“Tell me again. How long has it been?” the bloated gangster continued.
The Native American lifted his left arm slowly, as though the simple movement hurt him. With a scowl, he pulled back the sleeve of his suit coat to reveal his watch. The skin around his wrist had become dry, speckled white and black rather than reddish-brown. Long bristles of hair, or maybe fur, were poking through in places. The nails of his fingers had grown unusually long as well. They were beginning to turn black.
“Her last report came in nearly twelve hours ago,” he managed. “She had spotted Sicario again after nearly a day of searching. She was about to move in. There has been no contact since then.”
“Perhaps she has begun the change,” Calabrese replied.
“Possible, but we spoke of that. She was under strict orders, if the molting were to come over her suddenly, she was to contact one of our agents. None of our people have had any word,” Joseph replied, his breathing slow and difficult as he walked.
Calabrese did not seem at all worried by his friend’s condition.
“Disturbing, to be certain. We’ll need to send someone to her refuge. Make sure that she has not begun the change. If she has, she might be there,” Calabrese said.
“There is another possibility,” the Indian said.
“Argus.”
“Indeed. Scylla reported the ancient one’s followers were tracking Sicario as well. If they got to her, she may already be dead. And Argus may have Sicario, or even Mulcahy by now,” Joe said.
“I must speak with our old friend,” Calabrese answered.
“Argus? No one seems to know his location, since he arrived in New York, he and his followers have hidden themselves from us. None of our agents have been able to learn their whereabouts.”
Calabrese did not appear concerned.
“The ancient one is cautious. His many years have taught him the value of privacy. I don’t begrudge him his secrecy. If he is indeed plotting against me, he will not tip his hand even a moment before he acts. And he will not act until the moment is right.
“I know that he has visited the Bleecker Street Haven, and spoken with those of our kind in residence there. I have told them that I will appear there personally tomorrow, to announce my intentions. Argus will be there.
“I will speak to all of our flock that has gathered, to welcome those who remain loyal to me, and to gauge the treason of those who may not be.”
They stopped their trail when they came before the same enormous structure that they had inspected only a few days earlier. This time neither man entered. Indian Joe rapped on the aluminum door, and both awaited a response.
It came quickly, but not in the form of a person to greet them. As if by unseen hands, the door opened from the inside.
“Many of our folk have gathered within. The molting continues. Some have already emerged. They will expect the festival to begin soon,” Joseph said.
“And your time is fast approaching as well, is it not?” he replied.
“I shall take my rest within, this night. By your leave, of course.”
“By all means, Lycaon,” the boss answered. “The time for this charade is now over. Salvatore Calabrese dies tonight. For the second time.”
Both men entered, and the door soon closed in the same way. They were plunged into total darkness. It was cold, and it was quiet. A reddish light shone from the distance ahead of them, but it was impossible to know how far away the glow burned.
“Come forth, children. Your master has arrived to see after the feast,” Calabrese said, but in a different and altogether softer voice than the gangster had ever used.
The reddish hue blossomed then, but strangely, it seemed to cast no light upon the figures of Calabrese and Joseph. From its center there stepped forward three silhouettes. They were cloaked, but clearly feminine in shape. The two on each flank held lances high. The blades beamed reflected firelight like steel torches.
The one in the middle, unarmed, lowered her veil and revealed her face to the pair. It was canine. Part hound, part lady. She was strangely beautiful, with sharply angled features, a round black nose and delicate whiskers that flared from the sides of her snout. Her eyes were black slits set in green crystal.
When she spoke, the words growled from between deadly fangs.
“The Daughters of Cerberus bid you welcome, Keeper. The preparations proceed as per Lycaon’s direction. May the festival meet with your expectations,” she said.
Their message given, the three receded, and their peculiar glow with them. In moments they were once again absorbed into the shadows from which they had appeared. A second door opened, only a few feet in front of the two men.
