by Harvey Click
Keeping inside clumps of fog, he dragged the rag-doll body to the tower where two ropes with leather harnesses hung down to the lake. He strapped Garrick into one of them and watched the corpse twist and jerk as it was hoisted to the roof, a poor man’s ascension to heaven done with pulleys like the levitation illusion Elden Becker used to perform to amuse his friends. He climbed into the other harness and was lifted out of the water himself. The air sucked the last warmth from his body, and by the time he reached the top of the tower he was too cold to move his limbs.
Men wearing black cowled robes placed him on a stretcher, wrapped him in a blanket, and carried him down a stone stairway that ended in a winding corridor, narrow and dark. Grimes tried to memorize their route, but the place was a mad maze of stairways and cramped corridors twisting one direction and then another. They squeezed into cobwebbed cubbyholes and passed through a long tunnel blazing with candles; a closet hidden behind a dresser turned out to be another stairway. He was asleep before the journey ended.
He opened his eyes from a dream of Saladin’s tomb in Damascus and saw Garrick’s dead eyes staring at him through black water. He sank back into the churning darkness and dreamed of Burne hanging in a web like a shriveled fly. He surfaced from the dream to another darkness that was death swirling around him in an icy maelstrom, and he struggled madly with several layers of blankets, trying to swim out of the watery murk.
A door opened, and Grimes saw that he was in a small bed in a small room. Someone entered with a flickering candle, lit an oil lamp on a washstand beside his bed, and caged the flame inside a glass chimney.
It was Letha, just an arm’s reach away.
“My glasses,” Grimes said, his throat hoarse and sore.
“Here.” Letha handed him a silver blur, and he put them on. “I’m surprised you didn’t lose them in the lake,” she said.
Lamp shadows caressed her face like fingers, sculpting her cheekbones and Aphrodite lips. She had aged well, if at all. An uncharacteristic sadness in her eyes stirred his groin. He sat up and covered his naked body with a blanket, feeling old and unattractive.
“I was dreaming,” he said. “I dreamt Garrick was dead.”
“He’s in a catatonic coma,” Letha said. “Two of my men are nursing him.” She pulled a chair near his bed and sat down.
Then it was real, the struggle in the water, trying to breathe life into dead lungs. Grimes sank back into the bed and shut his eyes.
“That’s no coma,” he said. “Garrick’s dead.”
“You’re wrong,” Letha said. “Since when does drowning kill a Longevital? In a little while he’ll be as good as new.”
“No he won’t,” Grimes said. “Garrick wasn’t a Longevital. No one’s born with Longevity, at least not since Methuselah.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “He’s stronger than either of us, like the offspring of two gods. Believe me, Michael, I know him better than you do.”
“Don’t tell me you knew him better,” Grimes said. “You haven’t seen him since he was six. Garrick was a freak, a biological disaster. You never wanted him, and you have no idea.”
“Well, at least I didn’t burn down his house and cause him to drown,” she said.
Here at last, here with Letha and wanting to kill her, just like old times.
“How long was I asleep?” he asked hoarsely.
She shrugged. “Time doesn’t mean much here.”
He looked around the small room: clammy stone walls, an armoire and a dresser with a mirror, two doors, no window.
“How long have you had this charming abode?” he asked.
“Since before I met you,” she said. “For seven nights in a row I dreamed of every room and corridor, and I drew the plans exactly as I dreamed them. I thought I might need a good fortress someday. We both have a way of making enemies, don’t we?”
“Yes, especially with each other.”
“It’s a good place to hide,” she said. “Even you couldn’t find me, and if you had you wouldn’t have gotten in, and now that you’re here I wouldn’t advise prowling around because it’s booby trapped.”
“When did this Athena rubbish begin?” he asked.
“When I was pregnant I gathered a few disciples. The number keeps growing.”
“Goddess of wisdom,” he said. “That’s what I love about you, Letha—there’s not a vain bone in your body.”
