Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  They’d barely broken ground on the condos. The construction site was bedrock and wet black dirt, piles of rebar and wooden pallets all soaked from last night’s rain. And in the middle of the scene, under the shadow of a sunset-orange crane, a dead and broken body.

  No.

  She felt like a ghost, drifting across the yard, past cops reeling out crime-scene tape. Past an evidence tech who swooped around the body with his camera, snapping photographs that sounded like cannon fire. Tony rushed over in slow motion, looking like he hadn’t slept, trying to get in her way.

  “Marie, listen—” he started to say. She brushed past him without a word.

  And stood over the corpse of Baby Blue.

  Blood smeared her pale cheeks, painted her lips, dotted the tip of her nose. In death, her killer had made a clown of her. Stealing everything she had. Her clothes, her dignity, her life. Leaving nothing behind but cuts and broken bones.

  Marie collapsed to one knee in the wet, cold dirt. Her shoulders tensed, her jaw rigid, fighting back the tears. She couldn’t show weakness. Not here. Not now. Grief welled up like a torrent of razor blades and sliced her to ribbons inside. She’d failed Baby Blue just like she’d failed the other victims. Not coming to the rescue. Not saving the day. Not saving anyone at all.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. She searched for absolution in those glassy, blood-flecked eyes. There was none to be found.

  Tony’s hand touched her shoulder, feather-light, like he was handling nitroglycerin.

  “C’mon,” he said softly. “Marie, c’mon, they have to finish taking the pictures. Move back a little, okay?”

  She rose, turned, and walked away.

  As she walked, the agony in her heart simmered into a gathering rage. A storm cloud of fury rumbled on the horizon of her mind, black weather and lightning coming in fast. The law was her liege. That’s what she always said. But she couldn’t make herself believe it anymore.

  She thought about Nessa. How she felt safe in the woman’s arms, the rules Nessa set for her, Nessa’s promise of keeping her. Nessa felt more real than her oaths and her badge ever had.

  The law said “fair trials for all.” The law said “bring the suspect in alive.” That wasn’t the liege she needed right now. She’d been on a quest: find Baby Blue and bring her home, safe and sound. She had failed. Now Marie had a new quest.

  She was going to find the monster who did this. And she was going to kill him.

  * * *

  Nessa had spent the morning cleaning up all evidence of last night’s indiscretions. Washing dishes, clearing away leftovers, changing the sheets. The bedroom smelled like torrid sex and while she could have happily basked in the scent, she flung open the windows and aired out the room. In her workroom, she’d swept up the broken ceramic bowl and mopped the floorboards, the wood stained in spots with faint swirls of deep blue ink.

  She heard the front door rattle, her husband’s heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  Richard was all smiles as he lugged his rolling suitcase upstairs, meeting her on the landing. He leaned in for a kiss. “There’s my girl. Did you miss me?”

  The party had left him a tense, miserable grouch. One night away from home, though, and he was a transformed man, lighting up the house with his good mood. Your lover must be good in bed, Nessa thought, taking a little pleasure in her own cattiness. Bet she’s not as good as mine, though.

  She paused, gesturing at his collar. And the tiny scarlet smear she’d spotted there. “Is that blood?”

  Richard blinked. He turned, catching his reflection in the hallway mirror.

  “Oh, looks like it. Must have cut myself shaving. I have to run my dry cleaning over anyway. They’ll get the stain out.”

  She scrutinized his face. “Where? I don’t see a cut.”

  His smile wavered and he turned one cheek away from her. “I don’t know, I mean, it was yesterday. Don’t worry about it. Did you take your meds this morning?”

  “Yes,” she lied.

  He rolled his suitcase into the bedroom, unpacking, laying out his travel kit on the bed Nessa and Marie had wrecked a few hours before. Fresh clean sheets and the morning spring breeze from the open windows had erased all traces of her treason. Nessa’s gaze drifted to her vanity. To the plastic prescription bottle, and the drugs Dr. Neidermyer so happily, so discreetly procured for her every month at her husband’s direction.

