Sworn to the Night (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 1)

by Craig Schaefer

  The kitchen wouldn’t have passed a health inspection in hell. Hard electric lights shone down on grimy, yellowed tile, one short wall dominated by a bank of industrial refrigerators. A soup, like a green, oily curry, bubbled in a tall pot on the burner by the door. Daniel walked past it, smelling rich and hearty spices on the steam—then his stomach clenched as he noticed the long black hairs floating on the surface. He turned his attention to the heart of the kitchen and wished he hadn’t.

  Two corpses, a man and a woman, were laid out on a marble-topped slab side by side and in opposite directions. Heads and feet aligned like puzzle pieces on the stone. They were in the process of yielding up their mysteries to the chef’s knife. Chests and genitals opened, ribs cracked and cut away, choice bits already scooped out to roast in the oven or simmer in a stewpot.

  There, resting beside the woman’s pale and eyeless face, was the prize. Lefevre’s Cutting Knife looked exactly like the one in the Mourner’s vision. Its wooden handle was cracked and wound with black electrical tape, the dull blade pitted with rust. Daniel snatched it up, wiped it down with a grease-spattered towel, and slipped it into his breast pocket.

  He turned just as Lefevre and the waiter stormed through the kitchen doors. They didn’t look happy.

  “I’m a big fan,” Daniel said. “Love your TV show.”

  The chef’s gaze shot to the empty spot on the slab, then back to Daniel.

  “Also I’m taking your knife,” Daniel added. “Sorry. A witch needs it. She lives in a cave, makes people drink tea—y’know, it’s really a long and complicated story and I should probably let you get back to work.”

  “You want a knife, huh?”

  Steel rasped against wood as Lefevre slowly drew a fillet knife from a block. The waiter picked up a meat cleaver and circled the slab, moving around to cut Daniel off from the other side.

  “Got your knife right here,” Lefevre said with a smile. Then he lunged, faster than he looked, spearing the air as Daniel jumped back. Daniel snatched up an iron skillet. The fillet knife jabbed in again and clanged off black iron. Then the waiter raised his cleaver high and charged. Daniel hurled the skillet. It hit Lefevre in the chest, staggering him back and buying Daniel a few seconds to breathe. He turned as the cleaver came swooping down.

  Daniel shot his hands up, grabbed the waiter by the wrist, and twisted hard to yank him close and off-balance. Then he slammed his forehead into the bridge of the waiter’s nose. The waiter howled as cartilage shattered, hot blood spattering across Daniel’s face. The cleaver fell from his grip and clattered on the grimy floor.

  Lefevre ran in. The fillet knife lanced across Daniel’s shoulder, shredding his suit coat and slicing skin. The wound burned like lit gasoline, but he didn’t have time to feel it. Daniel threw a brutal elbow into the waiter’s face. His front teeth broke on impact and he dropped, out cold. Then Daniel jumped to the side as Lefevre came at him again. The tip of the fillet knife snapped at his face, missing by an inch.

  Daniel leaped onto the slab, clambering over the half-dissected corpses as Lefevre scrambled around the island. The chef was on his heels, bringing back the fillet knife for a lethal slice—and Daniel grabbed the soup pot from the stove and spun on the ball of his foot. A wave of boiling broth splashed into Lefevre’s face. The chef shrieked, dropping his knife and clutching at his eyes. Daniel hit him with the empty pot. Then he did it again, forcing Lefevre to his knees as his skull fractured under the stainless steel. And again.

  Lefevre twitched like a gutted fish at his feet. Daniel picked up the fallen fillet knife and yanked the chef’s head back. Then he forced Lefevre’s chin up to bare his throat and finished the job with one quick slice. He tossed the blade aside.

  “Fuck,” Daniel panted, clutching his burning shoulder, “you. Seriously.”

  He leaned against the bank of steel refrigerators and caught his breath. Blood trickled down his arm and his back, plastering his dress shirt to his skin. He gently tugged the ripped shoulder of his jacket, eyeing the wound beneath, and winced. Seeing it just made it hurt more.

