Downside Rain: Downside book one

by Linda Welch

  “I registered for a new apartment today, not only because of what Angie did to River; I don’t feel safe at home.”

  “You should get out now.”

  “Yeah. I could go to Alain.” Where did that come from? I’m aghast and want to clap my hands over my mouth. Castle will have a ball with the suggestion.

  “No way!”

  But it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. “Just till I figure this out. I suppose a demon can appear in Alain’s house as easily as my place, but pitting Alain’s vampires against a demon bothers me not at all.”

  “There is that,” he reluctantly concedes. “Just watch yourself.”

  “Can you lay low for a while?”

  “Lay low? How low?” He eyes his grave. “If you think I’m going down there with the worms and gods know what… .”

  Exasperated, I pinch the bridge of my nose. “No, Castle dear, I mean don’t come to me while I’m at the Peralta enclave. I’ll forget myself and speak to you, and you know how good vampire hearing is.”

  He eyes me impishly. “Is that the only reason?”

  “Yes, the only reason.”

  “You’re sure you and vamp man aren’t… ?” and he makes an explicit sign with the fingers of one hand as his eyebrows wiggle up and down.

  I’m going to say I’d know whether Alain and I are doing what Castle alludes to. Instead, I give him a cock-eyed look and leave it at that.

  I crouch to pluck the rose from his grave. The dry withered petals and stem fall apart in my hand like confetti.

  My heart thuds in my chest, beating faster as a memory crashes into my skull. In my mind’s eye, a waterfall of dirt and yellow flowers; a casket teeters on the hole’s edge and plummets down.

  And in the depths of sorrow flowers bloom.

  Damn.

  I toss aside the dead rose. “Come on, partner. Let’s take a walk.”

  “Where are we off to now?”

  “I spoke with the angel. As usual, I didn’t understand a word. I thought he commiserated with me over your death. But I think he tried to tell me something about your death. We’re going to Bermstead.”

  “It said, ‘In the depths of sorrow flowers bloom.’ I thought it was a metaphor for … I don’t know … life isn’t all doom and gloom. Or maybe it tried to tell me you’re still here. But, Castle, when the coffin came down, there were flowers on it. Tulips, still in bloom.”

  “That’s kind of … thin,” he says from behind me.

  “There’s more, but let’s look at the crypt first.” Finding the casket still in the ghoul’s dining room is probably too much to ask, but we should check it out, in case.

  The mausoleum isn’t far. I ignore the path and walk across the cemetery, weaving between gravestones and another mausoleum. The grass in this stretch is thick and mossy, making my feet sink fractionally. Castle comes silently behind me. The dead make no noise when they move, not a footfall, nor the whisper of canvas shifting on denim. I look back twice to make sure he still follows.

  The mausoleum is locked. Nothing stirs in the expanse of grass, paths and markers. No witnesses, so I drop flesh and pass through the wall into the tomb.

  Sturdily made and dry inside, the mausoleum was built to last. Three long niches contain two ancient marble sarcophagi and old wood coffins adorned with brass and copper. The stone slab where the fallen casket had rested balances on the edge of the jagged hole in the floor. Two heavy wood beams span the hole on an angle, ends wedged against the side of the slab and the far wall to stop the slab falling in.

  The smell of old bitter earth comes from below. The casket is no longer down there. They removed it along with the dead ghouls; it’s been taken elsewhere.

  I slide through the wall, quickly dress and head north. Flush against the bluff which frames the cemetery’s north side, the mortuary and crematorium is a building of textured cement with four wings surrounding a central courtyard. An old gray faun with curling corrugated horns answers my rap on the office door.

  I smile. “Hi. We didn’t meet at the time. My partner and I dealt with your ghoul problem.”

  With head nearly touching one hunched shoulder, he fingers sparse gray chin hair as he regards me. “And did a bit of damage, didn’t you, hm?”

  “Sorry about that. It was unavoidable.” I try to dazzle him with my smile. “In a way, I’m here because of the damage.” I work two fifty drach notes from my hip pocket. “I want to look at the casket which fell in the tunnel, and the body in it.”

