This sounds familiar, Isaac thought, remembering what Alice had said about Nyx’s Pain Children. She had told him they were spirits which had been changed. The mirror, likewise, had likely been altered by Nyx’s magic, as had the Xiphos sword now in Alice’s possession, as had Alice herself—and probably Emily, too. Everything she touched changed in some way.
Did Isaac expect to be any different?
“So, what does this mean?” Isaac asked.
“Void magic is powerful, ancient, and largely a mystery to many of us. It doesn’t harmonize with our souls in the way magic from the Tempest does, and only Void Weavers know how to wield it—if the records are to be believed. It starts with a taint, then the taint spreads and spreads. Your magic becomes powerful, more powerful than you could imagine. And then, like a cancer, it kills you.”
“That’s it?” Isaac asked, “That can’t be it. There has to be more.”
“I’m glad you asked. Come with me—I want to show you something.”
CHAPTER 9
To Dust
Ashwood flickered by, a carousel of light, sounds, and images, as Cameron’s bike rolled down the street. As entire neighborhoods morphed and transformed, some growing and others shrinking like reflections in a house of mirrors, Alice found herself lost once more in her own thoughts; only this time they were of Isaac. Though she had heard nothing from him this last week, she maintained faith that he was okay, and that he would be out soon. But it seemed now as though Isaac was in more trouble than he had let on, and she was wondering if she had made the right choice in deciding not to help him.
Sure, the choice had been made, but it was one that could be un-made, right? They could, at any point, turn the bike around and head to wherever he was being kept. Alice could turn herself in, throw herself at the feet of the magistrate, and they could let Isaac go. Not only that, they would help Alice and Isaac fight Nyx.
But if there was any chance of that, then Isaac would have suggested it.
The Harley pulled onto the street where Raegan lived, and Cameron dismounted. Alice followed, removing her helmet and making a scan of the neighborhood. It was quiet here tonight, there didn’t appear to be any shady types lurking around, and there wasn’t an adult store in sight. Where was everybody?
Cameron pocketed the key to the Harley, then pressed his palm flatly against the body of the bike and closed his eyes. Alice felt a warm, tingly rush rise through her body, and suddenly found her heart filled with an urge to step the hell away from the bike. It was a bomb about to explode, or a wild animal about to attack. It didn’t matter which. All that mattered was that Alice walk away from the bike and toward the sidewalk before whatever terrible thing was about to happen, happened.
Only nothing did.
Cameron removed his hand from the bike and walked up to her. When he saw her puzzled—alert—expression, he immediately dropped his swagger. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t think that would affect you.”
“What the hell did you do?” Alice asked.
“Made sure my bike doesn’t get stolen while we’re here.” Cameron’s smile lit up his face. “Best damn security system on the market. Won’t stop the bike from getting run into by a car, but it’ll stop fools from getting near it.”
As they began to walk toward the building door, Alice said, “When this is over, remind me to hire your services. I have a few things I could use you for.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I have to decline.”
“Decline? Why?”
“Because I’ve never accepted money for sex and I won’t take yours, no matter how hot you are.”
Alice rolled her eyes and walked ahead of him. The front door opened into a dark throat which judging by the darkness didn’t see any kind of light until the late hours of the day. Alice pulled her phone from her pocket, flicked the flashlight on, and immediately scanned the row of letterboxes stuck along the left wall. There weren’t any nameplates on these, but she knew Raegan’s apartment number was 3B. It was so full of junk mail some of it was sticking out of the open slot.
Alice plucked one out, then another, and another.
“Just junk,” she said, and her voice bounced off the corridor walls.
“A week’s worth of junk, you think?” Cameron asked.
“Could be. God knows I get plenty.”
Cameron took his phone out and turned the flashlight on too as they proceeded up the stairs. One after the other, they climbed on hollow, wooden steps until they reached the third floor, but even before that point Alice knew something was off. The place was so dark it was almost suffocating and their footfalls thudding on the hollow steps were so loud she was sure they had alerted half the building to their presence. Yet the entire building seemed to be empty, devoid of any life except theirs.
Maybe her powers were returning, or maybe this was just good old-fashioned intuition, but she didn’t like any of this.
“This is it,” Cameron said, and he shed some light on what looked like the door to apartment 3B. He had to rub the marking on the door with his sleeve and clear the dust off it to be sure. The other apartments on this floor were also dark and quiet. Cameron knocked on the door, but no one answered. He knocked again, still nothing.
Alice reached for the door knob, which was cold to the touch as she wrapped her fingers around it, and said, “We open it.” Cameron nodded in agreement, and Alice twisted the handle until the thing turned, the mechanism clicked, and the door began to give way with a series of moans. Unlocked.
The apartment was dark, the shades were drawn, and the windows were closed, but the act of opening the door had kicked up a cloud of dust which seemed to sparkle like a flurry of lighter-than-air diamonds as they entered the radius of Alice and Cameron’s flashlights. As the dust touched the skin on the back of Alice’s hand, she felt it prickle and crawl and tighten as it had on many hunts prior to this one; as it always did when in the presence of the supernatural.
