Wisdom's Grave 01 - Sworn to the Night

by Craig Schaefer

  * * *

  Savannah huddled over her bank of consoles, staring at readouts, measuring and collating. It was a shame; she would have liked to capture both of the women, to study them under controlled conditions, but she’d have to settle for what she could get. Marie lit up the zoo like a beacon on her screens, a scarlet smear of magical energy rushing along a secluded trail. Savannah could have told Scottie and his friends exactly where the detective was hiding. She’d even offered to, just to be efficient. He’d replied with some nonsense about “the rules of the hunt” and how they had to conduct their sacrifice “the right way” or the King of Wolves wouldn’t be pleased.

  “Ridiculous and unproductive,” she murmured as she studied the readouts. “Religious claptrap is no substitute for rigorous methodology.”

  Her screens flickered. A needle went wild, drawing erratic arcs across a rolling spool of paper. Savannah recognized the energy signature in a heartbeat; it was the same burst of occult power she’d observed when the detective and the Roth woman were together at the Iroquois Hotel. Somehow, without Marie’s help, Vanessa Roth had found her way here. And the entire lodge was scattered across the zoo, with no one standing guard.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh, no.”

  She tugged on her goggles and ran for the door.

  * * *

  Just south of the main gates, at the heart of a paved boulevard that cut through the belly of the zoo, a carousel rotted away in the dark. Icy drizzle rained down on the peeling paint, the burned-out lights, the upturned faces of wooden horses and zebras frozen in mid-prance under a tattered and broken canopy. Marie ran in a desperate, loping crouch, trying to minimize her profile as she skirted the carousel’s edge and—

  —skidded to a dead stop in the middle of the boulevard. Scottie strolled up to meet her, his wooden sword resting casually against his shoulder, and the six men at his back spread out to cut off her advance. She heard footsteps running up behind her, from the paths to the left and the right.

  The carousel square filled with leering, hungry faces. At least fifteen men, sealing every avenue of escape. Every eye on her. On her body, as they brandished their clubs and knives. Marie’s throat tightened.

  “Now comes that fun part I mentioned,” Scottie told her.

  She should have been terrified. Instead, she found a strange quiet in the center of her heart. Tranquility in the eye of a storm. Freezing raindrops kissed her face and rolled down the blood-slick blade of her machete. She turned the weapon in her hand, appraising its weight.

  “Vicky Wagner,” Marie said. “Lottie Holmes. Letisha Franklin—”

  Scottie shook his head. “That supposed to mean something?”

  “The names of the women you killed here. The ones I know about. How many other victims were there?”

  “You think I counted? We kill a lot of people, and I don’t write their names down. Far as I’m concerned, they don’t have any.” He spread his open hand, taking in the gathering of men. “Don’t you know where you are? These are the hunting grounds. Only hunters have names here. You? You’re nothing but meat.”

  “I have a name.”

  She held the machete before her. The rain upon the bloody steel caught her image and shone it back at her, her burning eyes reflected in every drop. Multiplied a hundred times over.

  “My name is Marie Reinhart. Knight. Servant of the Owl. You call yourselves hunters? I’ve been hunting you for months. And now I stand at the end of my quest.”

  “Jesus.” Scottie blurted out a nervous laugh. “Savannah’s torture machine really scrambled your brains, didn’t it? Either that or you were always a whackjob and just better at hiding it. So here you are, oh brave and mighty knight. What now?”

  “Now?” Marie said.

  She pointed the tip of her machete at Scottie’s face.

  “Now I’m here to avenge the dead and fight for the living. To make sure you never ever hurt another innocent person again. And we both know there’s only one way to do that.”

  She lowered the blade and drew a line across the ground between them.

  “You want me?” Marie said. “Come and get me.”

  * * *

  Savannah ran alone along the empty walking paths. There was the carousel, about a hundred yards to her right. She saw the pack of men, circling, hemming the detective in. That was good. She saw the glint of the bloody machete in Marie’s grip. That was…suboptimal. Still, the lodge had the advantage of sheer numbers; it was a battle Marie couldn’t hope to win. More importantly, a battle Savannah didn’t have to get involved in. Her focus was on the padlocked gate to her left and the pressure she felt building in her sinuses with the speed of a runaway train. Something was coming. Something powerful. Relentless.