  She’d been off them for two days now and felt better than she had in years. Sharper. Clearer. And while she wanted to chalk that up to her delightful evening and the rush of new love, dark suspicions were brewing.

  Now she was going to do something about it.

  Act II

  Time after Time

  Interlude

  Carolyn Saunders sat placidly at the interview table, the stark light of the interrogation room casting long shadows across her weathered face. She folded her cuffed hands on the table.

  “I hope you’re starting to understand how everything that happened was basically your fault,” she said. “‘You’ in the general, collective sense of the word.”

  Her interrogator, sitting across from her, wrinkled his hooked nose like he smelled something rotten. “Explain.”

  “Let’s see. For starters, you people created an occult drug, this ‘ink’ garbage, and flooded the nation with it before you really had any idea what it did. You still don’t know.”

  “We know more than you think.”

  “If that was true,” Carolyn said, “Dr. Cross and her team would have known what they were walking into. Instead, you had one Network cell acting as a distribution hub, another serving as a middleman between the hub and the street dealers—oh, and that cell was into kidnapping and ritual sacrifice on the side, not the most low profile of hobbies—and getting ready to murder their way into a better job.”

  Her interrogator cracked a rare smile. “Scottie Pierce’s assumptions were quite correct. We say it’s forbidden, but we do rather like it when our outer-circle teams test each other’s strength. The fastest way to rise in the ranks of the Network is over the broken bodies of your former superiors. It shows initiative.”

  “And with all that trouble brewing, the logical, brilliant, certainly not-at-all-a-raving-lunatic Savannah Cross was coming to town and armed for bear hunting. Well, coming to Jersey City, but we both know how that ended up. Badly.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  Carolyn rapped her knuckles on the stainless-steel table. “Ah, but you don’t know all the nasty little details. If you did, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “We’re more interested in what happened after,” the interrogator told her. “You’re the one who insists on telling the whole story from the very beginning.”

  “Because you have to understand. You have to know who Marie and Nessa were, before you can understand what they became. Why they did the…things they did. This is the story of their initiation.” Carolyn’s cuffs rattled as she raised her hands, holding up three fingers. “A quote, from a piece I’m fond of: ‘Spiritual initiations vary from culture to culture, but throughout the ages they have always been marked by three essential elements. Beyond ritual, beyond liturgy, a true initiation always involves pain, fear, and blood.’”

  The interrogator mulled that over and gave her an easy nod.

  “True enough, I suppose. One of your books?”

  “No. ‘Reflections on Global Initiatory Practices,’ by Professor Vanessa Roth. It was the last paper she ever published. And it was true for both of them, each facing their own crucible. A fallen would-be knight, mired in misery and grief after her failure to save Baby Blue…oh, Marie Reinhart knew all about pain. She’d known about pain her entire life, since the night her parents were taken from her. And now she was learning how to turn it into a weapon.”

  The interrogator tilted his head. “And the Roth woman?”

  Carolyn chuckled, but there wasn’t a trace of humor on her face.

  “That leaves us
with fear and blood. And as she would soon prove, if there was anyone in this universe who knew all about fear and blood…it was Nessa Roth.”

  Thirty-Two

  Nessa climbed from the back seat of a taxi at the edge of Inwood Hill Park, a canvas tote bag slung over her shoulder. Today was the day. She knew it.

  Excitement put a bounce in her footsteps as she crossed the walking trails, leaving the well-traveled paths for the ragged, primeval wood on the northern tip of the park. It rested on the farthest edge of Manhattan’s peninsula, barely touched by human hands or eyes, a spot of rare solitude in a city of eight million.

  She stopped here and there along the way, pausing by clumps of wildflowers. Her ritual knife, a small and slightly curved blade with a wooden handle painted white, sliced at the roots of the choicest, most colorful plants. She gathered them in her hand like a bouquet for a date.

  And that made her think of Marie.