The sounds of chatter, and the bright light of lamps and braziers, spilled onto them.
Indian Joe turned. Sam Calabrese was no longer beside him.
A new figure had replaced the slobbering hood. Presiding among the smoke and the darkness, there stood an elegant, towering woman. A shroud that glittered deep crimson swirled around her like a pool of blood. Black tresses flowed from her crown in a waterfall of shadows, and her pallid features exuded a delicate glimmer.
“Shall we enter, Queen Morrigan?” Joseph asked.
Vince did not know that the night had passed, or that morning now dawned upon the city. But he did know that something sinister lurked just out of sight.
The room in which he was held was dark. When a noise roused him from sleep, his mind immediately began imagining what might have made it.
Something entered through a concealed side door. Vince tried to look, but for all his straining against the dark, he could not see more than a hint of movement. The figure moved through the shadows along the wall, nimble as a cat.
Vince shuddered.
“You need not fear, my friend. As I told you yesterday, you are safe here. I assure you.”
The voice that greeted him was familiar. It was that of the child with the weird red eyes. The one who had named himself Argus. But when the figure emerged into the candlelight, the child was nowhere in sight. It was a new, and utterly peculiar being, which had presented itself. Unlike the truncated, diseased frame of the boy he had met a day earlier, the Argus before him now was long and lean of limb, but he resembled a man in that respect only. The remainder of his features were, to Vince’s sight, utterly hideous.
Three gleaming eyes were set like a triad of ruby stones upon a face that seemed carved from white granite. A long, thin nose almost merged with his stark, ladylike cheeks. His lips were full and rounded like a woman’s, but eerily bluish and hypothermic against the pallor of his skin.
Combed back from his temples, waves of shimmering, blood-red hair gathered the candlelight in deathly sparkles. It fell thick over his bony shoulders and clung so close to his skin that it seemed to drip across his androgynous breasts. His limbs were stringy, the musculature pulled tight beneath his cold flesh. His hands grew uncommonly long.
When he lifted them, they turned to reveal the palms in a fluid, dancer-like motion. Nestled in the heart of each was a crimson eye staring outward with its own conscious gaze, just as the three atop his forehead.
Then he lowered the shiny leather belt that held fast the layered, silken folds of his skirt, which fell to the floor and hid all of his lower quarters. There, a sixth eye, brilliant and scarlet as the others, peered forth from the navel. As a single, bizarre concession to vanity, a silver ring pierced the skin of his lower belly. It was the only jewelry the ancient creature ever wore.
“The one you call Sean. He is your friend, is he not?” Argus began.
“He was, once. A long time ago,” Vince answered, truly frightened for the first time he could remember.
“And you care for him still?”
The question was simple enough, but Vince waited a while before answering. He wanted a drink. His lips were so dry. Argus merely stood before him. He seemed as patient as a statue, unmoving but for the scarlet flickering of his half-dozen eyes, which did n
ot blink together, but rather in an endless, unnerving sequence. One after the other, on and on. Five of the six were always open.
“He came to me for help. What was I gonna do? He was my best friend. I lost him once, and I never had …”
“Never had?”
“Never had a friend like him again,” Vince finally said, unable to look upon the extreme visage any longer.
“Then if you care for him, you must help us find him,” Argus said, sensing his guest’s anxiety, moving closer to place his bony hand on the ex-cop’s shoulder.
“I don’t even know who … what … you are,” he said, still unable to look upon the strange being.
“We are the only ones who can help him. You must know by now, there are very dangerous people looking for him. They will find him, sooner or later. And when they do, they will kill him. Of that I can assure you.
“Help us. Help us help him.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
THERE WAS AN ENVELOPE DANGLING FROM HER DOOR-knob. Not so strange a sight, perhaps. But given the events of recent days, Maggie wasn’t sure what to make of it. It stirred a moment of hope in her, but that optimism was quickly overwhelmed.
