The Crimson Brand

by Brian Knight

  “Stay there,” Turoc said, and to Morgan’s great surprise added, “I’m on my way.”

  The hazy outline of his head and one abnormally long, spindly arm vanished before Morgan could respond, so Morgan went back to his newspaper and coffee in the sitting room. He fully expected another week or two wait while Turoc made arrangements, then flew to Florida. What he did not expect was to see Turoc waiting for him in the sitting room. Not standing—Turoc didn’t stand—but he was there.

  Morgan had frozen midstep at the end of the hallway, numb with terror, wanting to turn the other way and run but unable to move his rubbery legs into action.

  Turoc had grinned at him, then given a little nod of greeting. “Master Duke, it’s a pleasure to finally meet you in the flesh.”

  There was no mistaking the voice or the strange manner of speech. It was his longtime silent partner, the hazy shadow in his mirror, the—not a man, necessarily—the thing that had kept him so profitably busy over the past decade. Morgan had always suspected Turoc was partially responsible for the success of many of his lucrative personal projects, though he could never detect his silent partner’s hand in the deals. Morgan held a respect for Turoc so deep it was almost superstitious.

  In those first moments of recognition, Morgan Duke wished he had never heard of Turoc. Better poor and living out of a suitcase and his father’s old Studebaker bus than to have to acknowledge the monster in the sitting room.

  Then his rubbery legs failed him, his vision began to fade, and he suspected that if he didn’t break his neck in the fall he was about to take, he’d die of a heart attack.

  He never finished falling though, and the expected heart attack did not come. Morgan simply existed for the next few minutes in a daze of semi-consciousness in which he watched the monster, Turoc, advance on him so quickly that he covered the length of the huge sitting room in barely a second, catching Morgan with those peculiarly long arms before he collapsed. Turoc carried him as effortlessly as if he were a stuffed doll instead of a nearly seven-foot-tall, three-hundred-pound man. He felt a stab of pain on his meaty left bicep, but it faded quickly.

  When he’d recovered his senses, Morgan found himself sprawled on his sofa, his head propped on the decorative pillows and his feet dangling off the other end. Turoc’s massive, terrible head hovered close by, regarding him with concern and, Morgan thought, a touch of amusement.

  “I hope my visit doesn’t find you averse to continuing our rather interesting working relationship.” He grinned, exposing large, curved fangs. “I think you’ll agree it has been beneficial for you, and I know it has been for me and my benefactors.”

  “You … you bit me!” Morgan held up his left arm like an accusation. Twin punctures oozed blood through the long sleeve of his white shirt.

  “Only a little.” Turoc made a gesture that looked like it wanted to be a shrug. “You gave me little choice, dear friend. Your poor heart fairly quailed at the sight of me. I’m afraid you might have died if I hadn’t acted.”

  “What?” Morgan tore open the cuff of the damaged sleeve and yanked it up his arm, revealing the bite marks. Remarkably, there was no pain, and even as he watched, the slow flow of blood stopped entirely and the holes began to heal. “What did you do to me?”

  Turoc laughed heartily.

  Morgan flinched away from him.

  “Fear not, Master Duke. You won’t turn into one of me. I like you very much the way you are. I also prefer you breathing however, and my venom can have certain beneficent qualities. I think you’ll find your heart stronger than ever now.” He backed away in his peculiar fashion, giving Morgan room to rise. “In fact I think you’ll find your overall health better than it has been in many years.”

  With Turoc’s retreat across the room, Morgan found the courage to move again. He sat up, and to his surprise he felt much better; stronger, lighter, more aware, his senses sharper. He stood and easily lifted his considerable bulk. Many of the aches and pains he’d accumulated over the years—and grown quite used to—were noticeable now only by their absence.

  “I feel ….” Morgan regarded Turoc, took a cautious step toward him, stopped, took another. “I feel great.”

  “Excellent!” Turoc smiled at Morgan with benign curiosity. “The House of Fuilrix values you more than you know. It would be a great disappointment to lose your services.”

  For a moment Morgan was at a loss for words. In the last five minutes his entire understanding of reality had been heartily challenged, the limits of his imagination stretched past what he had assumed was their breaking point. He could feel himself tottering on the edge of panic, though he couldn’t help but notice that his legs remained strong, his body upright. His heart beat in a strong, normal rhythm.

  Morgan’s pragmatic nature kicked it.

  Really, had anything actually changed?

  Turoc waited patiently for his reply, as always one of the most pleasant businessmen Morgan had ever worked with.

  So, no, nothing had really changed. In fact, some things that had puzzled him over the years were beginning to make a little more sense. The secrecy, the trick mirror, gold instead of cash.

  Morgan didn’t know precisely what The House of Fuilrix was, but their messenger, Turoc, was not human. He belonged in this world no more than Morgan belonged on Venus. Space alien, mutant hybrid, extra-dimensional visitor, or non-of-the-above, Turoc could never exist openly in this world.

  But he was still Turoc.

  No, things had not changed, only clarified. Morgan retreated back to the couch and sat down.

  “It’s good to finally meet you, Mr. Turoc.” He extended a hand, and only flinched a little when Turoc moved far too quickly across the room to shake with him. “I take it we have business to discuss?”

