Sinners & Sorcerers: Four Urban Fantasy Thrillers

by SM Reine

  With that troubling thought, I headed back upstairs.

  Tabitha was sitting up on her knees, knuckles grazing the floor, crying softly. She had placed both of her grandmother’s shriveled hands together just below her bosom. I half expected to see a bloody gash in the clothing, but I guess supernatural knives could cut without leaving scars.

  Tabitha gave me a truly defeated look, and I realized me and Petey were the only family she had left.

  Me. I had included myself in the equation. Selfish, pathetic me. But it made me feel good, needed in a way I hadn’t felt since Amanda left me. Needed in a way that I’d never felt with Gerda, who had always been cold and distant, though she’d been sociopathic enough to run a good con game of romance.

  I walked over and placed my hand gently on Tabitha’s head. In the distance came the sirens of the ambulance.

  I gave the room another once-over, just in case there was some clue to what we should do next. The walls were bare, except for a scroll that hung from the wall, which was, upon closer scrutiny, a calendar of some sort. Today’s date was filled in with a black marker, as if she’d known something dark was coming.

  There was a bed, a small oaken cabinet, and a closet, which was closed. It was easy to imagine a writhing mass of mice behind the closet door, skittering and clawing at one another in their desire to come eat me alive.

  Next to the rumpled bed, fallen open on the floor, was a fat book. It was lying near the still-burning candles. Quietly, I walked over to it and, just before picking it up, looked back at Tabitha. Her eyes were shut, her wet cheeks gleaming in the flames of the candles.

  The book was heavy, and I grunted as I hefted it, careful to place my finger where the book had been open. The title was, predictably, Curses. I walked over to the light of the hall and opened the book to where my finger was wedged. And almost dropped it.

  The title of the page was straightforward, as if it were mentioning a great new recipe for macaroni salad: “Bringing the Dead Back to Life To Do Your Bidding.”

  Couldn’t happen. I mean, c’mon. Shit, this wasn’t some video game where you got three lives to get to the next level.

  Except you saw him with your very own eyes. The Surgeon of Silicon Valley.

  Seen him and smelled him. Hell, if there was a factory smell to a serial killer, that had been it. Not to mention I heard him walk away. Tabitha and the night nurse saw him, too. Max Richter, in the flesh.

  And this very book within my hands defied death, defied that very fundamental and rather necessary law of nature. Almost seemed to laugh at it.

  Shit, just flip the damn book open and bring back someone from the grave. Hell, we should all give it a try. Fun for the whole family.

  Better yet, keep it handy for when the woman you love dies. You just bring her back to life, keep bringing her to life, in fact, as many times as it takes. Plus, she has to do your bidding, so she’d never be able to leave you.

  Sarcastic or not, this whole episode made me sick. I wasn’t big on religion but it didn’t seem right that someone could just write up a new rule book for heaven and hell. There was only one word I could think of to describe it, and it was a word I’d always thought was corny until now: Evil.

  I looked over at Tabitha, and she hadn’t moved. The sirens got louder, then stopped. I flipped through the book, finding a rather odd little bookmark. It was a thin, gray, fuzzy cord—

  I quickly pulled my hand back. It was—it had to be—a mouse’s severed tail.

  14

  At one in the morning, we found ourselves at a little bar off Overton Street. We’d left before the ambulance arrived. I didn’t need another go-round with the cops and Tabitha didn’t have any interest in explaining her grandmother’s little eccentricities. Plus there were bound to be questions about the man who’d fled the scene shortly before Nana’s death, though by all appearances the death was due to natural causes. I wasn’t prepared to make up a lie and I couldn’t come up with a reasonable truth, either.

  The bar was busy, mostly young people juiced and on the hunt, but there were a couple of old-timers with their elbows glued to the bar and their eyeballs glued to championship poker on the corner TV set. Raucous riffs of The Rolling Stones growled from the speakers, glasses clinked and people laughed, and in the back room pool balls clacked liked spastic castanets. It was all so normal that I had to fight an urge to jump up on our table and scream, “Hey, people, black magic exists!”

