Silence in the Flames (The Traitor's Shadow Book 1)

by Ryan Talbot

  I sorted through the threads, separating them by feel, by the emotional resonance. I didn’t know Leah well, but I knew what she could do and that gave me something to look for at least. I ran my fingers over the threads one at a time. I found one that burned with righteousness, and ached with loneliness. With my thumbnail, I scratched a sigil of finding on the surface of the thread.

  I closed my eyes and whispered “Leah.”

  Nothing happened. I opened my eyes and stared at the thread. That should have worked. I had the binding, I had the name, I held her thread in my hands. I focused on her face, as I could recollect it. My mind brought the image of her, naked and beaten, back into my head. I saw her green eyes staring back at me as I looked over my shoulder at her in the cabin. Her eyes challenged me, they saw through me. They hated me. How could I have been so blind? In the Old Testament, Jacob had two wives, sisters. Leah and…

  “Rachel,” I whispered.

  27

  I stood on a dark, winding dirt road. The moon glared down at me, an angry red. I looked both ways, up and down the road to try to discern where I was. I smelled juniper and pine. The road led north and up, south and down. Where the fuck was she? In theory, I should have been brought directly to her. Either I was wrong, or something had gone wrong. It was kind of a toss-up at that point. A rustle in the underbrush caught my attention.

  An owl tore at a mouse that meekly tried to drag its eviscerated body away from its murderer. The owl looked up at me, then turned its gaze northward. I nodded. It was as good a sign as I was likely to get. I walked northward, my steps cautious and quiet. After all, it was a nightmare, it wasn’t likely to end well. I followed a gentle curve in the road and through the scattered pine and juniper trees, I saw lights from a three-story brick and stone building.

  Staying low and stepping off of the road, I approached the building from the east side. Behind me was a steep drop off, and ahead of me thirty yards of scrub with no real cover to speak of. The building was longer than it was deep, and it only had one entrance. Someone was either trying to keep people out, or keep them in. Two large men stood guard at the door, neither of them appeared armed. I knelt for a second, the two of them, I could take. Any friends they might have, well, that was another story. Thorne had taken my sorcery away for a reason. There were two obvious reasons, because his nightmare constructs were either vulnerable to it, or were unable to counter it.

  Still, a frontal assault was guaranteed to be noisy. Alone, I couldn’t risk that. I spoke a Word of silence and crept closer to the side of the building. Three windows, each over the next, adorned it. The ground floor window had a steel cage covering the security shutters. A rusty lock secured it shut. I spoke a short incantation and tapped the lock. With a gentle tug, I pulled it free in a spray of rust and dropped it to the ground. I waved my hand over the shutters and spoke a Word of opening. I grinned, wishing that Corrigan could have been here to see me. Not one corpse and I was in.

  I listened for a second to make sure that no one was moving near the window. Once I was sure that I would be alone upon entry, I gripped the center of each side of the frame. I pulled myself forward as I jumped, my feet clearing the sill, as I ducked my head to avoid the brick around the top of the window.

  My shoes clacked a little louder than I wanted on the tile just inside the window. I caught my balance, wind-milling for a second. The reddish light of the moon bathed the interior of the room in a bloody hue. Sixteen twin beds filled the room, eight lining each of the long walls. A heavy steel door was centered in the wall opposite the window, in the corner, just to the left of the door a folding privacy screen had been erected. I quickly surveyed the beds, fifteen small people filled as many beds. The empty bed’s sheets were thrown back as if the owner had just gotten up. Quietly, I closed the shutters. No sense in waking the remaining children. As I closed the shutters, locking the night outside with the scent of juniper and pine, I smelled the room for the first time.

  Bleach. Ammonia. Vinegar. The sheets on the beds had been a perfect shade of white. My stomach sank. This wasn’t a hospital, no one hid a hospital. Any sickness here would be of the kind that brought illness to the soul, the kind of illness that left irreparable scars. My eyes adjust to changes in light quickly, one of the perks of being invested with Satan’s authority. A small head peeked out from behind the privacy screen.

  “Shhh,” I spoke softly, putting my index finger to my lips. “Go back to bed, I won’t hurt you.”

  The tiny head nodded, and a little girl in a white nightdress ran out from behind the screen, her bare feet slapping on the tile. She dove into her bed and yanked the covers up around her chin. I walked slowly to her bedside and knelt.

  “What is this place?” I asked just above a whisper.

  “It’s where they send the bad kids,” she said.

  “Who sent you here?”

  “The Angel Mommy.” Her face fell as she spoke.

  “Can I tell you a secret?” I leaned close to her.

  She nodded gravely.

  “You aren’t a bad kid,” I smiled and touched her forehead. “There’s no such thing.”

  The heat from her brow was terrifying. She was gone and no medicine would save her. It was a miracle that she’d been able to walk at all. Someone here was murdering these kids. I was beginning to understand why Rachel was here. This was exactly the sort of thing that would draw her in. Don’t get me wrong, I’d have loved to tear the place apart to bring a very special kind of hate down on the bastards that did this. No child deserved this. I smiled at the little girl and patted her hand gently as I moved away from her bed.

