is house security who patrols our grounds.”
I realized Gunther was the one who had beaten me so badly.
“What if I had been, I dunno, someone lost and needing directions?” I asked.
“I sincerely doubt someone lost and needing directions would have scaled a fifteen-foot high fence. But, to answer your question, Gunther is trained to look for auras, or the l
ack thereof. He is trained to snuff out any supernatural threats.” He didn’t say it, but I suspected I knew of which threats he meant: alchemists. He continued, “I’m pleased to see that you’ve made a full recovery from the ordeal.”
If anything, he seemed more pleased that his bodyguard monster had performed his job astonishingly well, even if it meant giving me the beating of a lifetime. Ten lifetimes. Lichtenstein finished the last of his wine and asked if we’d like another round. Kingsley seemed all too happy to do so. My boyfriend seemed to be enjoying himself entirely too much. Last I checked, this wasn’t a social visit. There was a kid missing, possibly dying, and the big oaf was drinking our host under the table. Suddenly irritated, I declined another glass. Truth was, the wine was upsetting my stomach a little.
“Is the wine not to your liking, Ms. Moon?”
“I’ve had enough, thank you.”
Kingsley sat forward, almost spilling his recently-topped glass. “So, how many of your creatures work in town?”
“Many of them, Mr. Fulcrum. I own many shops and restaurants, many of which provide working opportunities for my children.”
“But why?”
“Why not? Those who are capable of working need to be stimulated. Many of them have been with me from the beginning and have learned valuable trades.”
Kingsley studied the doctor for a moment, eyes narrowing. He wasn’t quite buying the explanation. Neither was I.
I said, “Who invited us to visit tonight?”
“I did, of course. Some of my more competent creations are quite adept with modern technology. I was called immediately when two of the soulless entered the restaurant. A quick description was sufficient to know who, exactly, was at my establishment. You can imagine my pleasure and delight. I thought it only fitting to invite the two of you over for a nightcap.”