by J. L. Murray
"Baba?" I said softly. Her bony chest rose and fell only slightly. I put my head in my hands.
"Niki?" she rasped in a voice so soft it was a whisper. "It is about time."
I smiled and took her small hand in mine. It was so cold. "Sorry to wake you."
"Pah," she said. "I sleep all the time. I would rather see you. Now, tell me about this job of yours. You could not talk long on the phone."
"Sorry about that," I said. "I was in a hurry."
"So now you tell me," she said.
"Well," I said, "for starters, I got off the Registry."
Her eyes became saucers. "How? It cannot be done."
"It can," I said. I gave her the condensed version of the events last night and this morning, leaving out the parts about drinking and working for Hell. "And I went to see Sasha just now."
"Will wonders never cease?" she said. "How is he?"
"He looks terrible. I think they’re starving him or something. And he still doesn’t take responsibility for anything."
"Well, what did you expect?"
"I don’t know. But I did manage to get some information about my case out of him."
"That is something," she said. She closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. She opened them again and looked at me.
"I’m tiring you out," I said. "I’ll go now. You need your sleep."
She squeezed my hand. "Wait. One thing. I have had a vision. Just after we talked on the phone. I do not know what it means, but I had the strangest feeling that it had to do with you."
"What is it?" I said. Sofi’s visions were notoriously reliable. She had used her gift over the years to support us doing sittings with clients, at least until it got too dangerous to even think about advertising such things. If only I’d been so careful.
"It is strange," she said slowly. "Two lions fighting, both black. A woman in a blue dress, a business lady with little round glasses. Only she has a shotgun and blood on her dress." She frowned. "I’m sorry, I don’t know why, but I felt I needed to tell you."
"Are you sure it wasn’t a dream?" I said. "They say those drugs are pretty powerful."
"Not a dream," she said, rising above a whisper. She coughed and her whole body shuddered. I got her some water from a nearby stand and let her drink it from a straw. "Not a dream," she whispered, closing her eyes. "Be careful, Niki." I set the water back on the stand and turned back to Sofi, but she was asleep.
I grabbed a cheese sandwich in the cafeteria, then looked for Gage. He was sitting by himself at a big table and had his giant book in front of him. As I approached I saw there was an untouched cup of coffee and an empty plate that used to have something with red sauce on it. He had the same sauce around his mouth. He was flipping through the pages of the book, his face screwed up in concentration. I sat across from him, munching on my tasteless cuisine choice.
"What are you looking for?" I said. He started, actually jumping about an inch off his chair.
"Jesus, warn a guy, would you? "
"Sorry." I looked at the book. There were strange symbols all over the page and they seemed to be moving. I watched as a set of runic-looking cones moved side to side, then seemed to become far away, then got bigger again. Then they morphed into a different set of symbols that looked like stick-drawings of constellations. "So, that’s why it’s such a big deal to be able to read this stuff."
"Yep." The page started swirling around like water down the drain, then the symbols practically jumped off the page before shifting into another set of symbols again. This time they formed different sizes of spirals.
"How do you know what it says?"
"How do you see dead guys?"
I shrugged. "I just see them. I look at them and know they’re ghosts."
"I just look at this stuff and know what it means. Something in my brain is different I guess. Yours too probably."
"They say Abnormals came from people eating preservatives and being exposed to radiation all the time," I said. "Scientists are doing all these studies."
He looked at me. "You believe that?"
"No," I said after pausing for a moment. "I don’t think they know. Besides, they think we all just popped up one day."
"You don’t think so?"
"I think we’ve always been here. Just no one ever let themselves see us before. And all these other things wandering around, the politicians have never mentioned them."
"Like demons," Gage said.
"Yeah," I said. "Like them. Though they sure like to talk about Hell a lot."
"Your friend all right? The one that’s sick?"
"She’s fine," I said, but I wasn’t so sure. Her vision had disturbed me, as well as her condition, and I was looking forward to getting back to work to get my mind off of it. "So what are you looking for in that---?"
"Grimoire," he said. "I’m not really sure. I heard what your dad said, and I thought maybe an exorcism spell or maybe a Binding would be useful. I’m working blind, though. And if I don’t know, the Grimoire won’t help me."
"Help you?"
"Yeah, sometimes the books help you out a little. That’s how I see it. Maybe it’s another force, or another kind of magic." He shrugged. "But I got nothing so far."
"Maybe if we see the place where it all started it’ll help," I said. "Start from the beginning."
"You want to go to the place the seal was broken?" said Gage.
"You know where it is?"
"Yep."
"Peachy."
Chapter Six
The traffic detours started five blocks from the scene, with barricades and blinking lights blocking every street. Gage steered into an alley, then another, and parked next to a dumpster in a garbage-strewn dead end behind some dingy brick buildings. The man knew his alleys, I’d give him that.
I opened the rear door in Gage’s car and dug through the guns in the box, each with a tag tied to it, some of them in plastic bags. I found what I was looking for after a few minutes, and the ammo a minute later.