  He eyes the notes but keeps worrying at his chin. “Not only irregular, I can’t let just anyone in to look at the dearly departed. You’re not related, are you? No, of course not.”

  “Not related, but interested.” I tug another note from my pocket.

  His arthritic old fingers shoot out and grab the notes. They disappear into a pocket in his checkered wool vest.

  A brass plaque says Chumleigh Yarrow died eight years ago. In the casket, the body rests on what looks like a layer of tar from when the organs and soft tissue inside putrefied into goo and seeped out. Embalming fluid can slow down the decay, not stop it. But all in all he doesn’t look bad, probably owing to the solid crypt and top-quality casket. His skin is gray, cracked like old leather stretched over the bones of his face. His nose is gone, leaving gaping nasal cavities and an earlobe resembles a small piece of shriveled leather.

  His head lies on one side, arms are straight down. Aren’t the dead buried face up with hands folded on their waists? Did the shift in position happen when the casket fell in the hole?

  “He looks kind of squashed,” Castle notes.

  Chumleigh’s cheek is crushed and his chest concave beneath a disintegrating suit jacket. Something catches my eye. A small piece of red silk twists around a cuff button. I carefully unwind it.

  And it all clicks into place.

  A silent grave. Does something of you linger here, beloved? Do your bones tie you to the earth?

  “I think someone put a fresh body in an already occupied casket.”

  “That would account for him being a mite crunched up,” Castle agrees.

  Deep in thought, I brush off his comment with a flick of my hand. “And they hid another someplace. They were in a hurry, wanted the bodies concealed fast.”

  “How did you come up with that?”

  “I know who they were.” I close my eyes to better picture Ethan Hyde and his wife Derille. Derille, who always wore her signature red scarf with the long fringe. “Hyde and his wife didn’t go Upside,” I breathe. “They were murdered. Derille was dumped on top of old Chumleigh.”

  “Derille Hyde?”

  I hold up the red thread with thumb and forefinger.

  Castle gets it. “Her scarf?”

  “She never went out in public without it.”

  “I know, but I wouldn’t call it hard evidence.”

  I give him a brittle smile. “Come outside. I saved the best for last.”

  I reposition the casket lid and head out to where Castle already waits for me. I angle right to look up at Calla Blayne’s house, perched on the edge of the bluff against a red sky streaked purple and mustard-yellow, and murmur, “What you in your ivory tower, deceit and death and gloom?”

  “The angel said that?”

  “Yep. Who took over Hyde’s position when he left?”

  He walks away from me, nearer the cemetery’s perimeter, and gazes at the house, a three story home of ivory stone with towers on the south and north wings. “Well I’ll be damned.”

  Calla made the public announcement of Hyde’s resignation from the Triad and the reason for his retirement. What did he do, or discover, to earn death? Is the other remaining Triad member involved? I know little about Solange Jughon, except she tends to stay in the background.

  Newshounds did their job. They tracked down Hyde’s personal physician who confirmed Derille suffered from a disease which could not be successfully treated Downside. They spoke to the Station Master, who confirmed
Hyde and Derille left through The Station.

  How much did Calla pay them, what promises did she make, to commit what amounts to treason? And another reason for the Station Master to haul ass.

  “We disturbed old Chumleigh’s last resting place before she could move Derille’s body. She thought we saw Derille so she came after us.”

  “Beginning with me,” said Castle.

  He looks at me over his shoulder with his mouth open as if to say more, then his eyes flare and he thrusts out one hand. “Rain!”

  A hand on my shoulder. The shock of full flesh unexpectedly hammering into me. A sting in my neck… .

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Let her go!” Castle roars.

  Calla Blayne says, “How could you be so stupid in the first place?”

  “I didn’t know you hid the bodies in coffins.”

  “I mean the wraith. Your orders were to question him before you killed him. Not only did you get nothing, you left the body there.”

  “I heard her coming. Yes, I panicked.”

  I don’t know the other voice but he’s next to me, the hand on my arm belongs to him, a wraith, or a vampire, because flesh fills me.

  “You bastard!” Castle rages. “You killed me! I’ll see you in hell for this.”