She had only been out for a short while, looking for Sean or Vince. Anyone really, though she’d somehow known she wasn’t likely to find either one. It was now drawing past noon. There’d been no sign of either once since the previous morning.
The envelope was yellowed. The paper seemed delicate, aged like old newsprint. It was sealed with a glob of red wax that had been imprinted with a round stamp. She didn’t recognize the design. For a moment she guessed it to be Greek, but didn’t give the matter much thought.
It wasn’t addressed to anyone, so she snapped it open. A single sheet of parchment, dry and ancient as the envelope, was folded inside. Text was inscribed in scarlet ink across its face. The script was elegant, a little archaic even. The first letter of every word was oversized and each “S” was rendered with a long tail like an “F,” which lent the message a classical air, but only complicated her reading of it.
Was it a joke? The thought crossed her mind for a moment.
When she read it, brief though it was, all ideas of humor slipped away. She felt a chill crawl over her. Her fingers trembled as she fiddled with the keys in her purse. They clattered against the lock as she clumsily unfastened it.
The apartment was dark. She wanted to call out after Sean, but she couldn’t muster the voice. Instead she tore through the place in silence. As she suspected, he was not there.
She thought about staying, waiting for him to return, but she couldn’t do that. Vince was in trouble. She needed to find Sean. So she left, venturing out into the neighborhood like she had so many times as a child, looking for Sean Mulcahy.
It was almost as if the last thirty years had changed nothing.
The afternoon had passed, and the evening was growing late. Long midday shadows were threatening to spill over, stretched out and tired in the wake of endless rows of brown brick and age-stained iron. A dark tide seemed poised to wash fully into the narrow, dirty streets as the sun failed in a red-orange haze somewhere beyond the west. Alleyways and vestibules and alcoves had already flooded, shallows submerged by the first lightless waves.
Maggie had tried all the old haunts. She’d poked through most of the midtown after-work joints around Eighth Avenue and the West Thirties, but saw no sign of Sean amid the chattering throngs of lawyers and accountants and insurance salesmen dulling their senses just enough to stomach the commute home.
That hadn’t really been a surprise, but it was worth making sure.
She’d fought her way through the hive of worker drones circulating in and out of Penn Station like a swarm shuffling about a subterranean nest, then around the big post office as it closed down for the night, and over toward Tenth. The bars there were a little less upscale, if that was saying anything, and a little more local in the way of patrons.
Most of the swill consumed in those pubs was chugged on tattered stools under lowlight by grizzled, hard-faced rail-yard men still stained with their daily mess of black dust and grease. The chatter was rougher too, a blend of accents throwing up guttural laughter and tossing around casual, working class vulgarity. More Vince’s kind of place.
She had no luck in any of those dives either, barring the four or five drinks she had been offered in as many locations or the slightly incoherent marriage proposal whispered in her ear at O’JVeil’s Aran Isles.
So she’d scrambled through the tunnel traffic that always clogged five or six blocks in each direction around that time of the day, north toward the lower forties. She was still fairly certain from her memory of Vince’s old habits which places she could rule out without physically going in. That cut down on her options quite a bit. Personally checking every Irish pub in Hell’s Kitchen would have taken days.
By half past seven on her grandmother’s pocket-watch, she had already covered just about everyplace she could think of, and still hadn’t found a trace of Sean Mulcahy. Now she was reduced to checking inside every liquor store and bodega.
The sun was down fully. Night had fallen over the city. Maggie knew that she was passing through a part of town that wasn’t safe after dark.
Some teenagers were loitering on the corner as she left a Spanish-run newsstand, passing a bottle between them. Local Irish kids, she figured. All of them sported short-cropped hair in identical military fashion, but they were far from clean-cut. Several wore similar jackets, the black leather beaten and creased. Dirty, threadbare clothes clung to the rest of them, knees ripped out of their trousers and holes dotting their shirts. None of them looked to have bathed in days.