There was only one thing of Sasha’s that I kept after he was arrested. A gun. It was a Makarov 9mm, a handgun he’d gotten off a Russian ex-soldier, though he never said how and I tried not to think about it. It was Russian-made, and cheap, but Sasha, I was more than sure, had made some adjustments to it. For example, I’d never not hit what I was aiming for. My aim is pretty good, granted, but you have to expect the occasional off-day. I didn’t have off-days. Not with my Makarov. It slid into my hand like it had been molded there. I looked it over. Someone had been taking care of it; it had been recently oiled. I looked into the boxes. All the guns were clean and in good shape, even my old shotgun. I’d have to thank Smithy for that, or maybe Eli. I took out the Beretta and zipped it into my jacket pocket. I loaded up the clip of the Makarov and clipped it onto my belt. I filled my other jacket pocket with the bullets. I felt better.
We walked the remaining few blocks to get to the place. I saw now the reason for the detour. Yellow police tape stretched across the wide, now-deserted street, guarded by a lone officer drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup. Behind the police tape I could see small fissures in the surface of the blacktop that seemed to multiply further down the street until, where it intersected with Fourth Street, the ground collapsed into a massive sort of pit, taking with it street signs, a semi truck that must have been parked nearby, and which had gone nose first into the pit, with its rear bumper now at street level, next to an angled pole holding a streetlight.
We had come from a traffic jam, with honking horns, yelling and cursing, cars sputtering and backfiring, police sirens, and the general sounds of the city. That’s why it was so eerie when we stepped into this scene and heard absolutely nothing. Complete silence. I looked at Gage.
"That’s weird, right? It’s not just me?"
"Not just you, sis," he agreed. "It’s damn creepy."
The officer with the coffee noticed us and almost looked relieved for a moment before frowning and heading over.
"They have to," I said. "They’re what people see. A face on the law."
"You’ve known a lot of cops, haven’t you?" he said. "That suit in the station, you seemed pretty chummy."
"We were," I said. Gage grunted, I guessed in disapproval. But the cop interrupted any further inquiry, which was a blessing in disguise in my book. I didn’t like talking about the past. And I wasn’t comfortable enough with Gage to tell him not only was I friends with cops, but I used to be crazy about one.
"Excuse me, but this area is off limits," said the officer. He had kind blue eyes and a round face that would probably always look younger than he was. Right now he was probably in his twenties, but he looked like a kid to me.
Gage showed him his badge and the boy smiled in relief. "I am so happy to see you guys. I’m getting totally freaked out being here alone."
"Why are you here alone?" I said. "Aren’t you supposed to have someone with you?"
"Supposed to," said the kid. "But there’s some big homicide going on, they needed all the help they could get. "
"Because of the judge’s murder?" I said. "Even for a public official, that seems pretty over-the-top."
"Nah, that’s old news," he said, not questioning that I knew about the judge. I loved these badges. "Mass murder happened a couple hours ago. My partner went in, but I never heard back from him. And someone had to stay here."
"Lucky you," said Gage. He looked past the kid at the enormous hole in the ground. "You see anything come out of there?" he said. "Any noises or funny feelings?"
The kid looked at me, frowning. "He’s completely serious," I said. "Best just answer the question."
He took off his hat and smoothed his hair. "I haven’t seen anything," he said. "But the mayor was here."
"The mayor?" I said. "What did she want?"
"Dunno," he said. "Just sort of looked into the hole and left without saying anything. Kind of weird." He frowned. "Something else weird, too. I got here before the sun came up, around 4:30, and there was this light coming out of the hole, like someone had lanterns down there. Like, really deep down, ‘cause it was sort of dim. Like when the sun shines through the curtains."
"Anything else?" said Gage.
"Can’t think of anything," said the kid.
Gage and I slipped under the police tape and walked gingerly across the cracked pavement.
We were at the section of road that was starting to turn in on itself. Bits of the street crumbled down into the hole, hitting the sides and dinging off the metal of the streetlight and semi truck. Gage and I got on our bellies and peeked over the edge. Even on a briskly bright day like today, with a cold sun lighting up the winter landscape, the pit was so deep that I could not even begin to fathom the depth of it. I imagined falling into it would be like Alice, following the white rabbit down the rabbit hole and falling for so long she had time to have tea on the way down. Only falling into this rabbit hole would be incredibly unpleasant. There would be no conveniently-placed magic mushrooms. Definitely no tea. This was the road to Hell. Literally.
Gage and I scrambled back from the edge, apparently entertaining the same vein of thought. We retreated some distance from the pit, then looked back at it, both lost in thought.
"Why here?" I said.
"Why summon here?" said Gage.
"Yeah. I mean, why not in the middle of the art museum or a swimming pool, or City Hall for that matter? Why this particular spot?"
"Good Summoners know their stuff. Where the weak spots are, what spells to use, that kind of thing. They have to get creative because it’s all under the radar. Everything’s unknown, or close to it. So whoever did this would have known where to go, the exact location. Whether it was a thin spot between Hell and our world, or if that was the spot that corresponded with the place in Hell they were going for and they were a powerful enough summoner to barrel through. It’s another universe, Hell is, but it’s not another physical world. It’s hard to explain, and we don’t have a lot of time on our side."