  Since this was Southern California, they’d probably all just applaud and buy themselves another round.

  Instead, I ordered a side of French fries and a beer, trying not to lick my lips. Tabitha ordered a cup of coffee. We sat in silence when the waitress left.

  When beer had been placed safely before me, I tore my gaze off the tattooed, be-ringed bald man sitting in the booth behind Tabitha. I kept trying to imagine the logic of piercing one’s tongue, and couldn’t. At least the thick silver ring that pierced the area between his eyes and sat on the bridge of his nose had some practical use for, I don’t know, maybe mountain climbing. Just run the line right through the ring and you’re safe as can be. An oversized key-ring also came to mind.

  I sipped on my beer and tried to keep from snorting foam. At least I haven’t lost my famous sense of humor. And if the skinhead could have read my mind, he might have asked me to dance. Outside, with the weapon of my choice.

  I tossed back half the mug and looked at Tabitha. She looked ghastly. Her skin had lost its color and the lines of her face were evident under the white lights. She hadn’t touched her coffee and didn’t appear to have even noticed it had been placed before her on a white lacy thing. The steam rising up from the porcelain cup and obscuring the features of her face created an otherworldly feel.

  Hell, this whole night had an otherworldly feel.

  “You okay?” I asked when my fries came. Truth be known, they tasted great, and I chowed them quickly, not stopping to splotch ketchup all over my plate. Two things even death couldn’t take from me: hunger and thirst. And apparently French fries, too.

  Tabitha didn’t give me an answer. Or maybe she said something and I couldn’t hear it over Keith Richards’ distorted guitar. Talk about defying death, Sir Keith sounded just as cocky and wired as always.

  “Want some fries?” I asked.

  No answer.

  I finished the beer and motioned the waitress for another. I went on eating. Five minutes later, I pushed the plate away. I saved Tabitha a handful of fries anyway. And they say chivalry is dead.

  From under the tabletop her hand appeared, shaky and lined with thick rivulets of blue veins, to take hold of the still-steaming cup. Her hand seemingly welcomed the pleasant warmth the cup offered. Finally, she lifted the cup and took a careful sip. She did not look into it. God only knew where she was looking; it sure as hell wasn’t anywhere in this bar.

  She grimaced, meaning she was at least present enough to acknowledge the black tar that had probably been cooking away for the last six hours. She put the cup back down without a sound and I considered this a minor victory for her.

  “Tabitha?”

  She looked at me, really looked at me for the first time since finding her grandmother dead. Her eyes were wide and scared.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m all alone, Albert. I’ve got nobody now.”

  I reached across and gently held her strong wrist. I felt the small tremors in her. For a moment I felt as if I were holding a scared animal, a shivering little puppy that I wanted to protect from the horrors of the world.

  I didn’t say anything. There was truly nothing for me to say. I did not know her well enough to tell her that I was there for her, and even if I did, what guarantee was that to make her feel any better?

  Her hand continued to tremble, and my heart broke for her. We’d already shared one loss, and that one had been equally hard on both of us. Try as I might to empathize, I couldn’t get too worked up over an old lady who had fetched a rodent
horde on me. Still holding her wrist, I got up and walked around the table and sat next to her. I threw my arm around her and held her close to my body. She put her head to my chest, and my lips began to move and I found myself whispering in a hoarse breath: “You have me.”

  She began to cry. I heard bodies shifting in the booth behind me, and knew that Tattoo Boy and the gang were watching us. I held Tabitha close and let the rest of the world slip by without notice or bother. The wetness of her tears spread on my chest.

  “Can you do something for me?” she said with a sniffle.

  What else can you say to a crying woman? “Anything.”

  “Please call me ‘Tabby.’ Amanda and Nana called me that, and I’m not ready to be just ‘Tabitha.’”

  “Okay, Tabby.”