  Something angry.

  A peal of thunder rippled across the ink-black sky. The gate exploded. Savannah threw herself to the dirty pavement as a shredded padlock and a length of bike chain whipped above her head, debris from the blast. One half of the gate hung open, swinging crazily on twisted hinges. The other was completely torn free, knocked flat in a billowing cloud of dust.

  Nessa’s cloak flared out behind her as she strode into the hunting grounds. The wide, floppy brim of her hat cast half of her face in velvet shadow.

  “I believe,” she said, “you have someone that belongs to me.”

  Sixty-One

  A lodge brother charged past Scottie’s shoulder and ran at Marie, holding a mallet high above his head. Marie darted inside his reach and slashed a line from his belly to his shoulder, and he went down screaming. A sledgehammer whistled through the air and she ducked low, diving under the iron head. She didn’t have time to retaliate, not with another attacker on her left, swooping in with a butcher knife and aiming for her throat.

  Their blades clanged together, edge against killing edge. She thrust, punched the machete’s tip through the crotch of his pants, and twisted. Blood spatter flew in an arc like a string of wet rubies, mingling with the icy rain as she ripped the blade free and spun to parry the swing of a claw hammer.

  She needed space. There were too many of them, pressing in too close. Marie jumped up onto the dead carousel and ran. She darted and weaved between the painted horses, trying to break up the pack on her heels. A man with a bad toupee and a Louisville Slugger jumped out at her from the left. She ripped his throat open with her blade, felt his hot blood spray across her hands, and never stopped running.

  She came full circle, face-to-face with Scottie.

  “Enough,” he roared, louder than the thunder. Behind her, the lodge brothers froze. So did she.

  “Can’t trust you idiots to find your asses with both hands and a map,” he snapped. “Richard was my friend. This bitch is my sacrifice.”

  The wooden katana spun in his grip, so fast the blade left after-trails in Marie’s eyes as he carved the air between them. He raised his other hand, hooked his fingers in a ritual gesture and whispered a sibilant incantation.

  Blue-hot flames rippled along the blade like a trail of lit gasoline. His mad eyes glowed in the light of the burning sword.

  Then he bellowed a warrior’s shout, and lunged in for the kill.

  * * *

  Nessa and Savannah slowly circled each other, ten feet of cobblestone between them.

  “Your lover wasn’t very forthcoming, Ms. Roth. I encouraged her to cooperate. Is that how you found us? Did you sense her distress?”

  “So you’re the one who hurt her,” Nessa said.

  Savannah nodded. “It was necessary. For my work. I don’t suppose you could tell me exactly what you are?”

  “What…am…I. Let’s see. Once, I was a doting wife. A socialite, when I was forced to be. A college professor—”

  “Irrelevant,” Savannah said.

  “Agreed,” Nessa replied. “What’s past is prologue. You want to know what I am now.”

  Thunder pealed in the sky. The flickering glow of chain lightning lit up the smoky clouds.

 
“Lucky you. You’re about to find out.”

  Savannah twined her fingers, her elbows swaying, and whispered a ritual chant. “Three and three establishes the grid lay three numbers crosswise to establish celestial concordance then divide by the lunar hour to determine trajectory and speed—”

  As she hissed her equations, a sphere of air around her began to shimmer and harden. It took on a reddish tinge, like she was standing in a thin bubble of stained glass. Raindrops bounced off the magical shell. Nessa watched her, unimpressed.

  “I’m aware that you’re some sort of witch,” Savannah said. “You’ll find no victory here. I’ve done more than master the craft of magic. I’ve modernized it.”

  “And you’re proud of that? There’s no poetry in what you do.”

  Savannah squinted at her. “Poetry? Poetry is pointless. All that matters is matter. Anything that can’t be measured, quantified, and optimized is a waste of time. My magical technique is inherently superior because I’ve stripped away all the old chaff and dead weight, refining my spell-work down to the absolute essentials.”

  “Seems like a lot of joyless tedium. You could have just waltzed through a cloud of fireflies instead.”

