One of the old women shambled toward Amber and Miles, and for a moment her view of Pinsky and his hostage was obscured.
She heard the ding of the elevator arriving. The doors slid open to the sound of voices, and Amber saw that the elevator had passengers. She saw police uniforms and a momentary relief washed over her before she remembered that bullets did nothing, that the police could do nothing.
Pinsky spun as the voices cut off. As the elevator’s passengers saw him, the burned corpse twisted his hostage around and backed into the wall. The killer had nowhere else to go. Charred eye sockets narrowed.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me,” Chief Kramer said, slapping his hand onto the elevator door to keep it from closing.
The chief and another cop who Amber didn’t know sidestepped off the elevator, not wanting to turn their backs on Pinsky. There weren’t alone. A red-haired girl about Amber’s age practically leaped out, stalking toward the killer.
The morgue assistant howled as Pinsky stabbed him again.
“Please!” he said, tears streaming down, his voice, his whole body shaking. “Help me.”
Two people were still on the elevator, a beautiful Asian woman and a tall, lanky, good-looking white guy in need of a shave. At first glance they looked ordinary enough, but a weird light flickered in that enclosed space, and Amber thought it seemed as though a breeze gusted around them.
“Who the hell is that?” Miles asked.
Even the dead people in the corridor ceased their shambling and seemed to awaken from their death fugue and turn to look at the two people in the elevator.
The scorched killer slid his back along the wall, holding the weeping, bleeding morgue assistant in front of him. Black flakes of burned skin smeared with grotesque fluids on the wall as he worked his way toward the elevator, obviously intent upon getting on board. Either Pinsky hadn’t seen the people in the elevator, or he counted on the knife he held to his hostage’s throat to prevent anyone from interfering.
The elevator door started to close.
The man inside whipped out a hand to stop it, and Amber saw a penumbra of purplish light crackling like fire around his fingers. He stepped off the elevator, reached his other hand toward the murderous corpse—this one sizzling in a sphere of golden light—and made a single gesture, a twitch of his wrist. The knife jerked from Pinsky’s burned hand, snapping off charred fingers, and the blade clattered to the floor.
The fat woman fell to her knees and covered her face as if weeping. The two dead old women crashed into each other. Autopsy man flailed on the ground in a smear of his own entrails. They all felt something, reacting like animals to an oncoming storm.
Pinsky sneered, the skin of his left cheek splitting, revealing yellowed bone. He grabbed the morgue assistant by the throat, intent upon murder.
The tall man gestured again and the morgue assistant was ripped from Pinsky’s grasp and flung toward Chief Kramer. He staggered as he collided with the chief, and both men fell down.
The redheaded girl hissed, her eyes glinting horridly, and Amber froze as the girl lunged at Pinsky, baring fangs. A vampire, Amber thought. Ohmygodanactualvampire. And then the vampire girl drove the burned corpse of the killer into the wall and began to tear at his insides, and Amber wanted to be sick.
As the Asian woman slipped out of the elevator behind him, the tall man fell to one knee in the corridor, raised his right hand—which sizzled and throbbed with that purpleblack glow—and slapped his palm down onto the linoleum. Like the surf rippling across the sand, that color flowed down the hall, crawled the walls, spilled into the open door of the morgue, flared brightly, and then began to fade.
The dead collapsed like hanged men cut down from the gallows, bodies flopping to the linoleum. The vampire girl jumped back from Pinsky as the killer fell. His body hit the ground with a dry crack, his burned corpse splitting open like a rotten pumpkin. The stink wafted down the hall. Cops and guards, even Miles, all staggered back in disgust, covering noses and mouths. Chief Kramer swore loudly and looked like he might puke.
Amber’s own stomach churned, but she managed to keep from being sick.
Her gaze locked onto the tall, lanky man, and the words came unbidden to her mind. Magician, she thought. Sorcerer.
“Miles,” she said, turning to look for him and spotting him kneeling beside the corpse of the heavyset black woman.
