7.
Lisa Sparrow had ceased to exist.
The woman she’d been had died. Lisa would not have gone off into the night, near 4 am, with two total strangers (okay, one total stranger and one almost stranger who had secrets that were, frankly, difficult to accept). But what else could she do, let Jack go off on his own? Not going to happen.
If he left, there’d be nothing for her to do but wonder. Think. Worry. Imagine. One thing she didn’t need was to be left alone with her imagination, not after that thing—that imp.
No, better to risk the night and maybe die, knowing, than sit and wait in uncertainty. What were the possibilities if she had stayed behind? He’d return in the morning, battle-weary but alive? Never at all? Worse, what if weeks, months later, he knocked on her door, changed, beaten, now something unimaginable?
Her life had never been about reacting; she’d done far too much of that tonight.
It had started with Jack; there was no suppressing the sudden, overwhelming urge to know him, everything about him. And learning that he watched the dark, that he walked freely amidst the source of nightmares—somehow, that didn’t bother her.
The knife felt strangely comfortable in her hand. Heavy, but cold. It extracted the heat from her fingers. Rather than leaving her numb and rubbery, however, it made her more alert.
She watched every shadow.
She listened to every sound—as few as there were.
They were surrounded. The night closed in on them, bringing all manner of animal, person, and unknown. Even the rats—she saw three of them (she’d never seen three, not at a time, not out in the open) in the underbrush, sitting and staring, their long gray bodies almost black, their tales naked, their eyes steady.
Nothing moved. Yet. She guessed it was a matter of time. She’d entered a world that existed on the fringes of her own. She would follow Jack to the corners of the earth, and he might actually go there.
She tried to clear her mind, tried to concentrate on their mission. What was it, exactly? To listen to a story? She imagined the teller would be a psychic, a shaman, perhaps a witchdoctor from Haiti or New Orleans. It was all real now. Bigfoot, aliens, super government conspiracies, Dracula, Big Brother, even the gods of Mt. Olympus. In the real world, where the former Lisa Sparrow lived, none of this stuff existed except in fairy tales.
Eyes wide, the new Lisa Sparrow wrote nothing off as fancy. Dreams were messages, mirrors portals, and frogs princes. The rainbow, should she live to see another, led directly to a leprechaun and his gold. And Jack Harlow, who had come unpredicted into her life, became not just a lover, but a guide to all the things of the dark.
CHAPTER TEN
1.
This was the right thing to do. It had to be. The compulsion to hurt Jack was unnatural, and unlike him. He walked with this couple like he belonged. In a way, he had more in common with Jack than any other living person on earth.
The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. His heart pounded. From every direction, a set of eyes were trained on them, following, stalking. This wasn’t hunted, or even hounded, so much as it was marked and exposed.
The quality of night had changed. Clouds veiled the moon entirely, but glowed with the reflected lights of the city and should have given them some light. Instead, the dark tightened, the air thinned. The staccato of their feet reverberated loudly, bouncing off buildings, parked cars, the trees between them and the lake.
An unnatural silence lay underneath their own sounds. An occasional car passed on a cross street; none came close. The fountain splashed, but distantly.
To Nick’s heightened senses, their heartbeats rocked the night; no other creature made a sound. Heads turned silently as they walked by. There, in the trees, birds watched, and rodents, cats, people.
The people concerned Nick the most. They were vagrants, in mismatched clothes, carrying paper bags or pushing shopping carts. They were not lined in pairs or groups. They sensed the wrongness in the air, though maybe not as strongly as Nick felt it.
Nick glanced over his shoulder. The apartment building, a couple of blocks back now, dwindled in the distance. Did something stand on its roof, only to step away when Nick noticed?
Ahead, the sidewalk was clear. Unless something hid behind a parked car, there were no immediate threats. Relax? Nick couldn’t relax in the dark under normal circumstances. These were suicidal.
He looked down, checking the computer in the corner of his eye. Jack carried it in a bag that offered little protection. Anyone who wanted the machine could simply take it—slice Jack’s wrist and take the whole hand, if he must. He pushed back against the intrusive urge to hurt Jack. It came from outside him, so Nick could resist it.
