Scarlet Dream

by James Axler

  If he had had any lingering doubts, it was at that moment that Kane felt sure that there was a little more to the motherly Ellie than he had initially presumed.

  Something of the old magistrate code came back to Kane as Ellie drove her pudgy fist into his gut for a second vicious punch. Never forget—everyone’s a suspect.

  GRANT WALKED FOR A WHILE, passing more and more of the painted trees, his soles sinking into the moist earth with each step. But finally he came to a little wooden shack in the woods, beside which waited a cart on a simple dirt track. Lights burned in the windows of the shack, and Grant could hear faint noises coming from within. Although he didn’t recall seeing it in the painting, the shack seemed as if it had been in the forest forever, not incongruous with what else he had seen around him. As he neared, Grant became conscious of cheering and laughter coupled with strains of up-tempo music. It sounded like a party.

  Grant pushed aside a low-hanging branch that barred his way, and he walked up the dirt track to the shack itself. It was a single-story building, and he estimated that the interior would be no bigger than two family-size rooms, a modest accommodation for a woodsman and his wife.

  Grant peered through the nearest window, from which bright light glowed and dimmed as if with the flickering flames of candlelight. Through the window, much to Grant’s surprise, he saw nothing other than the changing hues creating the illusion of the flickering of candle flame.

  Like strokes of paint on a canvas, Grant realized, the illusion of something not really there.

  On a whim, Grant tried the door. Finding it unlocked, he pushed it open and, without a moment’s hesitation, walked into the shack.

  Inside it wasn’t a shack at all. As the door swung closed behind him, Grant found himself standing in what appeared to be an ancient Greek temple, with a troupe of dancers taking center stage as its lone patron reclined in a cushioned seat, nude serving girls tending to his every need. The patron had the dark skin of an octoroon, and a frame so corpulent that it made him look like one of the cushions he reclined upon. Most notably, however, he had no legs, both limbs finishing at stumps above the knee. Grant knew who the man was, for they had met just two months ago.

  Glancing behind him, Grant saw that the exterior door of the shack had disappeared. Instead there seemed to be a beautiful wood door, lacquered and decorated with a painting of swirling flames bursting from an idealized sun. Flaming sconces lit each corner of the room, casting their light and heat through the stone-walled building.

  Warily, Grant stepped away from the door and walked through the main hall of the temple, through the cavorting dancers as their lithe bodies swayed and dipped to the strains of the simple music that a quintet played in one corner of the temple’s open hall.

  The man at the seat clapped his hands together, delighted to see a newcomer in their midst. “Fresh entertainment,” he bellowed. “And what do you do?”

  The man stopped as he saw Grant’s face for the first time, and his broad, gap-toothed grin turned to a look of fear as he saw the scowl on the ex-Magistrate’s face.

  “Papa Hurbon,” Grant said to the man reclining on the couch. “You remember me?”

  The dark-skinned man with no legs swayed a little in place as if drunk, and his mouth dropped open as he tried to form a coherent sentence. “Yuh…?” he began.

  Impatiently, Grant waited.

  “You can’t be here,” Hurbon finally managed to say, his hand sweeping through the air as if to brush Grant from his sight. “How can you be here? This is mine.”

  Grant grunted. “Perhaps it’s time you learned to share, huh?”

  But Hurbon had turned his attention away, clapping his hands to get attention as he called over his shoulder. “He shouldn’t be here,” he shouted. “Kill him!”

  Automatically, Grant took a step back, planting his feet in preparation for battle as six guards, tall men whose skin was so dark it seemed almost to absorb all light, stepped from the shadows and pulled short swords from the leather scabbards they wore at their belts. Off to the side of the room, the quintet continued to play their music, but the dance troupe stepped back, sheltering close to the walls.

  “Whoa, let’s not be hasty,” Grant began. “See, I want to help you get out of this place.”

  Papa Hurbon laughed, a deep sound like distant thunder. “And why would I ever want to leave?” he challenged.

  Before Grant could respond, the six muscular guards began to close in on him, their short swords glinting in the flickering firelight of the room.