  “Fireflies,” Savannah said, “aren’t magical. They’re insects with bioluminescent properties.”

  “And if you dissect one, that’s all you’ll learn. But watch the fireflies dance around you on a warm springtime night while you walk at your lover’s side. See them sparkle and ignite, feeling the soft skin of her hand in yours, savoring the curve of her nervous smile. There’s magic to be found.”

  “Spare me.” Savannah rolled her eyes. “Romance is nothing but oxytocin plus delusion.”

  “Mm. Well, if you don’t enjoy the kinder side of my art, perhaps you’ll like this better.”

  The shadows thickened around Nessa’s cloak. They congealed and glimmered like long feathers of onyx, as she slowly raised her arms.

  “A child wanders into the woods, though he’s been told not to stray from the path. He’s lost now. The sun is setting. He’s cold, and frightened, and so very alone.” Nessa’s visible eye narrowed, the other half of her face veiled in shadow, as her lopsided smile grew. “There’s magic to be found there, too.”

  Savannah wavered under her stained-glass dome, suddenly uncertain. “What are you—”

  “The pounding heart of the prisoner being marched to the execution pyre. The hollow sympathy of the doctor as he reads your lethal prognosis, telling you what you already knew deep down inside: you’re going to die, in pain, and there is nothing you or anyone in the world can do to save you.”

  The feathers became blades of shadow, razor-edged wings that stretched out at Nessa’s back like a cloak of swords. They turned, glinting, trembling at the sound of her voice.

  “You asked what I am,” Nessa told her. “I am fear. I am despair. I am the punishment you have most definitely earned. Let’s keep it simple and just say I’m a walking nightmare. And considering you hurt my Marie…I’m your nightmare.”

  She slashed her arms downward and the blades of razored shadow launched toward her prey. Savannah’s scarlet bubble shattered, her wards sundered, and the shadows sliced bloody rents across her shoulder and her hip. She cried out, dropping to one knee, and quickly twirled her hands. Her ritual gestures were mechanical, millimeter-precise.

  “Let Z-one be Z squared plus Z,” she hissed, “and Z-two be Z-one squared plus Z—”

  The air took on new life around them as Nessa’s shadows fell under Savannah’s command. They formed a barrier, swirling, losing their organic shapes and becoming hard-edged fractals that blossomed like black snowflakes. The geometric patterns echoed in Nessa’s eyes, hypnotic, overwriting her mind like a virus. She felt Savannah’s spell slipping in through the pores of her skin, lighting her veins on fire, drowning out her thoughts and her mind.

  “The prime constant calls to you,” Savannah’s voice said, somewhere inside Nessa’s inner ear. “An orderly world has no place for the likes of you, witch. Become one with the universe, now. Dissolve.”

  * * *

  Marie ducked low as Scottie’s flaming sword sliced the air above her head. The bokken slammed against a carousel horse, knocking its wooden head from its shoulders and leaving a pitted black scorch in its wake. He spun the blade above his head and unleashed another brutal swing. Marie held her machete in both hands, bringing it up to defend herself. The impact sent them both staggering back a step, but Scottie rallied in a heartbeat, coming at her with a curse on his lips.

  The flames dazzled Marie’s eyes, leaving white smears across her vision as she struggled to fend off blow after blow. He drove her back, step by step, her footing shaky on the rusted steel of the carousel. She felt the other lodge members around them, silently watching the duel, but she couldn’t spare a breath on anything but parrying Scottie’s furious onslaught. He was relentless, more rage than technique, so fast she couldn’t even try to fight back.

  A wild slash caught her across the collarbone. The tip of the bokken ripped her blouse and scored a shallow gash in her skin, the flames cauterizing it black. She gritted her teeth, eyes watering, and pressed her sleeve to the smoldering fabric. She jumped back to escape another sweep of the sword, and the carousel shuddered under her feet.

  Weak metal, she thought, rusted out. Careful, you could put a foot through this thing if you land hard in the wrong spot.

  Then she knew what to do.

  Marie took another halting step back and fell. Stumbling, she landed flat on her back at Scottie’s feet. He stood over her for a moment and savored his triumph. The crackling flames gleamed in his eyes. Then he raised the flaming sword high and drove it down like a spear.