The crowd that had formed where the ugly tattooed man met the truck had thinned. Most of the cops were gone, and also the truck, though the mangled car remained. The driver, leaning against a tow truck, talked on his cell phone. The guy with the towing company logo on his back hooked chains under the car.
“Where, exactly, are we going?” Lisa asked.
“A bar,” Jack said.
“They’re all closed by now.” Lisa glanced at her wrist, but there was no watch. “Closing’s at two.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “The man I’m looking for won’t necessarily be inside. Just attached.”
“This helps, how?” Nick asked.
Jack hesitated before answering. “I’m not sure it will.”
2.
Briefly, Jack Harlow thought they’d reach the bar unaccosted. Lake behind them, buildings more crowded as they approached the heart of downtown, eyes in windows instead of trees.
They’d passed a series of one-way streets. Rounding a corner onto Orange, they were within sight of the bar.
It was too late in the morning, too long after closing, for the psychic to sit outside. Only the breeze occupied the empty street—and a layer of darkness. Inappropriate, even to Jack’s eyes, too deep and too rich. He detected an aroma of jasmine, vanilla, cinnamon—then decay. Unmistakable, overpowering, and awful. Rot like cabbage unattended, dead rats, congealed blood.
Nick halted. Sniffed. “Vampire,” he said.
“No,” Jack said.
“Death,” Nick said, drawing his gun. “The whole city reeks of it.”
Lisa coughed and backed against the glass wall of a shoe store. “You live with this all the time?”
Jack scanned the windows across the street, above a restaurant. Under its awning, in the shadows of its doorway, stood a figure in the shadows, a man in a black suit. Big shiny coin in his left hand. Chocolate skin.
Nick saw him, too, aimed, and waited.
Bearded, with long black hair and colorless eyes, shrouded in murk, the man flipped the coin once, smiled broadly, and stepped out from under the awning.
Three lanes of tar separated them. No cars. No people. Just two broken white lines.
“Vaudoux,” Jack realized.
“Indeed,” said the man.
“What?” Nick whispered.
“Like a witch doctor,” Jack said. “A sorcerer. From Haiti.”
“Well, not quite,” the man said, pocketing the coin. “Santo Domingo, actually.” His accent was thick, almost French, almost Spanish, with a touch of British. He was old. Well-traveled. “Please, put down your weapon.”
Nick tightened his finger on the trigger. Just a touch. Not enough to be seen across the street. He did not lower his aim. “You smell like a vampire.”
“Actually, I don’t,” the man said. “Incense, maybe. Jasmine. Spices. But I do detect what you smell, my friend.”
“Friend?” Lisa asked.
“Please, the weapon,” the vaudoux said.
“You would usually ignore me,” Jack said, taking one step into the street. “Go about your business.”
The vaudoux nodded.
“But not tonight?”
“Not tonight,” he said. “Apparently, no.”
“Why not?”
“Your glow.”
“What?”
“Your aura, you might say,” the vaudoux said. “It screams to be noticed. Seen. Touched. Ripped.”
“I don’t want that,” Jack said.
“I can’t help you. But I had to see for myself, of course.”
“Why can’t you help?” Jack asked. “If there are rules to all this, haven’t they changed?”
“Rules,” the vaudoux said, shaking his head, “never change, and have no place between us. I cannot help because . . .” He shrugged. “Because I cannot. There is no spell to remove your aura, it’s what you are, who you are. It demands to be seen. Warps the dark around you.” He tossed the coin—though he’d never pulled it back from his pocket—across the street. Jack caught it with one hand. “I was already close,” he said. “But there are others, not so near, who will come. Others, not so strong as I, who will be unable to resist your magnetism.”
“Is that a threat?” Nick asked.
“Warning,” the vaudoux said. “I do not make threats.”
Jack examined the coin. It was silver, solid, unadorned on either side.
