Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  Janine forced a nervous smile. “Guess we should both try to get some sleep.”

  Marie trudged into her bedroom and shut the door. She peeled her clothes off in the dark, then tumbled onto the mattress. Her body had hit its limit, shutting itself down, every part of her going still. Everything but her racing mind. When she closed her eyes she was back on the street, hearing the gunshots, feeling the glass rain down. She put her face against her pillow, but all she could smell was smoke.

  Underneath it all, the question driving her was the same one Janine had asked. Who were these people? There was a good reason the city streets weren’t drenched in blood every day. That was because most criminals, even the hardcore, dead-end burnouts, still had some sense of self-preservation. They’d rather face a jury than a bullet. Ink traffickers were a different breed. Murderous. Feral.

  Richard Roth, her lover’s husband, might be one of them.

  Eventually she slept. Wandering through turbulent dreams, looking for clues.

  Forty-Two

  Richard Roth ran his empire from the fifty-ninth floor of a Manhattan high-rise. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the shining skyline, flooding the polished-granite suite with sunlight. He had a curved modern desk and a high-backed ergonomic chair like the captain’s seat in a science fiction movie. On a nearby table, an architect’s model stood on display. It was a rendition of a proposed development in Tribeca, an entire city block imagined in ivory plastic. His pride and joy.

  Today, real estate was the farthest thing from his mind. He paced behind his desk, eyes locked on the grill of his speakerphone, wringing his hands. Scottie burst in through the office’s double doors.

  “What the fuck, man?” Scottie said. “What the actual fuck?”

  “I know, I know—” Richard fluttered a hand at the phone. “I’ve got Westwood on the line. He’s got like half the lodge in his office.”

  “Brother Richard?” echoed the voice on the phone. “Is that Brother Scottie with you?”

  “Oh my God.” Scottie’s jaw dropped. “Will you please quit it with the ritual bullshit for five seconds, Westwood? The ink factory is gone. Our pipeline is gone. You know how many police checkpoints I had to get past just to take the damn subway? The NYPD’s deploying Hercules teams all over the city.”

  “I’m aware of the situation,” Westwood said. “We’re just trying to figure out how it happened.”

  Scottie leaned into the desk, fingertips pressed against cold marble.

  “I can tell you exactly how it happened. I warned the factory that a raid was coming down.”

  Richard lifted an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Remember? I’ve got an inside source. They called me, I called the factory. Passed a warning through the back channels. You know, courtesy from one Network cell to another. Instead of clearing out like they should have, those idiots decided to turn Bed-Stuy into their personal Alamo.”

  Richard punched a button on the phone, muting the line.

  “Weren’t we talking about killing those particular idiots, so we could get a promotion?”

  Scottie dropped his voice. “Yeah, on our timetable. Dead cops, burned-out factory? This is, like, the worst possible way this could have gone down.”

  “Still. It’s almost what we wanted.”

  Scottie’s gaze flicked to the phone. “If we play it right. You feel like sharing with the rest of the class?”

  “No.” Richard tapped the button again. “Brother Westwood, I need to call you back.”

  He hung up the phone. The soles of his polished shoes rustled against the polished floor as he paced in front of the windows.

  “An entire Network cell is gone, and without a flow of product—their flow of product—we’re basically dead in the water.”

  “You and me, bro,” Scottie told him. “It’s all about you and me now. We need to get in touch with somebody higher on the food chain. Screw those other guys. Like Sun Tzu said, in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”

  Richard faced the window. He clasped his hands behind his back, feeling the warm sunlight on his face.

  “We have to be careful. I mean, ‘walking a tightrope over a pit of alligators’ careful. You know the Network is sending cleaners to fix this mess. And by ‘fix’…”

  Scottie’s shoulders tightened. “They’re sending Mr. Smith.”

  “Esquire. It was fine when he was on our side, cleaning up that mess in Jersey, but if the cops even glance sideways at us, we’re walking dead men. We need to make friends, fast. Get a patron. Somebody to hold an umbrella over our heads while this crap rains down on everybody else.”

