by Dan Rabarts
It’s now or never.
Penny creeps into the cleared area and scuttles across the space to Annie. Crouching so as to hide herself behind the crate as much as possible, she drapes Annie’s arm around her neck. Annie’s breath smells of almonds. She’s been poisoned. Was the dose lethal? Even a tiny amount can be dangerous. She’ll need treatment. And soon.
Bending her knees, Penny pushes upwards, heaving Annie to her feet, for the second time in two days calling on every muscle fibre she possesses. A tall woman, Annie’s not heavy, possibly doesn’t weigh much more than Penny, but the dose of cyanide has made her as floppy as four-day-old spinach, one of her feet dragging. Using a classic one-man fireman’s lift, Penny shuffles Annie away to the relative safety of the stacks of shelves. Perhaps she can hide her from Kerr until help comes.
If she doesn’t die first.
“Come on Annie, sweetie, you gotta help me out here,” Penny whispers. A bad mistake because Annie groans. Penny’s heart leaps, terrified the noise has alerted Kerr.
Please, please don’t turn around.
Encumbered, Penny glances over her shoulder, relieved to see the woman is still preoccupied with her ceremony. But then, Penny catches the flash of silver in her hand and realises with horror that the ritual is coming to a climax. It’s a stiletto. Or perhaps a bayonet from upstairs in the military collection. Either way, the blade is sharp and deadly. Kerr raises it above her head and brings it down on the dog’s throat.
The dog lets out a strangled yelp.
Still shuffling with Annie, Penny turns away, her blood chilling as Cerberus—and Matiu—begin to howl.
CHAPTER 26
- Matiu -
Matiu strides from the shadows, the M4 butted against his shoulder and a scream of rage on his lips. There should be words, but he’s past words. All the time he’d been creeping closer, ever closer, he could feel what was going to happen, but he didn’t want to believe it. He knew Kerr was going to kill the dog; knew he had to stop it; knew he’d be too late. But time fell heavy on his shoulders, dragging at his limbs, weighing on his soul. This is why he’s here. This is the tipping point. This is the precipice he’s been treading, one foot over the void, ever since he stooped and picked up that goddamned bowl in the factory. Once he steps from the shadows, there’s no going back.
Kerr spins at the sound of his voice, but her face isn’t the mask of shock he expects it to be. She’s smiling, a thin hard line on her sandstone features. She comes to her feet, the bayonet in her hand dripping scarlet. The dog, drizzling blood, she keeps tight to her chest. She’s wearing an industrial white PVC coverall, and the blood cascades down her legs in bright rivulets. Matiu scans the floor and there it is, hidden until she had stood to face him.
A bowl.
Not the same as the one from the factory, but a bowl nonetheless, filled with the dog’s vital fluids. It’s stone or maybe ceramic, and there are symbols scribed across its surface, though he only has a moment to glimpse these, not long enough to decipher them. In spite of this cursory glance, he senses that the bowl is old, much older than the tacky one at the factory. It didn’t come from a Manukau flea market on a Saturday morning, but from an exhibit. That’s why she’s here, at the museum. Whatever went wrong last time, Kerr has no intention of fucking it up again with cheap imitations.
Matiu could take her head off with the shotgun at this range. It won’t matter if he hits the dog, it’ll be dead anyway, nor if he takes out anything behind her. The discharge of the rifle will bring security running, and the Armed Offenders Squad, and he’ll be back in prison before he knows what’s happened. He’s willing to live with that, if it means putting an end to whatever this is. Because he feels it, in his blood, in his bones, and he knows how wrong it is. This is more than just some psycho killing stray dogs for shits and giggles. He can taste the toxic winds of other times, other worlds in the back of his throat, mingled with the hot rush of fear.
Matiu stops, sighting along the barrel at Kerr. “Down!” he yells, managing to extract a word from the inarticulate rage which burns through him.
“I don’t think so,” Kerr replies. “But I have to say, I’m awfully pleased you could make it.”
Matiu keeps the gun trained on her. The air is growing thicker around him. Static electricity coruscates across his skin, lifting the hair on his arms. Maybe that mat stuck in the door was a little too good to be true after all. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“They don’t like being cheated. But you’ll do.”