  “Yeah,” he muttered to himself, a pulled muscle flaring in his hip as he stumbled to the kitchen doors, “that’s probably gonna need stitches.”

  He pushed his way out through the swinging door and froze.

  The entire restaurant was waiting for him. Maybe a dozen people in all, between the waiters and the diners in fancy dress, one big happy cannibal clan. Their hungry eyes glinted in the candlelight, shimmering faintly turquoise. They spread out in a ragged semicircle. Most of them clutched forks and steak knives, looking eager to dig in.

  “Okay,” Daniel said, nodding to himself. “So, we’re doing this.”

  He opened his hand. His deck of cards launched from his hip pocket in a flurry of pasteboard. The cards riffled into his palm and crackled with anticipation.

  * * *

  Daniel shoved his shoulder against the motel room door and staggered inside. He made it five feet, fell face-first onto the lumpy mattress, and decided to stay that way forever.

  Pipes rattled behind the motel wall. His shower turned itself on.

  He ignored it. The pipes rattled louder.

  “God, what?” he grunted, shoving himself off the bed. He shambled into the closet-sized bathroom, the stale air hot and muggy with shower steam. He saw his ghost in the fogged mirror, a disheveled train wreck in a torn and blood-spattered suit.

  The Mourner stood at his shoulder. Her ivory veils rippled.

  He spun around. Nobody there. Her rasping chuckle drifted from the mirror.

  “Were you successful?” she asked him, her slithering voice eager. “Do you have the Cutting Knife?”

  “Yeah, I got it. It looks like a piece of crap, just like you showed me. I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking.”

  “I am pleased you did not die.”

  He stared at her image. “That’s it, huh? That’s all I’m gonna get?”

  “Return the knife to me at once. I’ll have a second task for you once you arrive.”

  “Are you…have you seen me? Is this a one-way mirror? I just need a few hours of shut-eye—”

  “Three hours. Then return. I must prepare the knife for its new wielder.”

  He couldn’t see her face—no one ever had and lived—but somehow Daniel knew she was smiling.

  “She is about to spread her wings,” the Mourner hissed. “And blood her talons. A momentous night.”

  Forty-Six

  It was time for Nessa’s appointment.

  She didn’t take the couch this time. She sat in the chair across from Dr. Neidermyer, her handbag in her lap, hands resting primly on the silver chain.

  On her way in, as she shut the office door, she flipped the lock.

  “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, and after your regular hours,” she told him.

  Neidermyer held up a hand, turned his head to sneeze into a tissue, then tossed it into his wastebasket.

  “You should be careful with that,” she said.

  “Honestly, it’s no problem, Vanessa. You’re a very important patient—and careful with what?”

  She flashed a toothy smile.

  “Leaving your bodily fluids laying around like that. You know, back in the olden days, people kept close watch over their hair and nail clippings because they believed such things were still connected, in a supernatural sense, to their own bodies. They feared that witches might steal them. They might use them in their wicked spells, and do terrible, terrible things.”

  Neidermyer gave an awkward chuckle. “Well, I…I suppose it’s good that we live in the twenty-first century, and we know that witches aren’t real.”

  “I suppose so,” Nessa replied.

  “So, you wanted to discuss your medication? How’s the new dosage working out?”

  “Oh, it’s wonderful,” she said. “There’s just one problem.”

  She opened her purse and reached inside. The plastic pill bottle rattled as she s
et it on the desk between them.

  “It appears that instead of medication to treat bipolar disorder, you’ve been giving me tranquilizers linked to brain damage, depression, and suicide. You’re a respected professional, Dr. Neidermyer. Such an odd mistake to make.”

  He swallowed. Hard. His gaze flicked from her to the bottle and back again.

  “Vanessa, before you do anything rash, let’s talk about this.”

  “Oh, I absolutely want to talk about it.”

  She reached into her purse and pulled out a gun. The barrel of the .38 revolver glinted as she casually leveled it at the doctor’s face.

  “Look at that. My husband’s gun somehow fell into my purse.” Nessa shook her head. “We’re both making such odd mistakes today.”