She hurried to him and knelt beside him, troubled by the faraway look in his eyes.
“Hey,” Amber said, tugging his sleeve.
“She just wanted her baby,” Miles rasped.
Amber shook him. “Miles!”
At last he turned and his eyes seemed to focus on her. She pointed at the newcomer. The magician.
“We need to have a talk with that guy.”
“TELL me again,” Octavian said, as he strode down the fifthfloor hall with this new girl, Amber Morrissey, at his side. “What exactly did your friend Tommy say about his father’s heart attack?”
“Not much,” Amber said, hurrying to keep up with him. “I don’t remember the exact words. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know,” Octavian admitted.
A nurse spoke up, demanding to know what was going on, but Chief Kramer led their grim parade, and he ushered the woman aside with a determined glance and a curt remark about police business. The rest of the hospital staff parted in front of them, and Octavian understood. The chaos in Hawthorne had not reached total anarchy, and perhaps it never would, but he suspected that all of these people must feel their world unraveling around them. Things were not right—not right at all. People were dying. Black wraiths assaulted victims in the privacy of their homes or in the shadowy corners of the town. The tide behaved wildly and toads rained from the sky. Dogs savaged their owners, birds smashed their bodies to pulp on pavement and glass, and bizarre lightning made mad children speak in dead languages. Corpses rose.
Octavian and his companions walked with purpose, and those who saw them moved aside with eyes full of hope that someone had a plan to put a stop to it all.
Keomany had been walking beside the chief, but now she dropped back so that she and Octavian flanked Amber.
“You said you saw his father in a vision,” Keomany reminded the girl.
“Kind of a vision,” Amber said anxiously. “More a dream. But it was like the others. It’s more than a dream. Look, I know it sounds crazy—”
Octavian halted, reaching out to take Amber’s hands in his. Chief Kramer kept walking toward the Dunne boy’s hospital room, but the others all came to a stop as well. Charlotte had been walking with Officer Moschitto and Amber’s college professor—Miles Varick. Was there something more between Amber and Varick? Maybe, but it wasn’t Octavian’s concern.
“Stop apologizing for the things you don’t understand,” Octavian told her. He squeezed her hands, allowing a trickle of magic to flow along his arms and into her, soothing her, giving her focus.
Amber had been frantic since the moment she had rushed at him down in the hall outside the morgue, telling him about her visions, and the wraith who’d murdered Miles’s mother, and the hot rain and an old iron chest.
“Breathe,” he told her.
A nurse hurried by them, huffing in irritation at the traffic jam in the corridor.
“I’m okay,” Amber said, glancing at Keomany and then at Charlotte, Miles, and Moschitto. She looked back at Octavian. “Please, let’s just go talk to Tommy.”
“We will,” Octavian promised. “In just a second. But first, focus. You saw your friend Tommy’s father in a vision, bringing an old chest as an offering to this goddess.”
“Does she have a name?” Keomany asked. “The goddess.”
Amber glanced at Miles, then nodded. “Navalica.”
“Does it ring a bell, Mr. Octavian?” Miles asked. “I’ve studied a lot of occult history, and I’ve never run across it.”
Octavian felt a flicker of recognition, but then it was gone. “I don’t
think so, Professor,” he said, glancing at Keomany. “But I’m willing to bet we can trace her back to ancient Chaldea.”
“Why Chaldea?” Miles asked.
“A story for later,” Octavian said. “In the end, it probably doesn’t matter. We know the most important part—an ancient goddess of chaos has come to this town, pissed off, and decided to make life ugly for everyone.”
“What does she want?” Amber asked.
Charlotte snickered. “I’m going to guess chaos.”
Octavian noticed that Amber flinched and moved away from the vampire girl.
“She may have some other goal,” he said. “But for now, let’s focus on finding her, and figuring out how to stop her. If you’re right, and Norman Dunne’s heart attack coincided with your seizure yesterday morning, when he was out fishing with his son . . .”