  I stopped beside the door and listened again. I reached for the door, a Word on my tongue and froze. Shaking my head, I swore under my breath.

  “Too fucking fast,” I said. “Slow down. Slow.”

  I rested my hand on the door whispered an incantation to unlock the door and waited. Counting down from fifteen, I opened the door slowly. I quick-stepped out the door and made myself small against the near wall. The long hallway was empty. Doors in the hall alternated from one side of the hall to the other. The building was silent. Not the normal silent, creaky boards, moaning pipes and the like. No, this was silent. You’d never know that there was a room full of little girls behind me. I ran a hand over the back of my neck.

  Halfway down the main hall, a staircase led to the upper floors. I moved slowly, cautiously, toward the stairs. I had no idea where Rachel was hiding, but the faster I got out of here, the better. The main doors were directly opposite the staircase. I grimaced, I’d have to pass through the light splashing the entryway and illuminating the first flight of stairs. There was a door just to the left of the staircase. The brass plaque on the door identified it as “Basement Access”. I froze. Since when did you hide things upstairs? If Rachel was here, and I was reasonably sure she was, that was where she'd be. I had to assume she was either freeing or being a prisoner. The latter was the clear winner, however. It meant she was alone and all I had to contend with. The sinking feeling in my stomach let me know that my body was betting on the former.

  28

  Two running steps and careful jump across the entryway had me at the basement door. Finding it locked, I ripped through the world’s fastest unlocking incantation and quietly pulled it open. I slipped through the door and shut it silently behind me. Creeping down the stairs, I listened for anything suspicious. The narrow stairwell was nothing like the grand staircase leading to the upper floors. Naked bulbs hung from swinging cords, casting disconcerting shadows. I was halfway to the basement when I heard the sobbing.

  I ducked under the railing and dropped to the bottom of the next flight of stairs. Sliding around the corner into the basement proper, I whispered “hello?”

  The sobbing was replaced by silence then a sniffle. “Jason?”

  I stepped into the light. “Yeah.”

  Rachel was bound to a medieval style rack. Her wrists were weeping blood through the coarse
ropes binding her to the table and her ankles weren’t in the best shape either.

  “Who did this?” I asked, stepping closer.

  “Demons,” she spat the word out.

  “By your definition, that’s a rather broad social group,” I said as I stepped alongside her. I thought she’d looked bad last time. This was a whole new level of abuse. “Fuck,” I whistled quietly.

  “Are you here to gloat?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I snapped. “When have you ever seen me torture anyone?”

  “I don’t trust you,” she retorted.

  “That makes two of us,” I snorted. I summoned a flame into my palm.

  “What are you going to do with that?” She pulled as far away from me as she could.

  “Set you free,” I said. I held the flame under the rope a foot above her hands.

  “Hurry,” her eyes grew frantic as the rope burned slowly.

  “I’m going as fast as I can right now,” I replied patiently. “Any more sorcery and they’ll feel me here.”

  “Can’t you just command them to stop?”

  “They don’t work for my Master,” I said. “So, no, I can’t.”

  “Unless he lied to you,” she sneered. “You can’t trust the Devil.”

  “I don’t trust anybody,” I caught her wrists as the rope snapped. “Everyone has a price.”

  “Then why help me?” She chaffed her wrists as I pulled the rope away.

  “Because you’re my ticket back to my body,” I explained. “And as much as I like kicking your ass, I’d like to kick Thorne’s more.” I repeated the flame to rope trick on her ankles.

  “That’s the only reason?” She unwound the rope from her ankles.

  “I can’t make it any more transparent, Rachel.” I shrugged and stepped back to give her space. “We’ve been at this for years, have you ever doubted me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I really thought you killed Magda.”

  “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  “She trained our best,” Rachel met my eye. “Why wouldn’t you want to?”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong,” I shrugged. “There are plenty on my side that would’ve loved to meet her in combat. She would have died cleanly, not like some fucking showpiece. That’s not how we operate.”

  “Thorne told me his people did it,” she frowned. “He gloated about the ‘blindness’ of the Almighty.”

  “As much as I want to catch up with you,” I gave her a winning smile. “And trust me, that isn’t much, I really want to get the fuck out of here.”

  “Fine,” she glowered at me as she put experimentally put weight on her ankles. “You asked the question.”

  I caught her elbow as she stumbled. “Easy,” I said.

  She yanked her arm away from me. “Shut up,” she frowned. “I can do this for myself.”

  “Really,” I snapped. “’Cause it looks you’ve done a bang-up job of it so far.”

  “Shhh!” She whirled to face me, her eyes wide.

  “What?” I mouthed.

  “They’re back!” She whispered.

  “Who?”

  “The Pigs!” Her eyes twitched side to side like a rabbit in a trap.

  “What are they?”

  “We are Legion,” spoke a new, deep, voice.