A shiver runs down Matiu’s spine. The air crackles around him, hot and dry, as blood continues to sluice into the bowl from the dog’s slashed throat, bubbling and slopping onto the floor. “Who don’t?”
“Fletcher cheated them, and they made him pay for it.”
“The fuck are you talking about?” Matiu coughs, his tongue suddenly dry, gritty, like he’s been chewing on sand. He can feel the walls falling away, burning shadow pouring between the shelves to swallow them both. The gun is hot in his hands, and he hasn’t even fired it.
Kerr kneels, laying the still form of the murdered dog on the bowl, where he continues to bleed weakly. Wispy tendrils rise from it, white like steam, black like smoke, and curl across the floor. “When they get here, give my regards to the other side.”
She steps back, that same thin smile on her face. It’s a look Matiu’s seen before. It’s the face of a death mask, the unflinching, impassive rictus of a sarcophagus, like something pulled from one of the exhibits around them. Staring at death and the underworld, not with fear, but with longing. Like some sort of perfect insanity. “On your fucking knees,” he grates through clenched teeth. His arms are trembling, and he takes a step closer to the crazy bitch with the bloody bayonet, and the bowl with its looping, swirling streamers of mist. He dares not take his eyes off Kerr, afraid that if he does she’ll suddenly be gone, melting back into the shadows, and he’ll be left here alone with whatever the hell it is she’s summoning. He can no longer see the walls, and a hot wind rushes over them both, tossing her hair about, stinging his eyes. The wind whips the mist into a frenzy, coiling and writhing around his legs, assuming the illusion of life. The blood in the bowl boils and thick veins of red rise into the air, twisting inside the curling tongues of vapour and giving them shape, substance.
Tentacles.
A phantasmal touch brushes Matiu’s leg and he jumps back with a startled yelp, kicking at the floor, at nothing. He sweeps the gun through an arc, looking for a target, flickers of bloodstained mist snapping back and forth between this reality and another. Recovering his wits, he brings the gun back up but, as he’d feared, Kerr is gone. “Fuck!” he shouts, and breaks into a run, leaping over the bowl in the direction she must’ve gone.
Something wraps around his ankle and he jerks to a stop, then he’s falling, landing painfully on the soft, dead dog. The bowl spills, blood sizzling over the gore-slicked floor. Matiu rolls, scrambling forward, but the grip on his ankle tightens, tugging at him. He glances back, sees the pulsing appendage, coils of looping mist and blood, looking more real with every passing breath. He chokes back a terrified cry and hurls himself forward, kicking out to break the insubstantial grasp.
He slides, but it isn’t the hard concrete of the museum floor beneath him. He’s in sand, soft and shifting under his hands, his feet. He can’t waste time thinking about the impossibility of that. If he does, he’ll be lost to madness. If he hadn’t spent most of his life with one foot in this other world, he no doubt would’ve cracked long before now. He staggers to his knees, brings the shotgun butt to his shoulder, and swings around.
The world is a haze of shifting shadows, the storage shelves swollen to towering stony canyons, the roof a black vault of untold depth, seething with dark energy. Like how it felt in the house at the farm, with the storm brewing overhead, only more vast and
utterly more horrifying. Lightning flashes, and Matiu swears there’s an outline of pyramids against the horizon. Then his eyes are full of blowing sand, the universe is collapsing around him, opening its lungs and screaming, its voice silent and deafening and cosmic, everything and nothing, and Matiu no more than a mote of dust falling through the abyss. He screams back, grips the shotgun tighter, and when the tentacle of smoke and blood flashes for him out of the darkness, he fires.
CHAPTER 27
- Pandora -
Penny jumps at the shot. It’s OK: Matiu has the shotgun. He’ll have fired it as a warning to Kerr, or in an act of humanity to spare the dog further suffering. Either way Penny doesn’t blame him. Kerr was about to butcher the dog. And somehow she’d forced, cajoled or conned Annie into ingesting a poisonous substance. Something had to be done to stop her. She might not have liked the idea of bringing it, but if she had been the one holding the gun, if she weren’t pulling Annie away, Penny would’ve reacted in exactly the same way. For the moment though, all her energy is focused on getting Annie out of here. The woman is dying. She needs help. Still dragging her, Penny navigates the labyrinth of shelves, looking back and forth along the cross aisles for a glimpse of a service elevator. There has to be one down here somewhere. It’s a fight to support her charge, because the woman is as floppy as a cotton sun hat. Annie slouches heavily to one side, forcing Penny to swerve sideways, the pair only held up by the shelving, which rocks precariously. Artefacts wobble, and dust rises.