And the supernatural was here, alright; Alice recognized the dust immediately.
“Hello?” she said into the darkness, but there was no response. In a way, she figured there wouldn’t be. “Find the light,” she said, and she entered the apartment.
Thin shafts of light streaked across the gloomy room, illuminating tiny motes of dust as they floated in the air and highlighting the layer of sparkling dust which seemed to coat everything. From the couch, to the coffee table, to the kitchen counter, it seemed nothing had been spared. The only question was; whose dust was this? Raegan’s? Unlikely. Helena’s body hadn’t turned to dust when Nyx had shed it, so Raegan’s wouldn’t have turned to dust either. Alice didn’t understand the reason for this, but she didn’t have to question the fact-like way in which she understood it.
Cameron found the light switch and flicked it on. Above Alice’s head was a black light fixture designed to hold six bulbs, but only three of them worked, and they were weak. So much so that the room was almost better off without them. Still, she pocketed her phone and started to look around.
The curtains on the wall were thick, brown things designed to keep out as much light as possible when drawn. Looking around, Alice spotted an old plasma screen TV stuck into a wall unit, a thin bookshelf filled with cozy mysteries and romances with pictures of hunky guys on beaches on the covers, and a wheelchair sitting stationary next to an oxygen tank. On the wheelchair, which was also covered in a thin layer of sparkling dust, was what looked like a crocheted shawl. Next to the wheelchair, on a small end table, were a crochet hook and a ball of yarn.
“That’s weird,” Cameron said. He had joined Alice next to the wheelchair.
“The wheelchair?” she asked.
“Well, yeah, that, and the yarn. How old is Raegan meant to be? I kinda thought she’d be in her twenties.”
“Crocheting isn’t only for old people. Anyway, it’s the wheelchair and the oxygen tank that get me. They couldn’t have belonged to Raegan. The man at the diner said she lived with her
mom, so this could have belonged to her.”
Cameron moved away from her and inspected the unit housing the television set. “This must be Raegan,” he said.
Alice came over and looked at it. The picture was of a pretty young girl standing in a park. She had caramel skin, almond shaped eyes, and stunningly beautiful, sharp facial features. She was smiling and cradling a puppy next to her face, a tiny black lab by the look of it. Judging by the red brick building not far from where she was standing, Alice figured this was taken at Bernard Park, a few blocks away from here. The building behind her was an animal rescue center; the same one Alice had adopted Elvira from.
“Look for more of these,” Alice said. “Look for pictures of her mother.”
“Her mother? Why?”
“Because I have a feeling I know what’s happened.”
“Care to fill me in?”
“Later. Just look for pictures.”
Cameron got to work searching the TV unit and any other surface, drawer, or cabinet which could hold pictures of this woman. The growing feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach, though, told her he wouldn’t find any. Sure, he may find some of Raegan, maybe other family members, but the person who used to sit in that chair was gone forever, and Alice knew exactly why.
When Alice turned the corner and saw footprints in the dust, her heart shifted into her throat and started to thump hard and fast. She craned her neck, checked for her own footprints, and found them. She found Cameron’s, too, and could trace both sets—especially when they crossed each other—around the room. But there were two distinct things about this set of footprints which caused Alice’s skin to prickle again, this time uncomfortably.
First, these footprints were unmistakably caused by someone wearing no shoes. Second, they had no visible start point, and they were leading away from the living room and into the bedroom at the end of the hall.
“Cam,” Alice said.
“What is it?” he asked, turning around to look at her.
“Here.”
Cameron approached, saw the footprints, and followed the tracks with his eyes. “What the hell?”
“I know. Just be quiet, okay?”
“Do you think Raegan made these?”
“No, at least I don’t think so.”
Alice took a deep breath and stepped into the corridor. She came across the light switch and flicked it on. A single bulb overhead buzzed to life, casting its harsh orange light in all directions. She could see the footprints more clearly now and saw that they continued on down the hall toward the bedroom; the door of which, she now noticed, was ajar.
“Wait,” Cameron whispered, tapping her shoulder.
Alice turned her head. “What?”
“You shouldn’t go first. Let me.”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit. You’re unprotected. If there’s something in that room, I need to get in there first.”
“What do you think is in that room?”
“I don’t know… a ghost?”
Alice rolled her eyes and turned again to face the door at the end of the hall. “If there is a ghost in that room, I’m probably better equipped to deal with it than you are, with or without my powers.”
“Alright, but I’m not going to be held—”
There was a loud explosion of sound, a series of unearthly shrieks, and then chaos erupted. By the time Alice turned around again to see what had happened, Cameron was all the way on the other side of the hall—and he was being pinned up against the TV unit by something tall, thin, and entirely naked.
The old man.
Alice felt like all the breath had been sucked out of her lungs. Where the fuck had it come from? Behind them? That didn’t matter. It was here, it had Cameron and Alice—Trapper. Instinctively she went to pull Trapper up from the strap she always kept around her neck, but it wasn’t there. Like a phantom limb she was imagining its presence, and for a moment had felt powerful again, but the moment passed.