"We have a week," I said.
"Says your dad," said Gage. "Sorry, sis, but I’m not going to take his word as gold. ‘Specially since I don’t trust him. And you shouldn’t either."
"I agree with you there," I said. "But why would he lie about that?"
"Was he particularly fond of the truth before?"
"No."
"Add to that he might be in on this. What was the deal with his personal guard?"
"I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like him," I said. "It was like he was big and small at the same time, and itching to be both. And then the badges didn’t work on him."
"That don’t mean nothing," said Gage. "Badges only give people a sense of who we’re working for, for what we’re doing. Somewhere in their minds, somewhere they can’t quite reach, they know exactly who we are, but in their conscious mind they just know that they should cooperate. If someone’s bad, they don’t care one way or another. Some of them, they get a little sentimental, scared about the afterlife, if you know what I mean. It’ll put the fear of God in them. But the really evil bastards don’t see any upside to cooperating. " He looked at me. "The psychos, the sociopaths and whatnot, they love chaos. Crave it, even. They don’t care what form it takes. And we’re just the guys that are trying to put an end to their fun."
"I really needed to take a class before I started this job," I said.
"If it makes you feel any better," said Gage, "all this is new to me, too. I’ve never dealt with a Dark and I’ve only read about Summoners. You’re better at the detecting stuff than I am."
"I don’t know," I said. "I think you might be a natural."
"Here’s lookin’ at you, kid," he said.
"We should head back to the car," I said. I nodded at the young officer as we passed him, but then remembered something he said. I turned to the kid. "What was that about a mass murder?"
"I said there was a mass murder," said the kid.
"Did it happen nearby?"
"Yeah. That’s why my partner went. It was so close. Just a few blocks that way," he said, pointing to his right.
"Got someone in custody?" I said.
"They took him in," he said. "I heard it on the radio."
I looked at Gage. "You were right," I said. "It is all happening much sooner than Sasha said. You can’t trust a con."
"Hey, " said the kid, "if you see Officer Singh tell him I been trying to reach him on the radio."
"Will do," grunted Gage.
Chapter Seven
The old townhouse had once been a nice place. The tiny front garden, though frozen like everything else, looked tidy, the iced-over rose bushes clipped and packed around with fall’s decomposing leaves. It was the nicest house on the block, even after they added more lanes, widening the highway right up to the front of the once prosperous-looking row of brick dwellings. The roar of cars and trucks and Jake brakes was not so good for the real estate business. One of the neighboring properties had a For Rent sign staked at a jaunty angle in the hard ground with a phone number scrawled in permanent marker at the bottom. Another had frosted weeds crumpled over the faded plastic children’s ride-on toys left there.
I walked past a couple of ghosts, but pretended I didn’t see them. I had a job to do, after all. Living trumped the dead. Again with the yellow tape. Gage and I flashed our badges to the officer, and he let us proceed to the house.
Most of the cops had already gone home. There was a serious-looking woman with black-framed glasses and spiky hair dusting for fingerprints. A man in a puffy coat was taking photographs. But the thing that drew our attention was the blood. There was so much of it. It splattered the living room walls and the pale carpet looked like a Jackson Pollack painting. A pool of it lay just at the bottom of a set of stairs.
"Good God," said Gage, covering his nose with his jacket against the warm, coppery smell of blood..
"Doesn’t it bother you?" he said.
"The blood? Not really. I’ve helped the cops on some pretty grisly cases. You get used to it. It’s good to be working again."
Gage’s eyes were wide. He stood next to me for a minute while I looked at the scene. I liked to take everything in and just think for a bit. After a little while Gage quietly stepped outside and I heard the sound of gagging. Lightweight.
I stood in the middle of the room and scanned the scene. There was more than one body’s worth of blood, for sure. But something seemed off. It wasn’t your usual homicide scene, but I couldn’t say immediately what it was. I turned slowly, letting my eyes slide around, taking in the walls, the floor, the side table, the knick knacks, the television, the dining table surrounded neatly by four chairs. I stopped turning. That was it. It was extremely neat. Once you got past the shock of the blood, it was obvious that not a thing was out of place. Not a photograph was knocked over, not a single glass figurine was smashed. And it didn’t look like the killer had straightened anything up afterward. It was more like he had been in absolute control, had killed quickly, but then started to play with the blood.. The blood told one story of the death and pain inflicted, and the room told another, about the joy of the kill.
All I knew about Darks was what I learned from Sasha and Gage. But to me this seemed evil. I looked at one of the photographs. A red-haired man had his arms around a sweet-looking woman with pale, curly hair and two small children. They were all smiling. In fact, they looked extremely happy in every single one of these photographs. At the beach, kids pink with sunburn; at the zoo, kids on the back of a statue of a hippo, parents standing by looking at them lovingly; and an older picture, with younger versions of the man and woman in their wedding clothes kissing. I frowned. I’d seen that woman somewhere, but couldn’t remember where.