“Maybe they caught something,” Amber said in a quiet voice.
“Exactly.”
“Let’s go find out,” Keomany said, and started to hurry after Chief Kramer.
They all followed. Octavian saw no sign of the chief, and realized he had already reached Tommy Dunne’s hospital room and gone inside. Amber picked up her pace until she seemed about to break into a run.
But then they reached Tommy’s room, and Amber led them in.
Chief Kramer stood at the foot of the hospital bed and as they entered, he glanced at Octavian.
“The boy’s awake,” said the chief.
Octavian looked from Chief Kramer to the beaten and bandaged face of Tommy Dunne. “And the iron chest?”
Tommy had been staring at Amber, pleased to see his friend, grimacing with pain as he tried to sit up. At the mention of the chest, he looked at Octavian and the others.
“We did find something just like that,” Tommy said. “An old metal box with worn leather straps. My . . . my dad was opening it when he had his heart attack.”
Thoughts of his father—the man who had always loved him but had now tried to beat him to death—gave the young man pause. Octavian saw the pain and confusion in his eyes.
“Tommy, I need you to describe this chest,” he said.
“There’s not much to describe,” Tommy replied, reaching a hand up to probe gingerly at the bandages on his head. He winced. “I’d guess it’s maybe a foot and a half long, probably nine or ten inches high and deep. The leather straps were worn away, like eaten away, y’know? Old and just rotted or whatever. There were two locks, heavy latches, and the top—the lid, right?—was kind of a weird shape. Not round or square, but kind of edged. If I’d paid attention in geometry, I could give you a better idea.”
“Go on,” Chief Kramer prodded.
Tommy took a deep breath and continued. “Well, I guess the weird thing is that it looked like it had been made a long time ago, like it should be in a museum, but the metal—I’m thinking iron—it should’ve been affected by being in the ocean, right? I’ve seen stuff brought up from wrecks by salvage guys and it’s all pitted and worn by the salt. But other than the leather straps, this thing looked brand new.”
“Were there any marks on it, anything carved into the metal? Words or symbols?” Keomany asked.
“Nothing,” Tommy said, but then he hesitated.
“You just remembered something,” Octavian said, glancing at Amber as he moved closer to the hospital bed. “What is it?”
“On the locks,” Tommy replied, face set in concentration. “I barely noticed at the time. My dad was already trying to break them open. But on the metal of the latches, there were marks that looked like flames, a weird circle of individual flames like the burning wicks of candles, and then something in the middle that looked almost like a bird.”
Octavian flexed his fingers, a flicker of magic rippling through him. “They, the Seven,” he said, “proceeding from the west, rising from sea, descending from mountain.”
A hungry intelligence lit up Miles Varick’s eyes. “What is that from? Assyria? It sounds familiar.”
“That design, the ring of flames around a bird, you’ve seen it before?” Charlotte asked, sidling up beside him almost like an animal investigating his scent. The thought made him study her more closely, wondering just how feral all of this chaos would eventually make her.
“You’re close, Professor Varick,” Octavian said. He glanced at Chief Kramer and Keomany. “Earlier this morning, we met a young psychiatric patient here in the hospital whose room was struck by arcane lightning, and who now can speak only in ancient Chaldean.”
“Chaldean,” Miles echoed. He turned to stare at Tommy Dunne. “The circle of flames . . . do you remember how many there were? Could there have been seven?”
Tommy gave a small shrug, wincing with pain as he did it. “I guess so.”
“The Maskim?” Miles asked, turning to Octavian.
Keomany rapped her knuckles on the wall. “Come on, Peter. Don’t keep us in suspense. This town is falling apart. People could be dying out there.”
“People are dying out there,” Chief Kramer said.
Octavian nodded. “You’re right. And Professor Varick’s on the right track. The ancient Chaldeans had a complex theology, including a hierarchy of gods and demons. There were ranks of demons, like the orders of angels in Hebrew beliefs. The most powerful and most evil of Chaldean demons were the Maskim, also called the Seven, and sometimes the Seven Flames.”