  AS THE LIGHT CAST by the astronavigator’s chair grew brighter in the basement of the House Lilandera, Brigid Baptiste stared at the sleeping woman resting within its embrace. The woman was locked in the chair by tendrils that had spread across her body like a creeping vine. The woman was definitely still breathing, and she was old, Brigid realized, really old. Blue veins showed in the pale skin of her face and hands, and her clothing looked like something from another era, layers of taffeta and lace finished in creamy whites like something a bride might have worn two hundred years ago.

  The woman’s face was drawn with age, but she still retained a certain aristocratic air in her aquiline nose and the sharp angles of her cheekbones. Up close, Brigid saw that she wore a little blush on her cheeks, a whisper of silver eye shadow. At a guess, Brigid estimated that she was at least eighty years old.

  Another pulse went through the chair and its disconnected parts strewed across the room, and with it the basement lit up once again. Its mildewed walls and the dust bunnies that scarred the concrete floor of the basement became visible in the pulsing light. Feeling paranoia creeping into her thoughts in that eerie, ever-changing light, Brigid peered around the room, confirming that just the two of them were there.

  The chair’s parts had been placed at deliberate intervals around the room, the headrest here, the side panel there, each one forming a part of the clear pattern that was impossible to ignore once it had been seen. The pattern was a pentagram, a five-pointed star made up of lines so as to form a pentagon in its center. It was a potent symbol in both magic and the subset of magic known as voodoo. The chair with its dozing occupant had been placed in the center of the pentagon.

  Brigid eyed the staircase before she put down the bar in her hand, making sure that the door remained closed. Then, with the TP-9 semiautomatic still held loosely in her other hand, she approached the dozing woman as the lights pulsed bright once more.

  “Wake up,” Brigid said, keeping her voice low and reassuring. “Wake up now. I believe you’re in danger here and I want to help.”

  The elderly woman did not wake up. Indeed, she showed no signs of reacting at all to Brigid’s whispered plea.

  The lights in the cellar dimmed again, and Brigid took another step closer in the darkness, until she was standing right next to the chair. Then she placed her left hand gently upon the woman’s shoulder, shook her ever so slightly.

  “Wake up,” Brigid whispered, her voice a little louder this time. “Please wake up.”

  The woman didn’t even flinch; she seemed dead to the world. It was almost as if she was in a coma.

  Though she was no expert, Brigid knew a little about magic, enough at least to know that the pentagram symbol being created by the placement of the chair’s parts held significance. She stared at the pattern as the lights flickered on and off, wondering if their very specific placement was casting the illusory spell that operated within the house.

  AS THE SWORD-WIELDING guards stalked toward him, Grant noticed something peculiar about them. Their clothes seemed to be made of curling material, and their hair was the same, tight curls like cresting waves. As Grant noticed this, he saw, too, that their graceful movements seemed to follow those curving lines and he realized at last what it was—he was still in a painting, albeit a new one from where he had begun, and the curls were an affectation of the artist who had drawn it.

  “Kill him!” Papa Hurbon repeated as he snatched a mouthful o
f black grapes from one of his serving wenches.

  The first two guards leaped at Grant then, swinging their swords at him, the twelve-inch blades slashing the air. Grant stepped hastily back, and the swords cut the empty air where he had stood a fraction of a second earlier. Then he was leaping forward again, driving his right fist into the jaw of the first guardsman with the force of a pounding jackhammer. The guard went down at the blow, toppling backward to strike the marble floor. Grant ducked his partner’s sword as it rushed for his face. Then Grant moved in a short, three-step run, ramming his shoulder hard into the gut of his would-be executioner, knocking the sentry off his feet.

  As the sentry landed against a white marble column, the next two guardsmen had moved to take his place, jabbing with their own short swords as Grant weaved agilely between them. The swords flashed in the air, cutting through the same curling arcs as the hair on the guardsmen’s heads. Grant dropped, slapping his left palm on the floor and using it as a pivot to swing his legs around and knock both of his new attackers off their feet. The pair of them tripped and slammed against the floor like skittles, but there was no time to finish them. Already the final two guards were bearing down on Grant as he leaped back to his feet.