  The office doors swung open. Savannah Cross, swapping her lab coat and goggles for a severely cut pantsuit and sharp cat-eye glasses, strode into the room with a smile.

  “I believe I can help with that.”

  Richard turned from the window. “I’m sorry, and you are?”

  “Dr. Cross. And while we haven’t met, you basically work for me. Well, you work for someone who works for someone who works for me. Add another five or six steps to that chain of command, and you start to get the idea. I have good news and bad news. The bad news is, the Vandemere Lodge is dangerously close to being considered a liability. And you know how we resolve liabilities.”

  “But it wasn’t our fault!” Scottie said. “We had nothing to do with the place in Bed-Stuy—our lodge handles storage and distribution, period.”

  “Life isn’t fair,” Savannah said. “Neither is the Network. The good news is that I have a way for you to become very, very essential to our operations. Namely, by becoming essential to me, personally.”

  Richard squinted at her. “What do you need?”

  “For starters…”

  Savannah plucked an eyeball from her pocket.

  It sat nestled in the palm of her hand, dry and encrusted with scarlet. A ragged string of optic nerve, gnawed off at the tip, dangled between her fingers. She flicked the eye with her other hand. The air above it began to simmer, rippling like a heat mirage. She murmured an incantation under her breath.

  Scottie bumped against the desk as he took a halting step backward. “What are you, some kind of witch?”

  She glared at him. “I am a scientist. Pay attention.”

  The mirage took form, becoming an image. A faded, sepia-tone memory, frozen in time. A woman’s face.

  “Her name is Marie Reinhart. A police detective. I want her.”

  Richard wagged his finger at the image. He walked around it, slow, studying it from every angle.

  “I know her,” he said. “I’ve met her.”

  Savannah’s eyes lit up. “You have? When?”

  “Back when this whole mess started, when we lost the stash house out in Monticello. She and her partner came to my house to question me about it. I got rid of her, it wasn’t a big deal.” He frowned at the image. “Still. It was weird.”

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah, her and my wife, they seemed to…know each other? I mean, I asked her and she said they’d never met, but something was going on there.”

  Savannah reached into the image. Marie’s face rippled as the doctor stroked her fingers against the woman’s cheek.

  “Tell me,” she said, “all about your wife.”

  * * *

  At that moment, Nessa was only four blocks away, sitting in a stiff-backed chair. She eyed a picture of wildflowers as Dr. Robinson took a seat behind her desk. The psychiatrist was in her fifties, her black hair streaked with natural gray, and she had an easy, sonorous voice. The kind of voice made for reading bedtime stories.

  “If I understand correctly, Ms. Fieri, this appointment wasn’t for you?”

  “Right,” Nessa told her. “I just need some advice. A…friend of mine is in treatment, and I’m concerned that she might be misdiagnosed. Her medication really doesn’t seem to be helping her—”

  Robinson held up a hand. “I have to stop you right there. If your friend is one of my pat
ients, I can’t possibly comment on her treatment. It’s both unethical and illegal.”

  “No, totally different doctor. That’s why I chose you. I need a neutral opinion. Part of the problem is that she’s taking Seroquel—”

  “She’s bipolar?”

  “That’s what her diagnosis says.”

  The doctor rubbed her chin. “Go on.”

  Nessa opened her purse, a thin Gucci handbag with a silver chain strap, and fished out one of her pills.

  “I went on the Internet, and these pills don’t look like what Seroquel is supposed to look like. At all. Is there some kind of laboratory test I can have done to make sure she’s getting the right medication?”

  The doctor smiled and held out her open palm.

  “Nothing so complicated. Pill designs are proprietary. All I have to do is enter the shape, color, and imprint in a database, and in fifteen seconds we’ll know exactly what your friend is taking. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

  Nessa passed her the pill. Robinson set it on her blotter, typed, then froze. She stared at her screen. Then she checked the pill again, holding it close to her glasses and squinting at the faded imprint.