  Marie’s feigned fear vanished, replaced by cold determination. She rolled to one side as the sword came down and punched through the rusted metal flooring. She sprang up to one knee, using her momentum, and lashed out with the machete.

  Scottie had bought the ruse. He was off-balance, wrestling with his trapped sword, and barely saw the blade flashing toward him. He felt it, though. It cleaved his hand, slicing flesh, shattering bone.

  Three of his fingers tumbled to the carousel floor.

  Scottie howled in pain and horror, clutching the mutilated stumps of his fingers. The magical flames guttered out. He staggered back from the blackened, smoking shaft of his bokken, squeezing his hand to his chest. Marie watched with grim satisfaction as he turned and ran, howling into the dark.

  Now the others, she thought, rising to her feet.

  They never gave her a chance. A baseball bat crashed across her shoulders, knocking her back to her knees with a grunt of pain. Something slammed alongside her head and left her ears ringing. The next thing she knew she was down, curled fetal as shoes stomped down at her from every direction. She felt a rib buckle and snap. The men’s feral shouts drowned under the roar of blood in her ears. Her vision grayed out, a welling darkness that threatened to pull her under.

  * * *

  Nessa felt herself coming apart at the seams.

  Savannah’s magic encased her in a shell of cold logic. The shadow-fractals burned into her skin like hot wires, carving her into puzzle pieces. A soul dissection.

  Sweat beaded on Savannah’s brow. Her mechanical hand gestures spun faster, fingers weaving and stirring the currents of occult energy as she doubled down on the attack.

  “Submit,” she rasped, her voice hoarse with the strain. “The order and authority of the universe commands you. I command you.”

  I’m dying, Nessa thought. Her body crumpled to the dirty cobblestone, the force of the onslaught pushing her down. She knelt, enmeshed in burning gears that ground her mind to pieces with cruel precision.

  Fingers curled around her left hand. Then her right. In her vision—fading now, along with her heartbeat—she saw her sisters. They held her, standing firm in a line that stretched farther than she could see. Hundreds of them. Hundreds upon hundreds.

 
Hundreds of lifetimes in which she’d had hope, joy, love dangled in front of her like a carrot on a stick, only to have it ripped away from her. A sick, cruel joke.

  “No more,” she whispered.

  Rage blew open the furnace doors of Nessa’s heart. Her past echoes took up the call. They fed her their rage, their grief, their lament, stoking the fires until they burned hotter than the sun.

  Savannah’s hands began to tremble. “The order and the authority of the universe command you—”

  Nessa’s head snapped up. Her sisters lifted her up. She rose to her feet.

  “No,” she said.

  The spell sputtered and died. The shadow-fractals shattered on the stone at her feet. Savannah staggered back a step, winded, and shook her head in stunned disbelief.

  “What? How did you—”

  Nessa strode toward her, slow, like a lioness stalking her prey.

  “I reject order,” she growled. “I am the nemesis of all authority. And the universe? The universe is chaos. You can try to impose your rules, your petty sense of order, safety blankets to make you feel like you have some semblance of control. But you don’t. At the end of the night, chaos always wins. And I am chaos.”

  Nessa raised her open palms to the storm-cast skies.

  “Let me show you.”

  Savannah looked up. Her mouth hung open, fear dawning in her eyes. A swarm was coming. Dark shadows roaring down from the storm clouds.

  Owls.

  Hundreds of them, small and large, tawny and ice-white, screeching, blanketing the sky over the zoo. Two landed on Nessa’s outstretched arms, wide-eyed witnesses while the flock flew low, their wings battering the air around them. Savannah threw her arms over her face as an owl buffeted her, razor-sharp talons clawing at her scalp and drawing blood. She batted it away and it carved into her arms, slicing jagged rents in her coat sleeves. A smaller one clamped down on her shoulder, digging into meat and bone, and gnawed at her throat.

  Savannah shrieked as she fell. There were owls on her back, on her legs, clawing and tearing as she tried to crawl away. Death by a thousand cuts. She held out a trembling hand to Nessa, pleading with her eyes.