“Necessity more than vanity,” she said. “Garrick’s birth wasn’t easy, and I’ve not been well since. I need attendants.”
The oil lamp stretched its shadows across her eyes. Grimes smelled the fragrance she’d worn so many other places and remembered sniffing it in hotel sheets after she had slipped away in the night. He wanted to pull her into bed and let the old enchantment drown his suspicions, but he trusted facts more than perfume.
“The man who shot Garrick was aiming at me—no?”
“I suppose so,” Letha said. “The Lost Ones don’t seem to like you.”
“They were your own men,” he said. “You dressed them up in camouflage masks and ordered them to act out the ruse for Garrick’s benefit. You didn’t want him to know you ordered his father’s murder.”
Letha got up and straightened a painting near the dresser, and Grimes caught a glimpse in the mirror of a young man wearing her dress. So she was playing a little trick; she wasn’t here after all.
“Put your cards on the table,” she said.
“I described the New Society shielding pattern to Professor Krickbaum,” he said. “It does more than shield the gallery and the room upstairs—it’s able to project a scrambled hologram with airborne dust motes as the medium. He replicated the pattern and created Rebus.”
“So?”
“So Krickbaum taught me how to decode the lacework,” he said. “It was extraordinarily difficult, but I unscrambled Rebus and spied my old friend Letha.”
She sat down and played with her hair.
“How long have you worked for Cypher?” Grimes asked.
“Since Garrick was born,” she said. “I got sick and no one else could help me. Cypher saved my life.”
“Oh? Does he know where you can find Longevity ingredients?”
“No, but he gave me a way to postpone death until he does something better.”
“Of course the something better costs something more,” Grimes said. “Apparently my head is part of the price.”
“You’re just a little dab of pocket change,” she said. “Frankly I can’t see why Cypher’s worried about some old has-been never-was like you.”
Letha was braiding her hair and avoiding his eyes. “It’s your own fault, making yourself so damn conspicuous,” she said. “The whole world knows you work for the Philosopher. Besides, I did everything I could to protect you.”
“Curious sort of protection, having your men shoot at me.”
“I’ve protected you by keeping my mouth shut all these years,” she said. “Cypher tries to sift me with telehypnopathy, but I block my thoughts with the old Bon mind-game. He has no idea I ever met you.”
“But he put you in charge of capturing me. Interesting coincidence—no?”
“Cincinnati just happens to be part of my sector, so I was stuck with the job,” she said. She finished the braid and began undoing it. “I warned you about Burne, don’t tell me I didn’t, and I told you to get your ass out of there.”
“Yes, and a few hours later you sent Ryver and Kat to collect my head. You picked that particular couple because they’re quick to pull the trigger, and I daresay you told them to pull it fast and often.”
“You gave me no choice,” she said. “You put me in a hell of a spot. If I brought you in alive the Lost Ones might learn about Garrick, and if Cypher wanted you he just might want Garrick too. So my only option was to make sure you were killed instead of captured.”
“You’ve always been a practical woman.”
“And you’ve always been a son of a bitch,” she said. “You sacrific
ed your favorite houseboy and risked your own son’s life so I’d be forced to invite you here.”
Grimes shrugged. “Sometimes love must follow strange maps.”
“Love, my ass,” she said. “You stuck me with a real mess, having to sift Burne without asking any questions that could lead to Garrick, and you were laughing in your listening shells the whole time I did it. Then Kat becomes First Avatar and takes over the interrogation, and all I can do is watch and hope your catamite will croak before a clue slips out, but he remembers one you left in plain sight on your car seat. You planted it there on purpose, you bastard.”
Grimes smiled. She was more talkative than he’d expected, and he hoped she’d keep talking until he learned something he didn’t already know.
“Well, Cypher can’t hurt Garrick now, so there’s no need to kill me,” he said. “A happy ending, except of course for poor Garrick.”
“Cypher still wants you dead,” Letha said. “I need a couple favors from him, and you’re the wild card in my hand.”