  Thinking of Marie made her think of Marie’s desperate kisses, the way her body had writhed under Nessa’s. She bathed in the memory of how Marie’s wrists had twisted, helpless, trapped in Nessa’s grip. The way they’d held each other close after, until Marie sank into a peaceful slumber. Warmth simmered in the pit of Nessa’s stomach and spread out through her body like tingling lines of fire.

  Getting that Internal Affairs detective off Marie’s back had been a pleasure, not to mention a mark in the win column when it came to Nessa’s growing prowess as a witch. But that was nothing compared to the scrying experiment. Both of them, side by side, witnessing the same vision in the inky water? It was such a triumph she could almost overlook the content of the message.

  Almost.

  She’d heard it clear as a bell, though: her own voice, telling her that she was in danger, just before the spell overwhelmed the vessel and the magic shattered along with the porcelain bowl. There was only one remedy for this.

  She needed more. More magic. More power.

  Nessa found her spot of perfect solitude on the edge of the shaggy line of trees, set down her tote, and laid out the tools of her trade: the smooth, round stone carved with a pentacle, a scattering of fresh beechnuts and pecans, the wildflowers sprinkled around her. Their vivid color was a lure. Her book, Games for the Cunning, lay open across her lap as she sat on the grass with legs folded. “The Game of Finding a Guide” was the final spell in the book, the halfway point before the strange tome became nothing but page after page of tangled, incomprehensible ciphers.

  For furtherance of skill, the anonymous author wrote, it is essential that the cunning Student of the Art seek a guide, who will teach the virtues of Power and Freedom. This guide may take on the form of a beast of the wild and must be greeted with respect and a proper sacrifice.

  Nessa read the chant, a hymn in a dead language that became a whispered song. The chant twisted in the air as the words left her lips. They seemed to take on form, shimmering like runes of gold in the crisp late-morning air and fading, echoing into the wood. She felt her power rising, spurred by her memories of Marie’s eyes, her voice, her kisses, one desire feeding another until the heat in her stomach was a raging inferno that burned along her spine and ignited sparks behind her eyes.

  The doe had returned. The timid creature stepped cautiously from the wood. She watched Nessa with deep caramel eyes.

  Yes, Nessa thought. She held out her open hands. “That’s it. You’re my guide. You’re here to teach me. Come closer.”

  The doe stood her ground, halfway between the safety of the trees and her offering. She turned her head toward the mound of beechnuts and sniffed the air.

  “I’m ready,” Nessa whispered, trying not to scare the doe away a second time. “I’m ready for the real magic, the real power. Give it to me. Please.”

  The doe extended one uncertain hoof, then pulled it back.

  The more Nessa watched the doe, her head clearer than it had been since…well, since she could remember, the more wrong this seemed. This wasn’t some harbinger of mystical enlightenment, some occult teacher and taskmistress. The doe was timid. Afraid. Inches away from what she wanted, and refusing to reach for it.

  She looked into the doe’s eyes and saw everything she hated about herself.

  As if sensing her thoughts, the doe’s head jerked up. She turned and bolted, diving into the trees, bushes shivering in her wake.

  Nessa sat in deflated silence. The fire in her veins sputtered and died, going cold.

  She gathered her things, bundled them into her tote, and emerged from the woods alone. Her phone chimed, reminding her it was time for her appointment with Dr. Neidermyer.

  * * *

  “And you’ve been taking your medication?” Dr. Neidermyer asked.

  Nessa lay back on his leather couch, staring at the ceiling. Distressed over her failure, distressed over being stuck in this room with this over-degreed idiot, waiting for the clock to wind down. She thought about Marie. Despite it all, Nessa found a smile.

  “Always,” she lied.

  “Your husband was concerned. He thought you might have missed a dose, before a party, I believe?”

  “If my husband is so concerned, Dr. Neidermyer, maybe he should try being home once in a while.”

  “He has a very demanding career. You know he cares about you.”

  “I’m so glad,” Nessa said, “that my appointments with my doctor allow me to have such reassuring conversations with Richard. It’s almost like he’s in the room. Does he pay you extra for this?”

  Neidermyer pulled a tissue from the box on his desk. He blew his nose and tossed the rumpled tissue into a wire basket at his feet.