  “Doctor?”

  “Hold on,” she murmured, typing. “I must have gotten that wrong.”

  Robinson’s genial expression faded as she read the screen. She looked across the desk at Nessa, grave.

  “Where did you get this?”

  “I—I told you, it’s my friend’s prescription—”

  “No,” the doctor said. “It isn’t. I can tell you with one hundred percent certainty that this did not come from a pharmacy.”

  “It didn’t,” Nessa stammered. “I mean, they have an under-the-table thing with her psychiatrist. My friend comes from a wealthy family, and there are politics involved, so they don’t want anyone knowing she’s in treatment.”

  Robinson held up the tiny lozenge.

  “Ms. Fieri, this is Preloquil.”

  Nessa shook her head. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a sedative. Intended to be taken before bedtime, as an occasional sleeping aid.”

  Robinson set the pill on her blotter. Nessa stared at it, her lips parting as an icy, trembling chill trickled down her spine. It spread to her arms, her legs, freezing her in her chair.

  “It’s a tranquilizer? My…my friend has been taking sedatives? All day? Every day?”

  “Preloquil was pulled from the market over a year ago. Its FDA approval was revoked.”

  “So this…” Nessa pointed at the pill. “This isn’t for treating bipolar disorder. At all.”

  Robinson shook her head. “The situation is a little more serious than that, Ms. Fieri. Preloquil was designed as a supplement to a regimen of anti-psychotic medication, in case patients suffered from sleeplessness as a side effect. It tested well, initially.”

  “Initially,” Nessa echoed. Her own voice sounded a thousand miles away.

  “You have to understand that there’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all treatment. Psychiatric medications, when they’re properly prescribed as part of a regimen of care, can enable people to live healthy, active lives—”

  “Doctor? Why was it pulled from the market?”

  “There were unforeseen consequences. Some people were taking it against recommendation, as a long term and stand-alone sleep aid. Used that way, over a long enough time period, Preloquil caused permanent damage to the serotonin levels in their brains.”

  “Brain damage,” Nessa said. “This drug. It gave them brain damage.”

  “Not everyone who took it. But, yes, there were cases where otherwise-healthy people manifested symptoms of severe clinical depression, related to their reduced serotonin uptake. There were a number of suicides.”

  Nessa stared at the pill, so small, so innocent-looking, as her world caved in around her.

  “Suicide,” she breathed. She struggled to force the words out, her mind racing, storm-tossed. “So. If you wanted someone to be…permanently sedated. To shut them up. If you—if you wanted to give them brain damage, or make them kill themselves—”

  “Ms. Fieri, please. If someone is giving this to people and misrepresenting it, they’re committing a serious criminal act. Do you know this doctor’s name?”

  “I know his name,” Nessa whispered, her eyes misty and her voice jagged. “I know her husband’s name.”

  Robinson reached for the phone on her desk, watching, uncertain.

  “I think you should sit here with me,” she said, “so we can help your ‘friend’ together, all right? Let’s talk to the authorities, you and me, and tell them what happened. Everything is going to be just fine.”

  Nessa’s anguish spiraled inside her chest, a tornado of self-loathing and betrayal and fear and hurt, building until her blood roared in her ears and she thought she might burst.

  Then the light shone through. A moment of calm and beautiful clarity.

  She wiped at her eyes, sniffed once, and smiled.

  “Thank you, Dr. Robinson, but that won’t be necessary.”

  Robinson paused with her hand on the phone. Frozen, as if she physically couldn’t push the buttons.

  “Ms. Fieri?”

  Nessa stood, graceful and serene.

  “I have been—I have allowed myself to be—lied to, betrayed, used. Treated like an object. Walked on. It ends today. It all ends today.”

  “What—” The doctor swallowed hard, her hand still frozen in place. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to stop being meek,” Nessa said. “And I’m going to stop being nice. I’m going to be…me.”