“And you think these demons are, what, being reborn on Earth here in Hawthorne?” Chief Kramer asked. “I mean, here, of all places?”
“Impossible,” Miles said.
Octavian shot him a dark look. Amber reached out and took her professor’s hand, and Octavian thought there was more there than the concern of a favored student.
“From what little I can remember reading about the Maskim, if they were here, we wouldn’t be,” Miles said. “Hawthorne would be a smoking pit.”
“Agreed,” Octavian said. “I don’t think we’re dealing with the Maskim.”
“Then what—” Officer Moschitto began.
“The symbols Tommy saw engraved on the latches of that chest,” Octavian said. “I’ve never seen anything like them. But if these are the pieces of this puzzle—Greg Wheeler speaking Chaldean, that symbol, and everything that’s happened thus far, all the chaos—I think we have to assume those seven flames are the Seven Flames, the Maskim. Which raises the question, what the hell is the bird in the center of that circle of flames?”
Charlotte went to the window and peered anxiously out through the dark and the rain. Octavian thought she looked like she’d heard the call of the wild and wanted to run. To howl. He could feel it inside him, as well, an energy that had nothing to do with the magic at his core, and everything to do with his basest, most carnal instincts. He wanted to fight. He wanted to fuck. He glanced around and saw that they were all edgy. They had been feeling it all morning, and the effect—wherever it came from—was getting worse. He glanced at Keomany and she flushed, as if with guilt, and glanced away.
“An eighth demon?” Amber asked, sliding closer to Miles, the two of them almost rubbing up against each other.
Octavian looked at Miles. “There’s an older myth. It isn’t strictly Chaldean, but from all of the magic theologies of the region—Babylon, Acadia, and a lot of others. The Chaldeans had mages, of course. The Magi, the three ‘wise men’ who brought gifts to the newborn Jesus Christ, were descendants of Chaldean mages. The Chaldeans had vampires, too—”
“Wait,” Keomany said, “I thought Christ himself was the first vampire.”
Octavian took a deep breath. He had learned so much in Hell . . . so much that the rest of the world had forgotten.
“Okay, quickly,” he said, “you’ve all read the story by now of how the Christ faced demons in the desert, and how they savaged his flesh. Had he been anyone else, he would have become evil, a twisted mockery of life wearing his own face. But the divine power in him prevented the taint from spreading in him . . . up until he died, and Divinity—wha
t Christians call the Holy Spirit—left him. When God had no more use for the shell once inhabited by the Christ, it became something else. Something new. Shadows, like Charlotte . . . what we think of today as vampires . . . are a combination of demonic contagion, human flesh, and the divine influence passed down from that conflict in the desert.
“But those creatures . . . the things Jesus fought in the desert . . . they were the original vampires. Pure evil, with no trace of human emotion or divine light to temper that darkness. They haven’t been seen in this world for two thousand years, not since the Christ himself eradicated them.”
“What does any of this have to do with the Seven?” Keomany asked, her voice filled with an urgency he understood quite well. They needed to get out of this room, out of this hospital, and find something to fight, before they lost control of themselves.
“Short version—”
“Too fucking late for that,” Charlotte snapped.
Octavian ignored her. “This ancient vampire species, the Innin, were never born. They were created in a storm of chaos that tore holes in the walls separating the human world from the demon realms, as if a chemical reaction of dark magic and our reality spawned them.”
“Holy shit,” Officer Moschitto muttered.
They were all staring at him, but Octavian ignored them, forging ahead.
“Do you think these wraiths are—what did you call them—Innin?” Amber asked, pushing her hair behind her ears.
“I don’t. Maybe they’re related, but I think they’re something else entirely. That’s the point. This maelstrom of magic . . . other cultures that existed at the same time as the ancient Chaldeans claimed that it’s where the Maskim came from, too. Like the maelstrom, that chaos was some kind of womb that gave birth to monsters.”
Waking Nightmares Page 24