  “Indeed.”

  The discussion was, thankfully, short. Morgan thought he’d be able to take Turoc easier in small doses.

  “Take this.” Turoc produced a tiny wooden box with a small clasp.

  Morgan took the box, turned it over in his hands, opened it. Inside was a heart-shaped locket on a fine chain.

  “Do not open the locket if you value your life.”

  Morgan regarded him, the unspoken question burning in his mind, and he almost asked. Then he decided he really didn’t want to know what the locket held. He decided to take it on faith.

  Mr. Turoc told him what he was to do with it.

  “Keep it safe until you deliver it, and do not be near when she opens it.”

  Morgan regarded the locket again, then returned his attention to his silent partner.

  “It would be best if she were alone when she opened it,” Turoc said, keeping his strange eyes, large dusty-gold orbs with vertical slits for pupils, on Morgan’s face. “Collateral damage can be so inconvenient.”

  Morgan’s brain was beginning to wind back into action, forming a plan. He didn’t know much about Diana Sinclair, but what he did know, he could use to their advantage.

  “She’s a frequent flier,” Morgan said. “She travels between San Francisco and Los Angeles about once a week on a private company jet … what?”

  He’d seen the startled look, the suddenly tensed posture, and the widening of Turoc’s eyes.

  “She … flies?”

  Morgan had to stifle a momentary urge to laugh.

  “In an airplane,” he elaborated.

  Turoc calmed at once. “Yes, of course. Continue.”

  Morgan explained his plan, a rough one to start, but a good one.

  Turoc nodded. Evidently collateral damage was acceptable as long as it wasn’t public. “I have every confidence, Master Duke. You haven’t failed us yet.”

  “But,” Morgan said, wanting to make the potential flaws clear, “what if she refuses it?”

  Turoc grinned, and Morgan had to look down at his feet. Pleasant he might be, but when Turoc grinned it gave Morgan the willies.

  “Tell her it is a gift from Tracy West. She will take it.”

&n
bsp; He spoke the last with such confidence that Morgan didn’t doubt him. He was taking a lot on faith that day.

  “I’ll leave the details to you.” Turoc moved to the center of the sitting room and, seemingly from nowhere, produced a short wooden rod, narrow, and about the length of a ruler. “How long until you’ve acted?”

  “Give me two weeks to get set up in San Francisco, then another week or two to catch her at the right time.” Morgan kept his eyes on the wooden rod in Turoc’s long-fingered hand. The tip glowed slightly.

  A magic wand?

  Crazy, but not the craziest thing he’d seen that day.

  Turoc nodded a final time, then brought the wand in his hand slashing down through the air, drawing a line of black light.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  The line opened in midair, parted like cloth before Turoc, and he slipped through it and was gone. The opening closed, crackling slightly as the black light burned out.

  * * *

  Morgan’s plan had worked perfectly. Three weeks after Morgan’s first face-to-face with his partner, Joseph hand delivered the locket to Diana Sinclair as she rushed from her apartment building toward a waiting cab. Joseph made a rather convincing bicycle courier, Morgan thought. He looked and acted the part: smart enough to write down a street address and buckle a bike helmet on front ways, but not much more than that.

  Morgan gave him his single line, and Joseph hadn’t varied it by a syllable.

  “Delivery for Diana Sinclair. Are you Miss Sinclair?”

  When she’d been reluctant to take it, he’d delivered the zinger, and it had worked as well as Turoc had promised.

  “A gift from Tracy West, Miss Sinclair.”

  Then she had taken it, her face pale with shock, her eyes wide and staring. Morgan, who had watched from a street-side comfort station not a block away, thought she looked as though she’d seen a ghost. She’d simply stood there for a moment, staring between Joseph—who had pleased Morgan that day by having the good sense to keep his mouth shut after delivering his lines—and the small, lacy gift box in her palm.

  Then the taxi driver honked, and she rushed away.

  She may or may not have waited until she was in flight to open the gift box, but she had waited until she was in the air to open the locket itself. Morgan didn’t know what was inside the locket, but it had done precisely what Turoc had promised.

  Her plane had gone down, and ownership of Clover Hill had transferred, just as they had planned.

  But it hadn’t transferred to Susan Taylor.

  It had transferred to Diana Sinclair’s daughter.

  It seemed that his associate hadn’t known about Miss Sinclair’s daughter until very recently; or rather, they knew that she once had a daughter but thought the girl had died long before. They never expected her to become a player in this deal.

  The arrival of Penny Sinclair finally prompted them to send Morgan in to wrap up the long-unfinished business personally.

  They had not ordered similarly drastic measures regarding the daughter. When his curiosity—something he usually kept well in check in his dealings with Turoc—got the better of him and he asked about it, his partner had said simply that they could not have the girl’s blood on their hands. Morgan didn’t complain. He didn’t want the kid’s blood on his hands, either. He had done a lot of mean-spirited things over the years, all in the name of business of course, but he’d never hurt a kid.

  So it was back to Plan A, try to charm Susan into making a deal, and if that failed, well, he wasn’t throwing in the towel just yet. Just because she didn’t technically own the land didn’t mean she couldn’t find a way to sell it out from under the Sinclair girl if he found her magic number.