  Using the nickname drew me closer to her in a strange way, just as I’d felt a wall of defense dropped when she called me “Albert” instead of “Shipway.”

  I reached past her and grabbed the handle of my beer mug. If anything, it tasted colder and sweeter than it had before.

  Some time later, maybe ten minutes, I heard the waitress come by and set down our bill and leave quickly and quietly. I shifted an arm unconsciously and Tabby sat up straight. She gave me a small smile. I held up a napkin and she toweled herself dry.

  A nose blow later, she picked up a French fry and ate it as I would eat a pickle: finger on one end, continuously feeding the mouth while the teeth chewed like a chipmunk. Or maybe a mouse, if a mouse ever ate a pickle.

  When she seemed to be in sufficiently better spirits, when the fries were gone and the coffee near empty, she said, “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” I hated it when people said “No problem.” It always sounded like it definitely was a problem, but they’d get through it despite the inconvenience and burden of your existence.

  When the waitress came by, arms filled with three sloppy pitchers of beer, I flagged her over. “Jack and Coke,” I shouted over the music and hubbub.

  The waitress nodded and was swept along by the tide of people flowing between the bar and the bathroom.

  Tabby looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  I shrugged. “What?”

  “You’re just going to pour amnesia all over yourself, aren’t you? Check out like Amanda always said you did when a problem came along.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “Don’t mess me with me, Albert. I know about fair and unfair, okay? Having two family members killed in 24 hours kind of falls to the ‘unfair’ side of the scales, don’t you think? And you think a drink is going to help?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I should have made it a double.”

  “This just makes everything harder, because Nana can’t help us find your wife and Amanda’s baby.”

  I noticed she hadn’t said “your baby.” I couldn’t tell if the omission was intentional or not.

  I tried to think like a cop would, but all I got was blurry, flickering images of television reruns starring Erik Estrada and David Caruso. “Okay. What do we know that we can build on?”

  Tabby seemed relieved to be able to focus on a task. “Their deaths are linked in a way, and that hurts the worst. Whoever killed my sister inevitably killed my grandmother, for the last spell of revenge she cast took all her strength, stopping her old heart.”

  “Is that some law of magic?”

  “It’s actually a three-fold law: what you send out returns to you three times.”

  “Hmm. Sounds sort of like ‘Do unto others and then duck.’”

  My drink came. She sipped coffee and I slugged Jack.

  “Al, who was that in the hall? The man you thought you knew?”

  I wiped sweat from my glass and looked into her blue eyes, and then she became a blur as my mind began to slip and then finally spin out of control, a kaleidoscopic merry-go-round of memories and things that probably hadn’t happened. A gasp, then short cry, escaped my lips, and I’m sure the bar patrons around me thought I was wasted.

  I took hold of the table, a physical effort to steady my dizzying thoughts. I reminded myself that the world was not always what it seemed and that I was part of one of those unsolved mysteries, and that I would need all my strength to steady my mind and nerves to survive.

  If only the stakes were just my sanity, I’d have let it go and polished off the Jack and ordered eight more.

  Like a Weeble wobbling back into place, my mind found its moorings. Tabby came back into view. Her eyes were wide with concern and I saw that she was holding one of my hands.

  “Boy,” I muttered, “they’re never going to let us back into this place.”

  Tabby tried to smile, but she was too serious to fake it. I couldn’t tell if it was her “cop face” or her “grieving Mead” face. “You okay, Al?”

  “I think so. Just your average, run-of-the-mill guy who’s watching everybody around him die while he runs from zombie mice.”

  “I’m sorry. It was my fault.”

  I squeezed her hand in return. “You’ve lost your sister and your grandmother. It’s not your fault.”

  She moved to get up. “Maybe we should be going.”

  I gripped her hand. “No, you need to know about the man I saw.”

  She settled back down in her seat. “Only when you’re ready.”

  I nodded. I was ready. “The man was Gerda’s father.”

  Her face went blank. “I don’t get it.”