“Magic,” the vaudoux said, “comes in many forms. Shapes, sizes, are unimportant, Mr. Jack.” He laughed, a quick, hearty Caribbean laugh, as smoke swirled around his feet and snaked up his body. Over knees, hips, around the back, across his face until only white teeth and eyes were visible. His laugh echoed even as the smoke dispersed. The vaudoux was gone.
“Witchdoctor?” Lisa asked.
“You’ve seen him before?” Nick asked.
“Him, no,” Jack said.
But Jack Harlow had glimpsed a vaudoux once before, briefly, in Miami—South Beach, actually—standing on a balcony of one of the art deco houses. He held a fresh human skull in one hand and sprinkled powders over it. He chanted so quietly, the skull could not have heard.
The weather had darkened—even nights could get darker.
A woman on the beach, not two hundred yards away, beautiful, black as shadows, braided hair to her waist. Possibly a model, once, no longer alive, not completely, but enthralled. When the vaudoux completed his spell, the woman—almost a zombie—stopped in mid step. She almost fell. She turned to look at her master. No smile, no nod, no other acknowledgement at all.
She crossed the street, passed one café, and went straight to a man calling customers into a restaurant. “Lovely lady like you,” he said with a thick island accent, “ought not be wasted on a fine young night like this.”
“Ought not,” she said, and then kissed him. A long, lingering kiss, hot, wet, the kind a man would kill for—or die for.
She walked away as his mouth foamed, eyes bulged, and sweat ran from every pore in his body. He swung his head. Lips curled back, drying, flaking. Spots mottled his skin. The people near him scattered, like they might catch the plague.
He stumbled to one leg. Agony etched his face. Smoke streamed from his eyes like tears. Finally, he saw the vaudoux on the rooftop. He opened and closed his mouth, trying to speak as his teeth fell out. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, and fell face down to the sidewalk.
The vaudoux lowered the skull and stood perfectly still. The victim sizzled, smoked, burned, melted. His skin ran like water. Eventually, he was just a stain on the street; not even a tooth remained by which to identify him.
No one else had seen the woman—or the vaudoux. No one, that is, but Jack Harlow.
3.
“His stink’s still here,” Nick said, not resting the gun. Probably thought the vaudoux had turned himself invisible. Wasn’t the case, not this time. The smell came from somewhere else. Something else.
Jack glanced at Lisa. She tried to smile back at him. To reassure—herself, more than him. To say, I’m not letting any of this get to me, I’m still sane, I’m still rational, I can accept these things and change with these things. Jack smiled back, took her hand and squeezed it. “We’re not alone,” he said.
Stupid thing to say. They hadn’t been. Since leaving the apartment, all manner of creatures had been focused on them. Every corner was dangerous. The children of the night were many. They were everywhere.
Further up the road, beyond the ghost’s club, a pair of men stood at a corner. Thin and wiry. One wore glasses. The other held back a beast on a leash. Six legs, the head of a lizard and the body of a—was it a beetle? Maybe a scarab? Snake-like tail. Salivating, straining at the leash that bit into its neck. Didn’t seem to bother its keeper any.
“Stories,” Lisa reminded him.
“Right.” Jack turned his attention to the blackened windows less than a hundred yards down the road.
Something dropped from the sky.
It swooped at Jack. Hands black as coal, claws, flowing robes, no visible face under its hood. Its cloak was like smoke, folding into itself, drifting, shifting in the breeze. It screeched, turned, and swooped again. The high pitch shattered the shoe store’s window. Lisa fell backwards. Nick readjusted his stance, fired three shots into the wraith without effect.
It hovered over the ground, directly in front of Jack. The robes swarmed behind it.
Jack stepped back, stumbling, held by the wraith’s gaze. Its eyes—there were no irises, no pupils, no whites, no sockets for them—its eyes reflected Jack. In the reflection, he screamed, pounded his fists in the air, banged on an invisible box like a mime in excruciating pain and fear.
Jack stared. He barely felt his feet leave the ground. Barely heard more gunshots and Lisa calling his name. Her hand swiped his leg as she tried to grab him.
He stared at himself, reflected, distorted, agonized.