  While Ernest hadn’t been much help with Morgan’s main objective, he had come through very nicely on the second. A few pulled strings was all it took for him to get Joseph the landfill job. Turoc had been very candid about the need to keep people away from that old carnie trailer, whatever his reason was, and with some help from Ernest Price, Joseph had been able to do just that.

  Despite his love of the game, Morgan Duke was looking forward to wrapping up this business. Sure he liked a challenge; he liked putting his spectacular creative problem-solving skills to profitable use. But he didn’t like unfinished business.

  Unfinished business was bad business.

  PART 2

  Night School

  Chapter 8

  Night School

  Penny’s favorite thing about school on Mondays was that they only came once a week. She tried hard to keep that in mind as she trudged through this one.

  First and second hours slid by in their usual, slow fashion. Katie’s mood was as bad as Penny had ever seen it when they met each other in second-hour Social Studies, but Katie seemed to be taking a little pleasure in her father’s new role as persona non grata with the rest of the family. Though it had been just over a week since the scene at her birthday party, she showed no signs of forgiving her father.

  On Susan’s advice, Penny refrained from adding to Katie’s abuse of Mr. West, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it.

  Third-hour math with Miss Riggs was, as always, her least favorite. While Miss Riggs didn’t play any favorites or purposefully fail Penny, Susan’s sister always seemed to keep at least one beady eye on her, as if hoping Penny would act out and give her a reason to kick her out of class. After the scene at Penny’s party, she was even worse. She watched Penny from bell to bell, not even trying to hide her dislike.

  “Doesn’t she give you the creeps?” Ellen Kelly said from behind Penny after the bell rang and they rose to leave. “She looks like she wants to bite you.”

  “You have no idea,” Penny whispered back, aware that Miss Riggs was still watching her over a stack of ungraded papers.

  Fourth hour was always a welcome distraction from Miss Riggs’s unwanted attention. English was her favorite subject, and Mr. Cole her favorite teacher. Mr. Cole was old, bald, and skinny, but easily the nicest teacher at Dogwood School.

  Lunch at Sullivan’s, Susan’s store, followed, but it wasn’t as much fun without Katie. Katie’s father had strictly forbidden her from going into Susan’s shop, so she was spending her lunches with Ellen and Chelsea in the school cafeteria.

  Even with Katie missing from their company, life had definitely improved since last fall.

  When Penny thought back to the start of that school year, the looks, the whispers, all the small-town speculation about The New Girl, the teasing from Rooster’s gang, even the hostility from Katie, Penny had to admit things were much better now. She still wasn’t a town girl, even though she’d been born there and her family had lived there since almost the dawn of time, it seemed, but acceptance was slowly coming, and she had a few good friends.

  Of course, Zoe was in the same boat, but she tended to attract less trouble since most of the kids their age thought she could probably beat them up. Zoe had enjoyed a greatly enhanced reputation since Trey Miller’s appearance at her birthday party. New kid or not, Trey was the epitome of cool to most of the boys in school, and his apparent interest in Zoe had done nothing to stifle the fawning of Dogwood’s other girls.

  Katie seemed to be as well-liked as ever, with the exception of what remained of her old clique, who usually ignored her. Tori, the richest and meanest of the bunch, mostly called the shots for all of them now, and according to Susan all the Main Street businesses were learning to keep an eye out when those girls paid them a visit.

  Even the excitement of last fall’s kidnappings and the dramatic rescue were becoming old news, barely worth repeating, and it had been weeks since Penny had heard anyone mention the Dogwood Witches.

  Life in Dogwood would have been almost boring, if not for their little secret.

  * * *

  Though Katie was mostly absent during the day, she met them nightly at Aurora Hollow. In fact, she’d become rather manic about their nightly practices, as if determined to
rebel against her father’s prohibition in the only way she could. They didn’t really do anything new that first week. Mostly they read and studied, which Penny guessed was necessary, but it was also almost as boring as regular schoolwork.

  One night they studied the difference between invocation—magic that required spoken words, usually a simple appeal to an outside source—and evocation, magic that relied on inner talent, innate abilities and, of course, lots of practice.

  That night started with Penny’s least-favorite kind of assignment, a written essay. The page following the invocation/evocation lesson started blank when Penny opened to it, then quickly filled with text instructing them to explain the dangers of invocation and calling up unknown forces. After they finished, their essays faded away, leaving the pages blank again—there was nothing quite as frustrating as watching a newly completed piece of homework disappear from the page only seconds after completing it—and the book rewarded them with two pages on the differences between active and passive spells.

  Watching the still-drying ink of their essays sink into a blank page of the book gave them something to think about, though, and Katie was the first to raise the question.

  “If it can understand what we’re writing, do you think it’ll answer questions?”

  “I dunno,” Zoe said, yawning hugely. “I’m too tired to think of any.”

  Penny had a head full of questions, even after her last revealing chat with Ronan, but thought she should contain herself to the ones that were relevant to all three of them. But before she could think of one to ask, Katie picked up her pen and began to scribble on the first blank page.