She got up and smoothed her long blue dress in the mirror. Her disciple’s reflection stared back.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “One of the favors is for Garrick, so don’t get all judgmental.”
“I daresay he’s beyond needing any favors except a decent burial,” Grimes said.
“I told you, he’s in a catatonic coma.”
“Have it your way,” he said, “but try to keep the flies away from him.”
Letha’s nostrils looked nice when they flared. He had always loved her anger.
“He’s not dead,” she said. “Damn it, you don’t understand anything. Garrick and I both need new bodies, and Cypher knows how to do it. You seem like a very small and petty price to pay.”
“Small indeed,” Grimes said. “You’ll find out I’m not even down payment. As for these two new bodies, I suppose you mean my ‘used cars,’ Dr. Radcliff and Bitter.”
“You’re just jealous because your son’s going to end up being a handsome hunk and you never got to enjoy that privilege,” she said. She picked up a comb and put it down. “I admit the Aztec isn’t much to look at, but even her stumpy little carcass will be an improvement over my current condition.”
“The only condition I can see is beautiful,” he said.
She sat on the bed and tickled his lips with her hair. “You’re slipping, Michael. You don’t really think I’d place myself in your nasty old clutches?”
Her features dissolved in a cloud of sparks. A skinny young man sat there wearing her dress and the idiotic expression of someone in a trance. His head was shaved, but he toyed with the empty air where Letha’s hair had been.
“To be inhabited by the goddess is a great honor for my disciple,” she said through his lips. Her face came sparkling back with a smug smile. “Don’t worry, he’s unaware of what we’re saying. His job is to just sit here and give you a good whack in the jaw if he has to.”
She lay down beside Grimes and slid a leg over his groin. He loved her smirk of schoolgirl pride, even if it was pasted on some dumb kid’s face. Her essence was there, the mysteries of mosques and prayer-callers and hotel rooms distant in miles and years.
“You knew I was Rebus and still you came here,” she whispered. “Do you really love me that much, or do you have some silly plan?” She reached beneath the blanket and tugged the gray hairs on his chest. “Tell me what you’re plotting so I don’t have to torture you.”
“No plot,” he said. “I thought if Garrick and I came here, maybe we could talk you out of this madness.”
“What madness?”
“You think you’re working for Cypher, but you’re not,” he said. “You’re working for Zyx. Ever hear of him?”
“Zyx, schmix,” she said.
“Zyx plans to destroy all human life and replace it with something even you might find repellent,” Grimes said. “Wouldn’t you say that borders just a tiny bit on madness?”
“Don’t get moralistic with me,” she said. She blew in his ear and licked the lobe. “You have some dumb little trick up your sleeve, you dirty old man. Let me see it.”
“I don’t even have a sleeve. I’m naked and defenseless.”
“You’ve never been defenseless, but you’re not nearly so clever as you think.” Her fingernails scraped his skin as she eased the blanket down his aging body. “This is one game you’re losing.”
“It’s no game,” he said.
“It’s always been a game,” she said. Wet lips sucked his dry nipples. “We like games, don’t we, Michael?”
“Speak for yourself. This so-called game has killed our son, and it will kill us too if you don’t quit playing. All of us, not just you and me.”
“One of us sooner than the all the others,” she said. “That’s what you don’t like.” Her nails scratched their way slowly down to his groin. “Mmm, I see you’ve been taking Viagra.”
“Damn you, listen to me,” he said. ‘‘I daresay you’ve forgotten the first rule of sorcery. You can’t serve a demon without being possessed by the monster you serve.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.” She squeezed his penis in a tight fist and nibbled the tip. “I wonder how I should kill you,” she said. “Do you like it slow and sweet or fast and nasty?”
“Better do it fast, before the worms eat you,” he said. “Cypher can’t serve Zyx without becoming Zyx, nor can you. Just ask Kat, with her head full of maggots.”
“I didn’t know you’d taken holy orders,” she said. “You do marriages and funerals too?” She took his hand and placed it between her legs. “How does that feel, Reverend Father?”