She watched Cameron struggle against the old man, who had grabbed Cameron by the shoulders and had started to hoist him up and off his feet. What do I do, she thought in that breathless instant of panic. When she had told Cameron she was better equipped at dealing with ghosts than he was she had lied, and now she was paying for that lie.
“Hey!” she said, screaming at the thing to get its attention. “Right here! Are you blind? I think you missed your target.”
The old man craned his neck around and snapped it into a 180-degree arc. It grinned an almost toothless grin, narrowed its black eyes, and tossed Cameron aside like he was a wet rag. As it turned the rest of its body around, Alice reached into the gun pocket of her leather jacket, produced the Glock, and cocked it. The metallic sound of the barrel sliding on its hinges sent a rush of power through Alice’s body and she raised the gun with both hands.
If it was here and she was seeing it, then it had manifested in the flesh; and a bullet wound would hurt him just as much as it would her.
It screeched, an ear-splitting sound that caused nearby windows to crack, and began to charge down the length of the corridor. Alice gently squeezed the trigger, and the gun went off with a loud bang and a bright flash. She had almost forgotten the feel of a gun in her hands—the muzzle flash, the kick-back, the smell of gunpowder. She had only had to discharge her gun on the field once during her time on the force, but used to go to the range often to hone her skills. Back in her Academy days, Alice had been the best shot of her intake.
And some skills you just don’t forget.
When the bullet flew out of her Glock, it went straight into the old man’s head and out the other side. The point of impact was tiny, but the exit was messy. Bits of gore so dark they could have been black sprayed one of the nearby walls, but the old man didn’t lose much speed. Alice squeezed the trigger again and succeeded in hitting the old man on the head this time too. It screamed as it barreled toward her, its mouth unhinging to become a dark, wide O.
Alice stretched the gun out with one hand and put a bullet in the thing’s mouth just as he came crashing over her, but the moment the Glock’s muzzle flashed the old man dispersed into a cloud of shadow that broke like a harmless wave of—putrid—smoke, and the bullet struck the wall on the far side of the hall.
Cameron came into view, his leather jacket covered in dust. “Did you get it?” he said.
“It’ll be back. I don’t think bullets will kill the old man.”
“You know what that thing was?”
Alice marched down the hall, past Cameron, and grabbed him by the arm. “I do, and we need to get the fuck out of here.”
“What? Wait! We just got here. What about Raegan and her mom?”
“Raegan is gone, and Raegan’s mom is all over your jacket and all over this house. We need to leave and get someplace safe—someone will have heard those gun shots.”
She ran past him, then, heading straight for the front door and yanking it open in her stride. Raegan’s apartment was the one at the end of the hall. When Alice turned to head out of it into the dark, light-less corridor stretching before her, she noticed something was different. The doors to the apartments along the hall were open. Had they been open before? She didn’t think so.
When Cameron came rushing out of Raegan’s apartment, he found Alice staring into the long hall—almost frozen.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Dust…” she said, and she pointed.
From behind the threshold of each open door, thin puffs of shimmering dust were being exhaled. And from behind the clouds of dust, things were beginning to emerge.
CHAPTER 10
Blood of a Shadow
The only door in the dark, cramped room led Isaac through an equally dark and stuffy corridor. The walls and ceiling were lined with pipes and rubber tubes, and though the darkness was near-total, Isaac could see the distinct shapes of two other doors—one to the right, and one at the end of the corridor.
Jim led the way
, and Isaac followed his silhouette. When Jim arrived at the far door, he placed his hand on the locking mechanism, and said “Ouvrir”—the French word for “open.” The wedding ring on Jim’s hand suddenly flashed with soft blue light, there was a click, and Jim pulled the door open revealing to Isaac exactly where they were.
They were in the subway.
Isaac stepped out of the corridor and onto the tracks, rolling the sleeves of his shirt up as he went. This tunnel was dark too, but in a moment it filled with soft blue light emanating from Isaac’s magic bangle. He raised his arm to chest height and the light touched cables that ran along the floor like black snakes, train tracks that disappeared into an open mouth of nothingness, and struts and support beams which cast sinister shadows that seemed to follow Isaac’s movements.
“Where the hell have you brought me, Jim?” Isaac asked.
“We’re underneath the Warwick district,” Jim said, “In a section of the subway which has been shut down for about, oh, fifteen years or so.”
“That’s good to know.”
“Don’t worry. This place hasn’t seen a train in as long as that. Barely sees any humans, either. I’m the only one who comes down here; the only one who can come down here.”
In the darkness rats squeaked, water dripped, and shadows watched.
“What do you mean by the only one who can come down here?” Isaac asked.
“This place is one of my protectorates,” Jim said, “I have set up magical wards to keep it obscured from humans and free from interference by other supernatural entities. As best as I can, in any case. Creating any kind of lasting, blanket protection is difficult even for a trained librarian such as myself.”
“Don’t you have help? An assistant, perhaps?”
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