“Do not be afraid,” a cold, whispery voice said. Slick, slithering, nasty, the voice left his ears unclean. It pierced Jack’s head, smashed his sinuses, rooted into his eyes, dug into his chest. Jack’s reflection screamed and screamed soundlessly.
“I will ease your pain,” the wraith said. Ice. Oil. Sticky and disgusting. Like acid, it seeped into Jack’s skin, under his muscles, into pinholes in his bones.
Jack’s reflection cried, tears racing down his cheek, the whites of his eyes burning red. Blood dripped from his nose and sprayed from his shrieking mouth.
“Do something!” Lisa screamed, touching his leg again. Just his leg, but he felt her desperation. Not about to lose him, not here, not now, not to this thing.
Jack closed his eyes. Stop looking, stop feeling, stop listening to the thing.
“I can end your suffering,” it said.
He reached toward those eyes with both hands. Grabbed them—nothing to grab but smoke and dust and air—crushed them in his grip.
The wraith screeched. The two lurched sideways, striking the brick wall hard enough to shake Jack’s bones.
Opening his eyes again, Jack saw the wraith’s skeletal face, the holes where eyes might have been (his own hands there, squeezing), missing teeth in its grin: a smoky, insubstantial skull, there and not. No reflection in its eyes.
To be certain, Jack shut his again and then yanked backwards.
With a screech, the wraith released him.
They might have been hundreds of feet into the sky, over buildings or trees or roads. Jack had no way of knowing, and no chance to brace himself for impact. He bounced on the sidewalk.
“Jack!” Lisa called, immediately kneeling at his side, hand around the back of his neck, lifting his head. Three more gunshots.
With one final screech, the wraith was gone.
Jack struggled for breath—the fall had knocked it out of him. The first inhalation hurt, but the next came more easily. He looked up at Lisa, smiled, touched her cheek. Concentrated on breathing before saying anything.
“It’s gone,” Nick said. “I don’t think I hurt it.”
No, he hadn’t. Wraiths were insubstantial. Like a ghost gone wrong. Empathic, apparently; Jack hadn’t known that. He didn’t know a lot of things. He’d watched, listened, recorded, but never investigated.
“You’re okay,” L
isa said. “You’re okay, there’s no blood, you’ll be fine. Right? You’ll be alright?”
Jack nodded once. “I will.”
“What was it?” Nick asked. “Smelled like a vampire.”
“No,” Jack said. “It smelled like death.”
4.
Jack needed another moment. The fall hadn’t hurt him, but the wraith had frightened him. There’d been a moment when he expected to die. The shadow hadn’t frightened him that way; it hadn’t shown him anything. He’d felt the pain of his reflection, burning and boring through him. Had that been a future the wraith offered? I will ease your pain. I will end your suffering.
No, he wouldn’t think it. Wouldn’t dwell on it. The wraith had not been offering to save him from that future.
Jack closed his eyes. Inhaled deep. Exhaled slowly. Controlled.
The dark lied. The creatures of the night were liars, thieves, murderers. The wraith had not meant to save him. He’d seen wraiths in action before. Invariably, their victims were skinned, flayed, left as bloodied skeletons broken in a hundred places or more. Wraiths came from the depths of despair. And it was true, their victims felt no more pain—not after the wraith left them. But the agony, even in reflection, had been horrible, as much as he could withstand. Over the course of what, a minute? Two? A wraith could spend hours burning to its victim’s core.
Jack had avoided that fate, but what waited?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1.
Lisa Sparrow did not cry. No need for it. A woman in an old horror movie might break down in tears every time the handsome hero disappeared for a moment, lost in folds of darkness as the embodiment of death loomed closer. She might scream, get hysterical, flee, suddenly speak in tongues or reveal herself to be the daughter of Satan. A thousand other things. Lisa did none of them.
She’d tried to catch Jack as he was lifted, even as Nick—the hunter—stared dumbfounded at the creature absorbing his bullets like a sponge absorbing stray drops of rain. She’d tried, failed, but never faltered.
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