by Joey Ruff
“Okay.”
He moved quickly past us to the small living room. I could see the kitchen through an entry to the right and a darkened hallway led away to the left, no doubt to the bedrooms.
“Have a seat,” he said and motioned to the room around him. There was a beat-up, blue recliner, a matching sofa and loveseat that were dressed in a brown plaid fabric that probably hadn’t been manufactured since the early 80s.
I found a seat on the sofa and Ape sat near me. Eric, ever the eager host, said, “Can I get you guys something to drink? We’ve got sodas, water, milk. I’m sure my mom has some beer left from last night, if she didn’t drink it all.”
“We’re fine,” I said. “We’re actually in a bit of a hurry, kid.” He nodded and kept standing, looking between me and Ape with expectancy. “There are other chairs,” I offered. “It might make me feel better if you sat down.”
Something dark crossed his face then. “That’s what they say in movies when they’re about to tell you something bad…”
“Relax, kid. We’re here for mostly good things.”
“Mostly…,” he said, wrinkling his face with concern.
“I haven’t found a body yet, kid, so sit the fuck down and shut up.”
He did, more collapsing than sitting. It was a good thing he’d been standing in front of a chair, or he would have fallen on his arse.
“Alright. A lot’s happened in the last few days. We’ve learned quite a bit, and we’re close to putting the whole puzzle together, but we’re missing one crucial piece.”
“Like what? What did you find out?”
“I’m not sure you need to know everything.”
“We know who took him,” Ape said. “And we know how and why.”
He looked at Ape funny. So did I. “Who took him?” Eric asked.
“Dewey,” I said.
He turned his quizzical gaze on me and snapped, “I’m not an idiot, Mr. Swyftt. Dewey isn’t real. I know that much.”
Ape looked pained as he said, “He was.”
“It’s complicated,” I added. “Suffice to say, we need your help.”
“Of course,” Eric said. “What can I do?”
“We need to know where this guy is, where he’s taken your brother,” Ape said.
Eric’s eyes got really small, overshadowed by his saggy, heavy brow. “How would I know that?”
“You don’t,” I said. “But Adam does. In your journal, you wrote that Adam drew pictures of dragons, and that after he met Dewey, his pictures changed dramatically.” Eric nodded.
“Can you show me?”
Eric nodded again. “Yeah. Sure.” He stood and moved quickly past us into the kitchen. There was a rustling noise and a few clicks. I didn’t even have time to look at Ape and comment before the kid was back in the living room, hovering in front of me, a stack of crayon drawings bouncing eagerly in his hands.
“These are his early pictures,” he said, and he held out two pieces of paper. I took them in gloved hands, and stared at them for a minute. Ape leaned over, studying them as well.
The first picture looked like a fat, green chicken, barely supported by tiny stick legs, with red eyes and a thick fog of orange vomited between two rows of jagged, white triangles.
The second picture was much the same, but with red wings and meatier legs. Where the first was alone, this one appeared to be doing battle with a squat little man in a motorcycle helmet and puffy jacket, a giant pencil in one hand and a straight line hovering beside the other. Above the man’s head, etched in crooked, little-kid handwriting, was the word “Eric” and an arrow pointing at the figure.
“You fight dragons?” I asked, looking up with a smile.
He shrugged. “I guess.” He took the pages back and added them to the bottom of his stack. “At least, that’s how he used to draw me. There are others like that.” He pulled one from the top of his pile and held it up to us and said, “These he did after…once he’d met Dewey.”
I took the page in my hand and leaned over to show Ape. He took it just as eagerly, and I looked up at Eric and said, “Let me see the rest.”
He handed the rest of the stack to me, and we flipped through the pages, one by one, gazing in horror and terror at the fearsome beasts that met our eyes. The kid was a fucking terrible artist, and every picture looked like toddlers had finger-painted in Picasso’s shit. But the distinction in the before and after images was uncanny.