  He squirmed, backing up into his chair like he thought he could wriggle through to the other side.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” he squeaked. “Vanessa, please—”

  “As much as I enjoy hearing you beg for mercy, is that really how you want to spend your final breaths?”

  “It was Richard. He came to me. Put me up to it. He—he paid me to do it.”

  “Why?” Nessa asked, pinning him under her dour gaze.

  “A d-divorce would look bad. He has his family reputation to think of. His father’s political ambitions. Couldn’t take any chances. He wanted to get rid of you in a way that would make him look…sympathetic.”

  “So the two of you schemed to gaslight me into killing myself.”

  “That or…” He swallowed, ducking his head down.

  Nessa thumbed back the hammer on the gun. “Or?”

  “Worst-case scenario, at least you’d be…”

  “Zombified? Trapped in a perpetual stupor? Asleep with my eyes open?”

  “Quiet,” he said. “So you wouldn’t embarrass him.”

  Nessa stared at him over the barrel of the gun. Her lips curled in a blood-hungry smile.

  “I’m not really sick, am I?”

  He gave a tiny headshake.

  “You’re not bipolar,” he said. “You do show some depressive tendencies—”

  “Which after being on Preloquil for a year, could have been caused by the pills, or so I’m told. What else, Doctor? This is our first and only truly honest session together. Diagnose me.”

  “I…I did a write-up for your husband, when I started seeing you. I—” He squirmed deeper into his chair. “Please don’t make me do this.”

  Nessa’s gaze flicked to the bubble-domed clock on the wall.

  “It’s after five on a Friday, Doctor. Most of this building’s gone home. Won’t be back until Monday. Nobody’s going to hear a gunshot. Nobody’s going to check on you. You could bleed for a long, long time.”

  “All right.” His hand fluttered. “All right. Fine. I told him that your behavior, possibly due to factors of your upbringing, was extremely repressed. That you showed traces of avoidant personality disorder—showing severe inhibition and social anxiety. That you are also…sexually inhibited—”

  “Ooh,” Nessa said. “Now we get to the juicy parts. Do go on.”

  “And that you also showed signs of latent and repressed”—he shut his eyes—“sadistic tendencies.”

  Nessa studied him like a bug under a magnifying glass.

  “I’m not a medical professional like you, Doctor,” she said, “so let me be sure I understand. Sadism. That means I like to hurt people, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s…it’s not classified as a formal disorder anymore. It was r-removed from the DSM because it’s largely considered a personality quirk or a sexual—”

  She cut him off with an amused chuckle. “Back to sex again. Goodness, it’s positively Freudian in here. Here’s a question, Dr. Neidermyer: if I get off on inflicting pain…how much trouble are you in right now?”

  “I’ll turn myself in,” he said. “I kept records. I can prove what Richard did, what he paid me for. I’ll make a full confession.”

  “I’ve got a better idea. I think you need a taste of your own medicine.”

  Nessa nodded at the pill bottle between them.

  “Eat one.”

  He picked up the bottle with trembling hands, shaking out a pill, almost dropping it. He put it between his lips and dry-swallowed it down.

  “Another,” she told him.

  As soon as he put it on his tongue, she raised the gun, aiming right between his eyes.

  “Chew it,” she said. He froze. She inched forward in her chair, bringing the gun closer. “Chew it.”

  He chewed the lozenge, wincing as it broke between his teeth.

  “Now swallow. Good. Have a third.”

  “Nessa,” he croaked, chewing the third pill as his eyes began to water, “don’t do this. Don’t shoot me. Please.”

  Nessa snickered. “Shoot you? How would I do that, Doctor? I don’t even have a gun.”

  He stared at her hand.

  There was no gun. Instead, she cradled a poppet of vintage cloth, a crude doll in the shape of a man, stuffed with tissue. Elaborate sigils had been stitched into the fabric, and twists of black thread spelled out his name.

  “Are you hallucinating, Doctor? Seeing things that aren’t there? Goodness, it looks like you might be suffering from a psychotic break.”

  “How did you—” He paused, suddenly choking, his next cough guttering out ragged and hoarse. He put his fingers to his mouth. They came away sticky and wet.