  “Sorry,” he said, “allergies. I only ask because you seem…different today.”

  “Isn’t that the idea? That the treatment is supposed to make me different? Better?” She twirled one finger around her ear. “Less cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Less mad than your average hatter—”

  “Vanessa, please.”

  She reached up and tugged an imaginary train whistle. “Less of a conductor on the crazy train, final stop: Batshit City. Choo choo.”

  Neidermyer rested his forehead against his fingertips. “Please. You know we don’t use words like that here.”

  She couldn’t tell him what she really wanted to say: that since going off her meds, she’d felt sharper and more awake than she had in ages.

  “I’m only bringing this up,” Neidermyer said, “because at a certain stage of treatment—when the medication is doing its job and normalizing your neurochemistry—many patients are tempted to stop taking it. It’s a common cycle: the treatment works, they feel better so they go off of it, and the original symptoms return in force. I don’t want to see you fall prey to that.”

  “I’m fairly certain I know how I feel, Doctor.”

  He shook his head, folding his hands on the desk.

  “But you don’t. Vanessa, you are severely manic-depressive. An insidious element of some mental illnesses, including yours, is a common inability to gauge how you actually appear to the rest of the world. Aren’t there times when you believe you’re presenting as perfectly calm, and others find your affect…off-putting?”

  Her thoughts had been jogging along, free and clear—and now she stumbled over a brick in her path. Flailing, her arms mentally windmilling, trying not to fall. Sure, she could think of times like that. A few hundred of them. Mostly involving Richard.

  Tonight is really, really important for Dad, she remembered him telling her before the party. So just…don’t be weird.

  Don’t be weird, Vanessa. I can’t handle you when you’re like this, Vanessa. An endless refrain, reminding her of how many times she’d embarrassed him with some awkward comment or by wearing the wrong outfit for the wrong party. Then there was the form rejection from the Quarterly Journal of Anthropological Review, her failure to earn tenure, everyone acting like her academic career had gone down in flames when she was sure she was at the top of her game.

  Maybe Neidermyer wa
s right.

  He reached into his desk drawer, pulling out an unlabeled prescription bottle. It rattled in his puffy hand.

  “I think we should raise your daily dosage by five milligrams,” he said. “Just for a while, then we can evaluate your progress.”

  Nessa found herself out on the streets of Manhattan, alone in a crowd. Across the street, a homeless man in an olive army jacket and wool cap was stumbling, raving, his whiskered face flecked with spittle as he shouted at passers-by about the ants in his brain.

  Could that be me, she wondered, right now? He doesn’t know what reality is. So how can I be so sure that I know? Maybe I’m screaming at the top of my lungs and I’m the only person who can’t hear it. Maybe everyone just takes one look at me and thinks, “Stay clear, she’s got crazy eyes.”

  She thought about her night with Marie, and for the first time, wondered if any of it happened the way she remembered it.

  She had to know. She called her. The phone rang seven times, then went to voicemail. She called again. Voicemail again.

  A sudden fear gripped her by the throat. Was Marie ducking her? Trying to make a silent exit?

  She had to know. Nessa stepped out at the curb, holding one hand high to flag down a taxi.

  Thirty-Three

  Marie wasn’t taking anyone’s calls.

  It was two in the afternoon and she was still in bed, hair a tangled rat’s nest, buried under the covers in her flannel pajamas. She’d taken a sick day.

  Janine knocked on her door now and then, talking to her through the thin wood. Marie responded in terse monosyllables. One thing you didn’t do as a cop, Marie had learned, was bring your work home with you. Sure, every once in a while she’d regale her roommate with anecdotes from the lighter, funnier side of the job. She’d share stories like the burglar who’d invited her and Tony to search his car, insisting he had nothing to hide, because he’d forgotten that he left a stolen necklace in the glove compartment. Or there was the time a purse snatcher had thrown everything he could grab at them, trying to slow them down during a foot chase—including his wallet, with his driver’s license inside. Those were the things you could tell a civilian about.