  “Why not kill her?” A woman. Don’t recognize her low, rasping voice, either.

  “I will,” come Calla’s silken tones. “But she’s been busy since her partner … expired. Alain Sauvageau, Verity Peralta and the new wraith. She’ll tell us what she knows and who she spoke to before she dies.”

  “Surely, if she did, they’d be at your gates.”

  “Not without evidence.”

  Hoping to assess my predicament before they know I’m awake, I keep my eyes closed. I sit on a hardback chair, wrists tied to the arms by what feels like plastic zip-ties. My ankles are bound to the chair legs. I’m cold, and well and truly fucked. Against my will, I shudder.

  “She’s awake,” the man says.

  I open my eyes. We are in one of Calla Blayne’s towers on an unfinished floor. The lathe and plaster inner wall hasn’t been painted or papered. The curved outer wall is a single gigantic pane of glass which should provide a view of the cemetery and city beyond, but a blue haze blurs the vista. My chair rests on a large sheet of clear plastic over the board floor. Unidentifiable items covered in dust sheets are stacked against the wall. Bulbs in pastel shades dangle on long steel chains from the ceiling.

  Tall and willowy, Calla stands before a scarred workman’s table. No business suit and severe hairstyle today, her pale pearly hair flows over her shoulders, her skin is luminous and she wears a semi-transparent gown made of tier upon tier of pale-green gauze. A string of sapphire-blue beads match her eyes. Her lips purse as she watches me and one fine eyebrow arches questioningly.

  I don’t know the wraith who holds me. Like us all, he looks young, has black hair and dark eyes. A wraith, who crept up and injected me with tranquilizer after the custodian phoned Calla.

  A wraith who killed Castle.

  Castle looms over him with shoulders tight and hands fisted, and he looks back at Castle as perspiration drips down his face.

  I turn a chill, withering gaze on him, but his eyes are locked to Castle’s.

  The third person - or fourth when you count me – she of the hoarse tones, is Phaedra, the Triad’s sorcerer. With her bright brassy-yellow hair piled atop her head, painted face and slanting green eyes, the long heavy white robe embroidered with metallic thread in every imaginable color, she resembles a tiny china doll.

  A sorcerer did not come to Gettaholt to call the hellion, she already lives here.

  The blue haze outside the window - Phaedra erected a protective ward around the house. Nobody can enter Calla Blayne’s mansion with the ward in place, nobody can see inside.

  Calla rests her buttocks on the edge of the table, crosses her ankles and folds her arms over her chest. “Well, Rain, you are in a pickle,” she says lazily.

  I run my tongue over dry lips. “Looks like it.”

  “We can make this fast or take our time. Up to you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Who did you tell?”

  “Tell what? I didn’t know anything till I saw old Chumleigh’s body.” How long ago? Minutes? Hours?

  Calla pushes off the desk and comes to me, standing so close the eager sparkle in her eyes is unmistakable. “Are you sure?”

  “Is that why you killed Castle? You thought we knew you murdered Hyde and his wife?”

  “Sylar was to question you and Castle.” She backs up a pace and circles me. “But it got out of hand and Sylar … you know what happened to your partner.”

  A stiletto in Castle’s neck. A growl snarls in my throat and I glare at the wraith, this Sylar, but he keeps his face averted.

  Castle has given up yelling at him in favor of listening to what’s being said, but still stands over him threateningly. Sylar is sweating up a storm. He trembles; I feel it through the hand on my arm.

  “You’re sweating, Sylar. Are you unwell?” Calla asks.

  “You won’t use me in this way again, Blayne.”

  “If you want your extortionate retainer, I’ll use you anyhow I wish. We wouldn’t have to take these steps if not for your bumbling.”

  Phaedra looses a laugh more like a croak.

  Calla spins. “I amuse you, Sorcerer?”

  “Yes, the incongruity of you reprimanding Sylar. You began this when you murdered Hyde and his wife.” Phaedra crosses her arms and tries to stare Calla down.