  “You must have felt so horribly guilty about what you did to me,” Nessa said lightly. “I mean, I can only imagine the anguish that drove you to such a cruel method of suicide.”

  He followed her gaze, down to the desk blotter between them. To his fingertips, sliced and bleeding, one nail hacked halfway off and dangling from its roots by a strand. And to the pill bottle.

  It wasn’t a pill bottle. It was a tiny wicker basket.

  A basket filled with razor blades.

  Nessa fished a makeup compact from her purse and casually flipped it open, turning it so Neidermyer could see his reflection in the mirror. The glass captured his horrified, bloody face, his sliced lips. The end of a razor blade where it wedged between his scarlet-stained teeth and dug halfway into his gums.

  He clutched his throat, choking, and collapsed to the office carpet. Nessa rose from her chair. She hummed to herself as she stepped around the desk and stood over him.

  “Such a man of reason, science, and logic,” she said. “So modern and free of superstition. You were never afraid of witches, were you? Never once.”

  Neidermyer choked up a gout of blood, a crimson splash across the thin carpet. He looked up at her, face contorted in agony, struggling to breathe around the razor blade lodged in his throat. Nessa crouched beside him and smiled sweetly.

  “But you’re afraid now.”

  He tried to crawl, to push himself up. His arm gave out from under him as he convulsed. Nessa took out her phone and tapped out a quick text: Can’t wait for tonight. Miss you.

  Neidermyer’s desperate hand clenched her ankle. She glared down, irritated, and kicked it away.

  Just finishing up some paperwork, Marie replied. Meet for dinner?

  My place, Nessa wrote. Don’t worry. My husband won’t be a problem.

  She leaned in and patted Neidermyer on the head.

  “Looks like we’re at the end of our session,” she told him. “This has been most enlightening, Doctor, and I feel like I’ve made a genuine breakthrough.”

  He let out one last rattling breath and died. His glazed, terrified eyes stared up at her. She glanced into her compact mirror, fluffed her bangs, and snapped it shut.

  “No, don’t get up,” she said. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Forty-Seven

  Richard didn’t mind that Savannah Cross had taken over his Manhattan offices. She was a lifeline, after all. Keeping him from being considered a liability and—if they played their cards right—offering a chance for him and Scottie to rise up in the Network. For that
he could put up with her eccentricity, her manic bursts, her tendency to carry on four conversations at once.

  Her “lab assistants,” the silent and pale qliphoth, were harder to deal with. The zombies shuffled here and there on unknowable errands. Some hauled in scientific gear and set up strange machinery, while others came and went in total silence. One had spent the last three hours spreading a handful of rice across the polished marble floor, rearranging the grains again and again.

  Dr. Cross herself sat behind Richard’s desk, her eyes hidden behind the black curve of a virtual reality headset. Her hands, sheathed in latex gloves articulated with wires, snatched at the air.

  “By interfacing directly with my servitors,” she said, “I can efficiently multitask. I’ve also patched into your lodge friends’ telephones, so I can access cameras and sound while they comb the city for Detective Reinhart. I’m observing twelve different feeds at the moment. They do know that they’re only supposed to follow and observe, yes? No direct action until I give the word?”

  “Yeah, Scottie’s giving them their marching orders, don’t worry about it.” Richard glanced over his shoulder. “You know one of your, ah, ‘servitors’ is squatting in the corner and playing with a bag of rice?”

  “Of course I do. It’s me. I’m all of them.”

  The qliphoth raised his pale face and gave Richard a lethargic wave before going back to his work.

  “That’s a warding ritual to keep your office barred against toxic energy,” she said. “My equipment is extraordinarily sensitive to cosmic radiation. If we were in my lab, I’d have my extra arms and I could do everything directly. I miss my extra arms.”

  Richard tilted his head. “Okay.”

  She froze for a moment, frowning at something she saw inside her headset.

  “This…is not right. Mr. Roth, are you a magician? Do you actively study the occult?”

  “No. I mean, I participate in lodge rituals, but beyond that I never really had a knack for it. Not like Scottie does. You should see what he can do with a—”

  “Is your wife?”