“He’s a good dog, Benson,” Annie murmurs, as they lurch forward, a gob of drool glistening on her lip. “Esshhhloyal.”
Benson? Could that be the Boxer? So, that was Hillsden’s dog back there under Kerr’s blade? Her own dog, and not one of Hanson’s horde? Penny tries not to shudder. Loyal Benson may just have paid the ultimate sacrifice, allowing Penny the time she needed to pull his mistress away. But they’ve only just made it past the first of the sarcophagi when, pale and shaking, Annie crumples, her legs slipping out from under her as she sinks, taking Penny with her.
“Won’t hurt. Promised.”
“Sandi gave you something to stop you hurting? What did she give you, Annie?” Penny asks softly, as she eases the woman to a sitting position, squeezing her into the angle between the empty sarcophagus and shelving.
“Not me. Benson.”
“Yes, but what did she give you?”
Annie’s eyes roll back in her head. It takes her a few seconds to get them under control.
“Cancer,” she gurgles.
“I know you have cancer, Annie. You’re one of Dr Buchanan’s patients.” Annie’s eyes rolls again. Bringing her face to the other woman’s, Penny gives her a shake. “Annie, I need to know what Sandi gave you.”
“Hurts.” Annie’s eyes glaze. Penny’s wasting time. She’s losing her. It doesn’t matter what Kerr gave her. Whatever the hell it was, it was toxic. Penny needs a first aid kit. Annie needs the first aid kit. There’s got to be one somewhere around here.
Somewhere obvious.
Abandoning Annie where she is, Penny runs back the way she came in, to the stairwell. Beside the door, where staff can find it, is the floor’s first aid kit, a metal cabinet fixed to the wall, the solid red cross proclaiming its purpose. Penny slips the latch and drops the cover. It hits the wall with a clang.
Activated charcoal…activated charcoal…
There has to be some in here. Penny runs her fingers over the items, flinging aside the bandages and sticking plasters, eventually finding a box of charcoal pushed to the back of the cabinet.
Nooo!
It’s solid. The box has been opened once before—perhaps to check the contents—and the container hasn’t been sealed properly afterwards. No, here’s the problem: a bottle of saline—for rinsing bits of dust and fibre out of a person’s eyes—has tipped over, leaking down the wall inside the cabinet and saturating the box of charcoal on the lower shelf. Which is why the charcoal is like a sack of cement: rock-solid and as black as West Coast iron sand.
Fuck.
It’s completely useless. And she can’t use the saline to make Annie vomit either, because only a thimbleful remains in the bottom of the bottle. Penny swears again. If she were the boss here, the person responsible for replenishing this kit—no, the person who failed to replenish this kit—would be in for a right bollicking. A day in stocks wouldn’t be too excessive. First aid kits have to be checked regularly! But no amount of shouting, no punishment, is going to save Annie’s life. She’d need to be Rasputin to survive a lethal dose of cyanide.
Rasputin! Oh my God, Rasputin survived a lethal dose of cyanide.
Leaving the cabinet door swinging, Penny races back to Annie, digging in her jeans’ pocket as she runs. Grigori Rasputin was given a lethal dose of cyanide, but he didn’t die, because Prince What’s-his-name made the mistake of administering the dose in a pile of sticky pastries, which Rasputin supposedly washed down with sweet wine. It didn’t work because the assassin administered the dose along with its antidote, the glucose in the pastries binding with the poison to create less toxic forms. Not an FDA certified antidote, but unfortunately Penny doesn’t happen to have a dose of hydroxocobalamin on her. What she does have, though, is the muesli bar she shoved in her jeans’ pocket before she and Matiu left the apartment this morning. A muesli bar full of sugar and fruit. Still running down the central aisle, she slides the bar out of her pocket, unwrapping the cellophane as she closes the last steps to Annie.