  Grant was a big man, but still tremendously agile. He kept himself in the peak of physical fitness, and his strength was formidable. Being struck full force by Grant was little different from being swatted by a hurtling locomotive.

  With grim determination, Grant slapped the next guardsman’s sword out of his way, knocking the blade from the man’s hand with a savage back-handed blow. Before the astonished guard could react, Grant drove a ram’s-head punch into his nose, driving the hard cartilage there into the man’s brain with such force that his eyes went bloodred as he collapsed to the floor.

  Grant turned, dropping low as the sixth guardsman jabbed his sword at him. Behind the guardsman, three of the fallen guards were recovering, picking themselves up and readying to join the battle once more.

  “This is crazy, Hurbon,” Grant shouted as the sentry in front of him swung his sword again. “I just came here to talk.”

  Lounging back on his cushioned seat, Hurbon barked a laugh, reaching out for another grape from the serving girl who knelt by him. “Oh, but this is so much fun,” Hurbon insisted, “don’t you find, mon ami?”

  Hurbon grabbed the wrist of his serving wench and pulled her onto the cushion beside him. Grant cursed, turning his full attention back to the scuffle as a flashing blade cleaved the air just by his ear. He could see how the voodoo priest might think this was all just fun and games, but Grant himself was not comfortable with the sinister implications of the scenario they both found themselves in. In Grant’s experience, it was rare that illusions were ever used for genuinely positive means.

  The nearest guard lunged again with his sword and Grant felt the blow graze the armor plate of his heavy coat. As the guardsman pulled back the sword, Grant ducked down and powered a shoulder into him, knocking him with such an almighty blow that there came the loud sound of ribs cracking. The guard scooted backward as Grant drove on, his own feet slamming against the floor as he charged at his foe. The guard struggled to take a breath as Grant shoved him into the nearest wall with a crash. The wall was decorated with a mosaic that showed the curling, stylized waves of the ocean, and a dozen tiny fleck tiles fell from the picture as Grant smashed his foe against it with bone-jarring force. The guard tried to recover, pulling his sword up to defend himself, but Grant’s hand grabbed his wrist, breaking it in a second and turning the sword away. Then Grant drove his knee into the sentry’s solar plexus, and the guard doubled over as if wrapped around an iron bar. Pulling the short sword out of the sentry’s grip, Grant stepped away and, no longer able to stand, his foe sagged to the floor, drool oozing from his open mouth in an all-too-familiar curling line.

  Grant turned, judging the weight of the sword in his hand. Though short, it was a heavy blade, ideal for what he had in mind. Swiftly, Grant switched the short sword so that he held it in a reverse grip, the blade pointing down ward.

  Then the three remaining guards were upon him, thrusting their own blades toward him as he darted and dodged their three-sided attack.

  As he spun out of the way of the nearest attacker, Grant drove his elbow back, slamming it into the gut of the guardsman who stood behind him. The man let out a blurt of expelled breath, and Grant stabbed behind him with the reversed sword, plunging it between the man’s ribs. Grant turned, pulling the blade free, and saw he had been just an inch too high to hit his opponent’s heart. Still, the guardsman struggled woozily on his feet as blood oozed over his bare chest.

  Then Grant heard a swish through the air as another of the guards swung his blade at the ex-Mag’s face. Grant met the blade with his own, pushing it aside with a clang of sparking metal. His opponent stepped back, swishing the blade through the air left and right in a showy but useless display.

  Grant went to meet with the attacker again only to find his progress blocked by the remaining swordsman, striking his blade across Grant’s flank. The thick material of his coat and his shadow suit took the impact, and Grant just grunted in irritation as he continued on to meet with the other man, driving the point of his sword upward to penetrate between the man’s ribs.

  The sentry hollered in agony as the sword cut through his stomach, nicked the spongy tissue of his right lung. Grant reached for the crown of the man’s head with his free hand, his fingers entangling in the man’s thick hair. Then, with a brutal yank, Grant pulled the man’s head forward and down in the direction of the floor, forcing his blade deeper into the man’s torso in a gushing geyser of spilling blood.