  Calla clenches her hands. Her eyes darken. “Do you know how long my sisters and I have been here? Two thousand years! We were the aristocracy when there was such a thing! Hyde was an upstart human from a family of tradesmen.” Her upper lip lifts in a sneer. “He rejected my proposals, said they didn’t benefit the people, and that toady Jughon sided with him. When he discovered I was diverting funds from city coffers to my own account, he threatened to expose me. And he told Derille. I would have lost everything. They had to go.”

  She makes a small tsk noise. “You know, I tried to persuade him to take Derille Upside when she became ill. He’d have none of it, said his people weren’t allowed to seek aid Upside. Derille agreed with him.”

  Calla lifts her chin so she can look down her nose at Phaedra. “I don’t know why you’d complain. With me in power, Gettaholt taxes fund your experiments, Sylar can pay off his horrendous debts and feed his gambling addiction for the rest of his life, and I… .” She smiles like a shark and opens her arms to encompass the room. “The city is mine.”

  She faces me again. “Tell us, Rain. Give us a name, or names, and it will be over. You won’t suffer. Otherwise … well, little girl, we have to be sure, don’t we.”

  “You need to bind us,” the wraith says. “She’ll be free in a second if I tire and my hand slips.”

  A second to rock the chair, tip it, make Sylar lose his hold, but with ankles bound to the chair legs I can’t get my feet down for traction.

  Calla returns to the table, picks up a phone and speaks into it. Almost before it rests in the cradle again, the door opens and in walks the elf with the notched ear. He carries a large metal case, places it on the floor in front of me and draws a length of cord from his pocket. Sylar’s hand slides down my arm to grasp the back of mine. The elf binds us together at the wrists.

  The elf leaves, but returns a moment later carrying a green brocade sofa piled with thick duvets. He totes the furniture as though it weighs nothing. This he settles on the floor beside me and Sylar edges onto it. Sylar can’t let go of me while our flesh ties us together, keeping us solid, keeping me vulnerable, but can make himself comfortable.

  The elf opens his case and removes an array of tools and instruments which he places on the floor. I recognize a few of them and imagine to what use the others can be put. An uncontrollable shudder wracks my body.

  The elf, Calla and Phaedra leave.r />
  I look at the instruments. “They’re giving me time to think about what those can do,” I whisper to Sylar.

  He doesn’t reply. Castle growls something.

  My voice is barely above a whisper. “Why did you do it?”

  But Sylar says nothing as he shifts on the sofa. Tied to me, knowing what I can expect when Calla returns to this room, he would rather pretend I’m not here.

  Loathing surges up my throat as bile. If I get away in one piece, I shall kill him first.

  The temperature in the room drops as the air conditioning kicks on and icy forced air settles on me, making me shiver. Sylar burrows into his duvet. Castle sits against big window, knees up to his chin, raking one hand through his hair.

  I want to make Sylar acknowledge me as a person, a wraith, someone who shares common ground, not Blayne’s anonymous victim he can disregard. “Your name’s not really Sylar. We don’t have names like that. You don’t want Blayne to know your real name.”

  He pulls the duvet over his head.

  “No, not Calla,” I continue, rethinking. “Phaedra. She can’t spell you if she doesn’t know your real name.”

  “His name is Wool,” says Castle.

  He stalks over, a threatening figure. I marvel that even in this form, the flex of sinew and muscle is prominent, every line of his body, every step, radiates menace.

  Wool’s head pokes from beneath the duvet; he blinks at Castle. “No! You’re not here.”

  “Yes I am, you bastard. I don’t go that easy.” He stands over Wool and snarls like an animal into the wraith’s face. “You’re dead meat, Wool. It’ll be messy and painful.”

  Not taking his eyes off Castle, Wool reaches for the cord which binds us and for one minute I hope. But the wraith’s brow creases, his head cocks on one side. “You’re dead. You’re a ghost. You can’t hurt me.”

  “Release her or I’ll haunt you,” Castle says, “every minute of every day. If you survive, that is. Blayne doesn’t like witnesses.”

  During a long sleepless night, I search for ways to escape and find none.

  Morning brings no hope. The ties on my wrists and ankles are so tight, my flesh is swollen. Castle left and I don’t notice his absence till now.