Sliding in on her knees, Penny pushes the bar to Annie’s lips. “Annie, honey, eat this, come on.”
But Annie is too far gone to chew. The crumbs fall out of her mouth, tumbling down the front of her blouse. No matter. Breaking a new piece off the bar, Penny shoves it in her own mouth, chewing it quickly. If she can make a paste of it with her own saliva, maybe she can force it down her. Penny spits the bolus into her hand.
God, that looks disgusting.
But it doesn’t stop her pressing it into the corner of Annie’s mouth, pushing it in with her index finger, feeding the gluey mixture to her as if she were a helpless chick.
“Come on, Annie. Please, open up, sweetie. It could save your life.”
Annie shakes her head. “I don’t want to live,” she croaks, her slack tongue slurring on the words. “Not like this.” Her breathing is laboured, coming in short wheezes. The sound rattles Penny’s nerves. She stops trying to push the food in, frightened she’ll choke her.
“Sandi promised I’d be healed. If I could give up Benson…” Annie’s eyes widen, her gaze far away, before her head drops to one side as she loses consciousness.
Penny checks her pulse. Nothing. Damn it, Penny, you’re palpating the wrong place. She adjusts her fingertips, but still can’t find even the tiniest beat.
Annie Hillsden is dead.
And yet, just seconds ago, she’d been lucid. A spike in brain wave activity? Penny has no electroencephalograph to prove it, but if anecdotal reports are true, then a person’s last words uttered in those final moments of clarity are often significant.
Poor Annie. So let down by the medical options, and yet so desperate to live that she was willing try anything: even putting her trust in a charlatan like Kerr. Sacrificing a best friend. She pushes the hair off Annie’s face and, leaning close, whispers: “Thank you for your confidence, Annie. You’re not to worry. Matiu and I will catch her. Trust me, we won’t stop until we have the evidence to put her away for what she’s done to you and Benson.” Gently closing the woman’s eyes, Penny hopes she finds her dog again somewhere.
Stepping back from Annie, Penny is suddenly aware of the commotion at the far end of the basement. How long has that been going on? Didn’t Matiu have everything under control? Turning, she starts running along the aisle to where she last saw Kerr, but she hasn’t gone more than a few steps bef
ore she’s bowled from behind by a fast moving projectile. Slammed forward, the air is knocked out of her lungs.
Ooof!
Penny hears Cerberus’ yowl as she goes down, plunging headlong into the second sarcophagus, her hands spread to break her fall, and catching a glimpse of the dog as he scampers past. Landing hard, Penny rolls once, pain blossoming in her thigh. Finally, the momentum spent, she comes to a stop. She holds her eyes closed an instant, hoping to deny the fact that she’s sprawled in the middle of the aisle, having toppled, and no doubt destroyed, an irreplaceable museum artefact. A priceless relic dating back several thousand years.
She opens her eyes, and sighs. For the second time in two days, she’s lying face-to-face with a cadaver.
CHAPTER 28
- Matiu -
The blast shatters the black and throws Matiu backwards, something warm searing his face as he hits the ground hard, flat on his back. The air explodes from his lungs, and for a second he’s gasping, gagging, fighting to breathe, his skin burning cold as the void. Through the haze, a figure looms over him, its face lost in shadow, and he knows, knows, who it is, but he can’t even find the breath to speak his name.
Makere.
See you soon, bro.
The voice rattles inside his head, and then he’s stepping away, out of sight. Matiu rolls, still breathless, bringing up the gun, sweeping it around. He finds his balance, searches for a target, but sees nothing except the walls of the storage facility, cases and packing crates and shelves, the overhead lights mysteriously dark. Finally, he manages to catch a heaving breath, but the taint of wrongness doesn’t leave him. If anything, he’s stricken by the knowledge that this isn’t the end, but only the beginning. Rising slowly, moving away from the centre of the circle where the bowl has spilled its contents and where the dog lies, a limp mass, he listens for footsteps. All he can hear is a slow, wet scraping behind him. Heart racing, he turns, the shotgun braced, trying to ignore the heat still burning at his face and hands.