  To Grant’s side, the remaining swordsman gasped as his friend was torn apart, and in the distance Grant heard Papa Hurbon’s rolling laughter come to an abrupt halt. Grant turned his attention to the remaining guard, fixing him with a no-nonsense stare as he pulled the blood-smeared sword free from his colleague.

  “You don’t really want any of this, do you, son?” Grant challenged, blood dripping from the sharp edge of his blade.

  The guardsman looked at Grant, then at the sword in his hand, then back at Grant. To Grant’s surprise, the swordsman ran at him then with a defiant cry, looking more determined—and more fearful—than ever.

  As the swordsman reached him, Grant dropped and, timing his blow with precision, drove a punch into the man’s hip. Grant’s blow hit with such power that the guardsman flipped over himself before hurtling four feet through the air and slamming down jaw-first against the hard floor.

  Ignoring the man’s cries of pain that came from behind him, Grant stood, flipping the short sword over in his grip once more so that he held it upright again. Across the room, Papa Hurbon’s eyes had gone wide, and he had ceased pawing at the naked slave girl with his pudgy hands. Grant pulled back his arm and threw the sword he had been holding. It flew across the room, end over end, until it embedded itself point first in the cushioned seat between Hurbon’s abbreviated legs. The serving girl who had been sitting with Hurbon leaped up and burst into tears, running for the nearest pillar, where she cowered, sobbing loudly. Hurbon visibly gulped as he eyed the sharp blade that had missed him by less than an inch.

  “I’m guessing you’re about ready to talk now,” Grant stated as he strode across the room toward where Hurbon sat.

  Slowly, Hurbon nodded. “Don’t think I ever did catch your name, son…” he began.

  AT THE TOP of the staircase, Kane struggled in the grip of Ellie as she used her hold on his Sin Eater to thrash him against the wall. The plasterboard wall disintegrated as Kane hit it, and he let go of his pistol as he rolled through the weakened wall and into the disheveled room beyond.

  Two of the fetus-faced women creatures stood in the room, using whips against two men who had been chained to the wall. For a second, Kane lost concentration, and he saw the room as the men saw it, a stylized dungeon draped with rich velvet curtains, in which two women dre
ssed in leathers teased and tortured them.

  Kane brushed his finger to his nose as he looked at the bemused clients. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” he said before turning back to the gap in the wall, focusing his attention on seeing the real once more.

  Ellie came bustling into the room, using the door that stood to the left of the newly created hole in the rotten wall. She was caked in the white dust from the wall plaster, her hair streaked with ghostly white. Kane watched as she brushed the dust from her face and ran her hand through her clumpy hair. Then he saw the final piece of the puzzle, even as the broad woman brushed the dust away. There, along the center line of her crown, a ridge of sharp spines ran through her hair in line with her nose. She wasn’t a woman at all—she was one of the Annunaki. And what’s more, Kane thought he knew which one:

  Lilitu.

  Except, of course, that meant that there were two of them.

  Chapter 15

  Two Lilitus. It almost didn’t bear thinking about.

  Kane girded himself as the broad woman who had called herself Ellie came rushing toward him, one of her meaty fists swinging at his head like a construction ball. Kane had never defeated Lilitu in combat. The last time they had met it had required the intervention of a third party to finish this monstrous foe.

  He sidestepped, managing to just barely avoid the woman’s incredible blow. Ellie’s fist smashed against the wall, loosening a cloud of plaster and splintered wood in its passage.

  Well, Kane thought as if in consolation, she sure has the strength of an Annunaki goddess.

  Somehow that didn’t make him feel better.

  From somewhere behind him, Kane heard the cries of the other people in the room, shocked at this intrusion into their depredations.

  With exceptional speed that defied the bulk of her frame, the woman grabbed Kane by his left bicep and yanked him close to her. Kane kicked out as he slid across the floor, and the heel of his boot connected with Ellie’s lower leg, forcing her to pivot away from him, releasing her grip on his arm.