As Maggie approached, a kid named Gerry stirred from their circle. He was nineteen, but the scruff on his face added a few years, making him look more like he was in his early twenties. The others followed behind him. He was the largest of them, which was more than enough to qualify him as their leader.
“Hey, hey pretty lady. What’s doin’?” he said.
Maggie growled under her breath. She was no stranger to the bands of restless delinquents who roamed the Kitchen. She tried to stay calm, even as she felt her hands trembling. They were probably just drunk, she told herself.
“Get lost kid,” she sneered, stepping past the group as if they weren’t there.
His friend, a younger kid named Brian, stepped in front of her. Despite his evident youth, Brian had a nasty gray scar snaking across his chin and jaw, and he spit out a wad of chaw that landed inches from Maggie’s foot. A slight brown stain remained on his lips.
Even though it wasn’t late, the street was empty.
“Hey, now. That ain’t a very nice way ta talk to my buddy there,” he said, through a mouthful of yellowed, crooked teeth.
He was near enough for her to smell him. His breath was like a dog’s. Shit mixed with yesterday’s trash, warmed over with a hint of cheap whiskey.
“Yeah, ‘specially fer a lady who just come outta that spic joint,” Gerry added, moving shoulder to shoulder beside his friend.
The others were drifting into a circle around them. One of them fingered half a broomstick handle. Another made a show of cracking his knuckles.
“What are you talking about?” Maggie said, obviously impatient with the delay.
“Valencia’s. That’s a spic name, damn PRs are takin’ over,” Brian replied.
“Yeah, ‘cause this used to be a nice neighborhood till them greasy slimeballs started movin’ in,” Gerry said, without even a hint of irony.
“You got a helluva mouth on you for a little boy,” she scolded.
“Whoa, there! Maybe you don’t get it, honey. See we don’t like them spics too much, but the lousy Americans who go with ’em are worse,” Gerry said, his voice raised and his hand outstretched.
From behind her a third one stepped up, a gangly red-haired kid named Brendan. His shirt was two sizes too small; his wardrobe had not yet caught up with latest growt
h spurt.
“Yeah, she’s prolly sleepin’ wit some slimy Rican!” he said. It was the wittiest thing he could think to say, but it won him a laugh from his buddies.
“Why don’t you lemme show you what a real American man is like!” Gerry offered. He was joking, but the joke brought on a raucous cheer from his cronies.
“Alright, you’re all very tough,” she said, exasperated.
She tried to push past Brian, but to no avail.
Finally, she shifted her handbag from both arms to one, and put her free hand on her hip, the schoolteacher expression crossed her face again. She turned her attention toward Gerry, if for no other reason than he appeared to be the most vocal of the four.
“Okay. What do you say you and me take a little walk over there and talk this over?”
Excited by the offer, but cautious, Gerry slowly stepped backward toward the alley behind the store. His eyes remained focused on Maggie, however, who followed him with a careful glide.
“What do you have in mind?” he whispered, once they were out of earshot of the other guys.
“You’ll see.”
She bridged the gap between them and they continued to wander farther back into the alley. Then, she neared, and placed her face right up next to his.
He stank of the same cheap whiskey and old cigarettes. Bad, but not nearly as foul as she had expected under the circumstances.
“I’m sure you’ll remember this …”
With as much calm as anyone raised on the streets, Maggie let her handbag fall to the ground, her keys remaining in her grip. Gerry was still staring into her eyes. He never saw the swing.
The smash of the jagged makeshift weapon, chased by a howl-like scream alerted the others. They turned from their awkward guarding of the street and rushed into the alley. She tried to run, to push by them as they came toward her, but they reached their arms out and closed off her only avenue of escape. Brian caught her. He shoved her back into the alley.
Gerry remained on the pavement, holding his forehead with his hands. A healthy stream of blood was slipping between his fingers and dripping into his face. He felt the tear on his scalp. He bottled his rage up with a snarl.
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