  I turned to face the stairs with a sigh. Things that started like this always ended in blood. All too often, most of it mine. I opened my mouth for something witty, but as I caught sight of the creature on the stairs, I closed it. The thing on the stairs was massive. At least eight feet tall, and thickly muscled, it had grayish-black skin and yellowed eyes crusted over with dried flecks of green puss. Massive, jagged fangs jutted out from the lower jaw and a steady stream of drool hung from its meaty lips.

  “The Lord Himself rebuked you,” Rachel said. “You have no right to be on His Earth.”

  “Oh, but we are not upon its earth,” the creature snorted, then let forth a blood-curdling squeal. It shook its head hurling drool everywhere.

  “Rachel,” I said quietly. I had an idea.

  “What?” She asked, not facing me.

  “Where is my gun?”

  “What?!”

  “Where’s my fucking gun?” I asked again, pulling her back toward me.

  “Your lower back,” she said. “Right side”

  The moment she spoke, she made it real within the dream. I felt its comforting weight against my spine. My left hand swept past her face, my forearm shoving her back behind me. My right hand pulled the Beretta free and I hammered two shots at the Pig’s head. The first shot slammed into its lower jaw, and the second punched a hole high left-center of its forehead. It exploded into foul smelling gray-green vapor.

  “Okay,” I pointed with the barrel of my gun. “What the fuck was that?”

  “Matthew, chapter eight,” Rachel said, shoving my arm out of her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “The Savior cast demons out of three men and sent them into a herd of swine,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But your book says they drowned themselves.”

  “What is death to a demon?”

  “We really need to discuss what constitutes a demon,” I shook my head. “But that’s gonna have to wait.”

  “We have to get to the children,” she pushed past me toward the stairs.

  “Rachel,” I reached out for her.

  “There’s no time!” She pulled away from my hand.

  “Rachel,” I yelled. “Stop!”

  She turned to face me, her eyes looking as trapped as they had by the Pig Thing. “We have to try.”

  “They’re gone,” I sighed. “It’s too late for them.”

  “Hope springs eternal,” she whispered, her hand closing over her crucifix.

  “Hope is fuel for the nightmare,” I said as gently as I could. “It’s what Thorne’s counting on.”

  “How do you live with yourself?” She asked. “How do you sleep at night?”

  “Scotch,” I answered. “Lots of scotch.”

  “You can’t drink your way out of this,” she hurtled the stairs two at a time.

  “Don’t be fucking stupid,” I yelled as I raced after her. “Why are you people always so fucking stupid?”

  29

  I collapsed as we crossed the rise. It felt like we’d been running for days. I pulled Rachel into the hollow in the rock.

  “We have to go back,” she mumbled feverishly.

  “I told you,” I mumbled. “Not happening.”

  “The children,” she tried to pull herself away from me. “We have to get the children.”

  “They’re dead,” I said firmly as I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back.

  “You can’t know that,” she moaned.

  “I can,” I replied. “And I do. Those kids were so full of whatever sick shit those bastards pumped into them that they’d be lucky to survive half a day.”

  “It was medicine,” she said quietly.

  “What?”

  “They gave us medicine to cure us.”

  “Who did?” I asked.

  “The Angel Mothers,” she said. “They said it was to kill the evil inside of us.”

  “Wait, you were really there, in reality?” I was incredulous. “This fucking place was real?”

  She nodded slowly. “It’s why we have to go back.”

  “What is?”

  “I promised I’d go back,” her moan turning into a sob. “I never went back.”

  For the first time in recent memory, I had nothing to say.

  “They believed me, trusted me.” She doubled over, her forehead resting against the stone floor of the tiny cave as she wept.

  “How did you get here?”

  “Anastasia Blacke,” Rachel spoke the name like a curse. “She was the Angel Mother that came for me.”

  “Blacke?” I’d heard Cassidy mention the Blacke family before, and that wasn’t a good thing.

  “Yeah,” Rachel
sniffed, sitting up. She ran her forearm across her nose and mouth. “She came to the foster home and bought me from my foster parents.”

  “Bought you?” I asked.

  “She told them she wanted to adopt me,” Rachel said in a faraway voice. “The state wouldn’t approve it, though. So she bribed them, and they never reported me missing.”

  “That’s…wow,” I ran a hand over my face.

  “They beat us, drugged us,” she pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her face against them. “Made us do terrible things.”

  “Why?” None of this made sense. “What was the point?”

  “Some of the girls,” she said. “Became Angel Mothers. The boys…I don’t know what they did with them.”

  “I’m guessing the Pigs,” I shrugged when she looked at me. “It just kind of fits.”

  “Maybe,” she conceded.

  “What about the rest of the girls?”

  “What do you mean?” She lifted her head from her knees.

  “The ones that didn’t become Angel Mothers.”

  “Most of them died,” she said. “The rest became Dolls.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said.

  “I need to know,” I said.

  “What do you mean you need to know?”

  “I need to know what to expect,” I frowned. “When we get back there.”

  “You want to go back?”

  “No,” I said. “I really fucking don’t. I want to get out of your twisted fucking nightmares and back to reality.”