While the original drawings were clearly modeled after Old-world, European-style dragons – Wyrms – that knights fought in poorly-animated cartoons, the second set was unorthodox. These dragons walked on all fours like wolves, had large, sweeping tails like a crocodile, and wings like pterodactyls.
The kid must have drawn two dozen pages worth of images, some featuring a single creature – sleeping, sitting, shredding a milk cow with its claws – while others captured a menagerie of the beasts, and nearly all of them looked the same except for their faces and their colors. They came in monochromatic black, grey, or white or an assorted rainbow from blue to yellow to green. Some had long, beak-like snouts while others had rounded faces like a lizard and still others had squat, square jaws and short noses like a feline. Some had large, golden eyes, while others had eyes that were only slits of white and bore the impression of savagery and menace.
“These are manticores,” Ape said.
“They’re what?” Eric asked, a bit curious.
“Manticores. Panther-like dragons. Like a sphinx. They’re rarely seen.”
“But Adam saw one?” Eric asked incredulously.
“Most definitely.”
Eric shook his head. “You guys are joking, right? You expect me to believe that dragons…?”
“Believe it or not,” I said, catching him in the eyes. “Your brother believes. And I think right now, Mate, that’s all that really matters.”
He shook his head and grabbed his ears in his hands, looking a little wobbly. “Holy shit.”
“That’s a pretty typical reaction.” I turned back to the images just as Ape swapped to a new drawing. “Wait. Go back to the last one.”
He did. A large, brown rock spired through the center of the page and an outcropping of rock near its top looked like a hamburger bun. At the base of the spire, two manticores dug in the earth. Another sat perched on the mushroomed-head of the mountain.
“What does that look like to you?”
Ape studied the image for a moment before he understood. Then he said, “It’s the Space Needle.”
31
Built for the World’s Fair in ’62, the Seattle Space Needle stood as tall as a sixty-story building – 605 feet – just north of Downtown in the fairgrounds in Lower Queen Anne. Construction lasted less than a year and cost 4.5 million dollars, but when the smoke cleared, the Needle was the tallest structure west of the Mississippi River. The Emerald City gained its first and only internationally recognized landmark, the equivalent of the White House to DC or the Eiffel Tower to Paris.
Essentially, the Needle is Seattle. It’s why the city put up 20 million in renovations at the turn of the century, most of it going to lighting, paint, and the five-story disc at the top that served as a revolving, over-priced restaurant.
We left the Gables’ house and headed back uptown. Ape dialed as he drove, checking in with his good buddy Father Finnegan. Words were exchanged, but I wasn’t paying attention to what was said. In hindsight, I should have been, but I was lost with my thoughts.
I kept thinking about what Nadia had said outside the Wright home. If even the American dream of posh living was being threatened, then the very core of who we were was at stake. I didn’t care about other people, but the Needle was Seattle. And Seattle was my fucking city.
At some point in my revelry, I became aware that Ape was no longer on the phone, and I took it from him and dialed the house. Nadia answered, and I said, “Hey. Are you ready?”
“You find a location?”
“The Space Needle.”
>
There was silence a moment and then she asked, “What’s our entry point?”
I looked at Ape. “Where we headed?”
“The Needle’s a tourist attraction,” he said. “If Brom’s got some underground lair, his entrance can’t be near the spire – it would attract too much attention. Tunnels go everywhere. No doubt, there’s an entrance somewhere nearby, but not too close. We need an old building, something built before the fire destroyed the old city, and for the area, I’d say Moore theater’s the best fit.”
I nodded. “Ape says Moore theater. Bring my car.” I hung up.
The theater was an old, white, six-story brick building that served as a concert hall and playhouse. The parking lot was empty, but as Ape and I got out of the car, the sudden whine of an engine cut through the otherwise silent afternoon, and one of those Japanese motorcycles thundered up the vacant street and in to the parking lot.
The rider stood, removed his helmet, and turned his blonde head toward us.
“Austin,” Ape said. “Good to see you again.”
Father Finnegan smiled as he set his helmet down on the bike. “Huh…last time I was here was in college for Nirvana. This where we go in?”