It felt good, almost like Letha’s furry mound if he used his imagination.
“It feels cheap, even for you,” he said. “You expect me to make love to some idiotic boy wearing your face?”
“Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all these years?” She smirked and stood up. “Don’t worry, I wouldn’t let you fuck me if you begged like a puppy.”
As she pulled her dress down over her thighs, Grimes noticed a bulge in the front. The disciple she inhabited was erect but not very well hung.
“Before you get too self-righteous, don’t forget you work for some bogus hell-dweller yourself,” she said. “Let’s see, doesn’t he pretend to be Roger Bacon? Or is it Eggs ‘n’ Bacon?”
“The Philosopher doesn’t work for a demon.”
“Cypher and Zyx, Bacon and eggs, they’re all the same,” she said. “That reminds me, you want some breakfast?”
“They’re not the same,” he said. “A thirst for knowledge drew Bacon to hell, and wisdom will release him in the end. Surely you’ve read the Aesh Mezareph? There are some who patiently work their way out of the pit by transforming the nature of their own souls.”
“You’re so tiresome when you evangelize,” she said. “Do you still like your coffee black?”
“Damn you, Letha, there are a thousand safe places I could be right now. Why do you think I came here?”
“I don’t know, but if you wanted a blow job you wasted your gas.”
“I’m trying to save what’s left of you,” he said. “You’ve never let any man love you, so why let a demon rule your brain?”
“No one rules me. I’m completely in control, and that’s what you hate.”
The disciple’s erection was gone, and whatever Grimes loved about Letha’s face was gone as well. He could see the boy’s hypnotized stupor behind her smirk.
“You don’t understand anything anyway,” she said. “I have no choice.”
“Listen to you,” Grimes said. “ ‘I’m in control, I have no choice.’ If you’re in control then make a choice. Every day is a choice between heaven and hell. I saw that as I dragged Garrick’s body through the water. I saw a whole history of decisions and wondered which ones had magnetized my soul to the pit. Most of them, I daresay. I saw the way I’d treated Garrick and Burne and a hundred other people. I always told myself
I had no choice, I needed to be harsh with them to make them smarter, but the water said I’d treated them badly so they’d serve me better. I saw plenty of things out in that lake, and I regretted most of them.”
Letha yawned. “Now I see your scheme,” she said. “You’re planning to bore me to death. Very cunning.”
She opened the door, and the last traces of her illusion disappeared in the darkness that seeped into the room. Her smell was gone and even her hair. A hairless idiotic boy wearing her dress stood in the doorway.
“Well, it’s been real,” the disciple said. “You’ll find a nice new suit in the armoire, shirt, socks, and underwear in the dresser. I’ll have some breakfast sent in. Try to enjoy it, since it will be your last.”
“It’s not much of a game unless I have a sporting chance—no?” Grimes said.
The boy smirked. “I suppose you want your doodads back, your amulets and rings and such.”
“And my wand.”
“Sorry, Charley, it’s not much of a game if I let you win. But I am looking forward to your amusing pranks. It’ll be like old times.”
“At least let me have my listening shells,” Grimes said.
“I don’t think so. I’ll leave your door unlocked, but don’t wander more than a few feet unless you want to be sliced in half before breakfast. The booby traps, you know.”
The boy blew him a kiss and left.
Grimes lay in bed for a while. Moralizing always tired him. When he got up, he went to the armoire and tried on the expensive brown tweed suit. It fit perfectly, and so did the shoes. Letha always had good taste.
The door opened, and a tall man entered wearing a black robe with a cowl that hid his face, a long dagger sheathed in his belt. More daggered dark robes lurked outside the door. The disciple set a coffee pot and covered platter on the washstand and left.
Grimes poured a cup of coffee and lifted the silver cover from the platter. Eggs, bacon, toast—and his listening shells. There was a note: “For my favorite old enemy so he can hear me sharpening the blade.”