  Forty-Three

  Nessa returned to Inwood Hill.

  She found her sanctuary on the tip of the park, her secluded grove by the tree line. She placed the stone pentacle before her and piled it with her mound of beechnut offerings. Her book sat open on her lap, pages turned to “The Game of Finding a Guide.” She traced the tangled incantation with the tip of her white-handled knife as she chanted. Each word was a firm call, the spidery syllables winding up to the trees and demanding the universe respond.

  The underbrush rustled. The doe emerged, timid, glancing between her and the beechnuts.

  Nessa stood. She pointed at the doe with her knife.

  “Come here,” she said, her voice like razor-edged steel in a velvet jacket. “Come to me. Now.”

  The doe bowed her head and obeyed, trotting across the dew-damp grass. She nestled right up to her. Nessa stroked her fur, soft and downy under her fingertips, and the doe’s deep chocolate eyes gazed up at her.

  “I didn’t understand,” Nessa whispered. “Not until now. You were never my guide.”

  She giggled. She couldn’t help it.

  “How could you teach me anything at all?” she asked the doe. “You’re me.”

  The doe trembled under her hand. Nessa understood. She understood what it meant to live like prey. She understood how it felt to be meek and afraid every single day of her life. She knew how it felt to cringe and apologize instead of standing up for herself. It was wretched to be told by everyone around her that she was strange, unwanted, weak. It was worse to believe it.

  Storm clouds passed in front of the sun. The light faded. Darker than it should have been, eclipse-dark, plunging the park into twilight. A strong, cold wind rippled along the wet grass. The trees quivered.

  “You were never my guide,” Nessa said.

  Nessa lifted her head. She looked up to the trees.

  A horned owl perched at the edge of a gnarled branch. It gazed down at her with eyes so vast they could swallow the world. Stars shone in their black depths.

  “You were my sacrifice.”

  She slashed her blade across the doe’s throat.

  The doe kicked and bleated. Hot blood gushed down Nessa’s blouse, soaking her sleeves, staining her hands scarlet as she wrapped her arms around the dying beast and held her close. She knelt, pulled down by the
doe’s weight, gently bringing her to the grass while she whispered in her twitching ear. Nessa thanked her. As the doe kicked one final hoof, the light dying in her eyes, she whispered goodbye.

  Nessa rose.

  She held out her arms. Her body was drenched in blood, hot and sticky and smelling of dirty copper. She looked up to the trees. The owl tilted its head, locking eyes with her, and she smiled. She saw herself reflected in the depths. Carved from darkness and starlight.

  “The doe is dead,” Nessa told it. “Call me…the Owl.”

  The owl unfurled its wings, wide and powerful, as it hurled itself from the branch. It plunged down, razor talons grasping, and landed upon Nessa’s left arm. She felt the talons biting into her skin, drawing blood. She savored the pain. It made her feel alive. She laughed, and her laugh became a full-throated cackle, a wild, raw cry of freedom.

  At her feet, the spell book was changing.

  The pages beyond “The Game of Finding a Guide,” fully half of the book, had been a twisted and impossible cypher. To the true witch, read the final legible words, the means to understand are given. Once you have found your Guide, all will be made apparent.

  The ink swirled upon the page. The cypher broke apart and the fractal symbols became letters, the letters became words. Now a new message waited for her.

  Welcome, Nessa. I knew you would succeed.

  Don’t look so surprised. I wrote this book just for you!

  We will meet when the time is right. For now, though…

  …don’t you think you deserve a reward?

  There’s a new game on the very next page, and I think you’ll enjoy playing it.

  Nessa crouched and turned the page. She and the owl read the words, studied the magical seals. She broke into a grin.

  “Yes,” Nessa whispered.

  She gathered up the book and strode through the park.

  There was no dead doe on the grass behind her. No horned owl perched on her arm. No hot blood spatter clung to her clothes or her face or her hands. She still felt it all, though, and she smelled the blood with every breath she took.