“We?” I asked. “You’re not coming.”
He just smiled, said nothing.
“He’s coming,” Ape said.
“He’s a pencil pusher. He’ll be in the way. I’m not babysitting.”
“Just because Tobias Finn wasn’t a fighter…”
“Don’t you fucking talk about Finn. You didn’t know him.”
“I’m not disrespecting your friend, Jono. I’m simply saying that you can’t judge Austin based on someone else you knew who had a similar job. And for the record, you are babysitting. Nadia’s never done anything this big.”
“Nadia can handle herself.”
“And so can Austin.”
I glanced up at Finnegan, but his smile never waivered.
“We’re working two cases. You can solve your case, and I’ll solve mine. Nadia’s your back-up, and I have Austin.”
“Your case is over,” I said in a flat tone. “We found the guy you were looking for. Guess what…”
“I’d watch the next words out of your mouth.” His eyes narrowed.
I took a deep breath, shook my head, and looked at Finnegan. “What the fuck,” I said. “Welcome aboard.”
He inclined his head to me. “You know I do have experience in the field. I’ve gone up against Bogey’s before, and I’m actually a pretty decent shot.” With that, he pulled up the rear of his biker jacket and revealed the two holsters in the small of his back, each holding an M1911 Colt Combat Elite .45, silver with black handles and a canary-yellow slide on the barrel.
“When this is over, I might have to visit your church.”
He smiled coyly at me. “If we survive this, I won’t hold you to that.”
“You know the stories about me. That mean you know what I can do?”
“Your Dead Zone psychometry?”
I nodded. “Well…seeing as you know about this Dark Communion bullshit, I figure you’re a good one to ask.”
“Okay,” he said.
“In the flashes I’ve had lately, whenever one of those…things is present…” He nodded. “They show up as a void or a negative space, like they leave no sense impression.”
“And you’re hoping maybe I know why?” Finnegan looked at Ape and then back to me. “I don’t know how your ability works. Obviously. But if I had to take a guess, I’d say there might be some kind of interference with the Dark Communion or something to do with the Ring Brom uses. I’m not an expert, not on your ability or on magic.”
I nodded, and Ape turned to Finnegan. “Are others coming?”
Finnegan shook his head slowly. “No, but I did speak to Hunter.” He held up his index finger and said, “That reminds me.” He turned to his bike and pulled a small case from a side compartment. He looked at me and said, “He’s sorry he couldn’t be here, but he sends a gift.” He opened the case and held it out before him. Inside were a half dozen pairs of glasses like the ones Ape wore.
“That’s it?” I asked, taking a pair of glasses. “This is fucking bullshit. What can he possibly have to do that’s more important than this?”
“As a priest, I’ve counseled everyone from drug addicts to married couples, and I don’t even begin to understand what happened between the two of you, Swyftt. But I’m sure he’d be here if he could.”
There was more I wanted to say about Hunter, but the El Camino purred down the street and hit the curb with a bounce, rolled to a stop beside us. Nadia stepped out, looking a little harried. She wore red knee-high boots over black leather pants, a thick, silver-studded belt, a tightfitting yellow tank top, and her favorite red jacket that came down to mid-thigh, her cuffs rolled up past her wrists. Her hair was pulled up in a pony-tail, half of her locks braided thickly and interwoven with beads of various colors and shapes, everything from black jet to the red-orange of Tiger’s eye. In one hand, she held a black chrome tactical shotgun, the barrel resting on her shoulder, and around her exposed neck she proudly sported Huxley’s amulet, the violet amethyst sparkling beautifully in the afternoon sun.
“What’s with the outfit? We’re not going to the club.”
“This is my first big case. I wanted to look nice.”
I rolled my eyes. “Girls. Well, thanks for finally showing up.”
“Sorry,” she said. “Looks like Stone has a sting going on a warehouse nearby. Traffic was backing up.”
“Stone?”
“Yeah. I saw her yelling in to a walkie. There were SWAT vans and everything.”