  “He’s been dead, Tabby. He’s been dead for nearly fifteen years.”

  15

  A hint of fear crossed over her otherwise sullen face, and even the laughter and the Arcade Fire blasting from the speakers didn’t lighten the mood. “You’re kidding.”

  Her voice expressed clearly that she hoped I was kidding, that things were hopefully not getting even stranger.

  “I wish I was. Sure, I could be mistaken, but I swear to God I think that was him. He’s certainly a man I’d never forget, even though I’ve never met him.”

  “You lost me.” And, indeed, she looked absolutely confused.

  I finished the Jack, and cursed under my breath because it hadn’t done a thing for me except steady my hands a little. I belched acid up the back of my throat, and the pain brought me around. I organized my thoughts.

  “You ever heard of Max Richter?”

  “Richter?” I could see the wheels turning in her head, although I’m sure she was thinking of family acquaintances or maybe someone from Amanda’s past.

  “How about the Surgeon of Silicon Valley?” I added.

  “That Max Richter? The serial killer?”

  “The one and only.”

  “But he killed himself in prison ten or fifteen years ago. He was on death row.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re kidding. Or are you drunker than you look?”

  “Neither. I’m afraid it even gets more bizarre, more horrible. Her father had killed over forty people over a period of about fifteen years.”

  Tabby sat forward, her grief forgotten, all cop now. “I know. Half the killings were done for Satanic reasons in the early seventies, among groups of people in secret rituals in a basement under the most prestigious church in Hollywood. The members of the Circle of Flames cult included deacons and even the pastor of the church. It would have been one of the biggest scandals to rock Hollywood, except there were a couple of celebrities involved and it got swept under the rug.”

  “That’s an understatement,” I said.

  “I read the case file. The real one, not the four pages in the dirty manila folder they give to reporters and true-crime writers. The victims were all homeless dregs, prostitutes, and junkie porn stars, so nobody really pressed for a serious investigation. That was back before celebrities couldn’t leave their house without a mob of cameras and video crews hoping to get a wardrobe malfunction or drunken stumble, much less something decadent. And, of course, the church had its own reasons not to dig too deeply. But what’s all this
got to do with now?”

  “Hopefully, nothing. But with all this magical mumbo jumbo and evil hoodoo going on, I can’t help but get a bad feeling about this.”

  “Are you sure it was him? Not somebody who looked like him?”

  I noticed she’d skipped over the whole “dead” thing, as if it wasn’t a surprise that he was up from the grave and strolling around Fullerton.

  “I’m as certain as I can be.”

  “Where does Gerda fit into all of this?”

  I eyed the gleaming rows of bottles doubled in the bar mirror, but they couldn’t save me now. “Gerda’s maiden name was, of course, Richter. In the early seventies, when she was eight or nine years old, her father was one of the High Priests in the Circle of Flames. He would bring her along to the rituals. She had watched as her father ritualistically killed, she guesses, around twenty-five women.”

  Tabitha gasped and shook her head, her hand covering her mouth. Even hardened by a career centered on atrocity and wrong-doing, and accepting a world where magic came to life, she was clearly horrified. “That...that wasn’t in the file.”

  I held the glass in my hand, the cold condensation running between my fingers. Once again, I found myself telling Gerda’s God-awful strange tale. I hadn’t told this story in quite a few years, for it wasn’t exactly something one went around blurting to the neighbors. However, under the circumstances, it was critical to get the story out to Tabitha.

  This honesty stuff was starting to upset my stomach, or maybe all that booze had finally burned a hole through it and drilled into my guts. I went on.

  “The other fifteen or so murders that her father committed were because he was one sick son of a bitch, and on every one of them, he dragged his daughter with him and forced her to watch the whole process. Sometimes she watched from the car, other times he made her hold the tools of the family trade, as if he were teaching her how to build birdhouses or something. I’m sorry for bringing all of this up, Tabby, Lord knows you’ve been through enough, but I think you need to know exactly what we’re dealing with here.”