“Good.”
“What does that mean?” Finnegan asked.
“It means she’s not looking for me.” I crossed to my car, popped the lid on the all-purpose tool chest, and reached inside, retrieving Glory, a SG five-fifty assault rifle. She was nearly three and a half feet of black, tempered stainless steel and just over nine pounds in my hands. I kept thirty-round box magazines in my trunk, snapped one in, and pocketed a half dozen extras. I took the light from one of my Glocks and fastened it under Glory’s barrel. As an afterthought, I grabbed a few extra specialty shotgun rounds – bolos, flares, grenades – and thrust them in my pocket.
I closed the box and locked it. Ape was at my side before I turned around. “Brom is mine,” he said.
I shook my head. “I understand what you’re feeling. But this isn’t a revenge trip.”
“Jono,” he said, and I could tell he was trying to be cool and calm about it, but there was a bubbling rage under the surface of his reserved demeanor. “He killed my uncle. I want him. He needs to be stopped. What do you care who does it?”
“You’re not a killer.” He just looked at me, his eyes narrowing into icy, cold slits. I shrugged and added with a sigh, “If you get a shot, take it, but don’t throw anyone under the fucking bus for your vendetta.”
He nodded, and there was a look of hard determination in his eye.
Finnegan stepped forward. “Before we brave the darkness,” he said. “I’d like to say a few words, if I may.”
Finnegan bowed his head and closed his eyes and said in a loud voice, “Your word, Oh God, is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. While we go willingly into the darkness, we do not go gladly. Go before us, light our way, and protect us. Direct our steps that we may find these innocent children and bring them out of the darkness and into the light of your Heavenly Glory. For no matter what happens in there, the battle belongs to the Lord. For us to live is Christ, and to die is gain. Amen.”
“How comforting,” I said. “Maybe just pray that we don’t die next time.”
As we walked around to the back of the building, Nadia pulled me to the side and said, “Umm, can I talk to you?”
“What’s up?”
“I, well…”
“It’s okay to be nervous. Just remember everything we taught you, and above all
, remember to breathe.”
She smiled weakly. “Yeah. Okay.” She hesitated. “And also, I told Crestmohr…”
Ape reached the rear entrance and tried the knob of the access door. “Swyftt. It’s locked.”
I turned to Nadia. “Can we do this later?”
“Sure.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said, put a hand on her shoulder. “Now, you wanna open the door?”
She nodded and crossed to it. With a deep breath, she conjured a green energy disc to her hand and swung it through the lock and the handle in one swift motion. There was a flare of bright light, and the door opened with such force that it shook on its hinges. “Sorry.”
“You okay?” Ape asked.
“Nerves,” she said. “Stomach’s upset.”
I looked at Finnegan and said, “Her first real case.”
“Ah,” he said. “Nothing to worry about,” he said to her.
“Shall we?” Ape asked.
I looked at him with a smile. “After you.”
He shook his head. “Not this time, Jono. You take point.”
32
We entered into a backstage area, noticing a significant amount of empty dressing rooms, discarded costumes still on their hangars draped across the backs of chairs or lying in a stack on the floor. It was an area most of the public never got a chance to see.
“We need the basement,” I told them.
“It’s possible it was sealed off,” Ape said.
“If Brom is using this place, there’s a fucking path he’s taking. We need to find it.”
We spread out, searched doors, cabinets, trapdoors in the floor behind the stage. It was all mop closets and more dressing rooms. One of the doors led into a little office.
In the rear of one of the prop rooms, past a few empty racks and some old crates that had been stacked in the corner someone had taken a sledgehammer to the concrete floor, leaving an uneven hole and a dark, descending abyss.
I fired a flare into the gloom, lighting a path through the air for fifteen feet or so before it bounced into a pile of loose rubble. Nothing stirred in the pit.
“Okay,” I said. “It looks like this is it. Glasses on and stick together once we’re all down there.” I took a deep breath and stared into the darkness, the red glow of the flare flickering weakly, the chemical burning itself out.