by Mark Parker
Tom hid none of these thoughts from Dulcé, who experienced them like her own memories. She understood that the weight of his secret knowledge had crippled him in more ways than one. He hadn’t shared it with any of the women he’d known in his past, and they’d all drifted away to other proposals or other priorities. Professionally speaking, his necromantic access to el Rey’s subjects and all the things they knew had made him a finder of lost objects, a string-puller, and (most profitably) an expert blackmailer—none of them occupations to be especially proud of, even though he’d limited his extortion activities to victims who deserved no better.
He’d never dared to want children, and he’d never once traveled (with body and soul united) more than a day’s ride away from the Hole in the Sky. Generations of el Rey’s servants had lived similarly, set apart from the world as it evolved around them.
Dulcé was looking down at him (down at el leon, that was) with deep sadness in her eyes. Sadness and pity, which he didn’t care to see. “This is no life for a lion,” she murmured. “To be held captive by a king.”
It’s mine, and I chose it. But I don’t want to put this burden on you, he confessed. On you or on anyone. Do you understand?
Dulcé nodded.
I’ll serve as I have to after I’m gone, he decided even as he thought it. That’s the deal I made. But I don’t want to pass this on. No good has ever come of it.
“Tom, would you come away with me, if I asked?” Dulcé blurted.
Come away?
“To travel. Wander. To see the world. The living world. I’ve never seen the Orient. We could go, together. And you’ve never seen Europe. London and Paris and Rome—these are places I know well. Let me show them to you.”
But…
“We can get on a train. I have the money; we can just go. Your life doesn’t belong to Death, Catman,” Dulcé reminded him. “However much of it is left, it’s not too late to live.”
***
Tom released his panther back to the wild and opened his eyes, alone on the bank of the Arroyo Seco. He walked back to the Cat Ranch, mulling over everything Dulcé had said, and waited for her on the front stoop, as he had on the day he met her. Nearly an hour later she came thundering through the trees on Sombra, the mythical horse of her childhood dreams, and dismounted at the edge of the clearing. Tom stood up. The shadow-stallion dissolved back into night when Dulcé came to him, and he gathered her into his arms, and kissed her.
They kept each other awake almost until dawn that night, exchanging talk and plans and tenderness. He ignored any complaints from his hip. When Tom finally drifted off to sleep it was with one excitable thought in mind:
He and Dulcé Calavera were going to run away together.
***
She didn’t have the money. That much was a lie. Her modest inheritance had all but run out before she ever came home to California, and while her scholarly efforts paid most of the bills, they hadn’t left her wealthy enough to travel at her leisure.
Yet she knew where she could get money, and she set off on her bicycle the next day, All Saints’ Day, with the intention of acquiring it. What she told Tom—that there were arrangements to be made before they could leave—was not at all untrue. But securing travel reservations was only the first of her goals that afternoon.
***
The building on Wilshire Boulevard had been designed in a neoclassical style, Dulcé supposed, to look like a pagan temple from antiquity, but the total effect of all that limestone always struck her as more sepulchral than Vitruvian. The place bore no signage beyond a cornerstone into which the date 1885 had been chiseled, underneath three ovals connected like links in a chain and inlaid with gold leaf.
She knew this to be the symbol of the Ordo Aurea Catena—the Order of the Golden Chain.
The doorman took her name. Moments later she was escorted inside, and upstairs.
***
“Dr. Calavera,” Jacobus Vreke said, rising from his club chair to greet her. Members of the Order were supposed to address one another by their ceremonial Latin mottos rather than their proper names, but Vreke flouted formalities whenever it suited him. “It is very good to see you again.”
His European diction was crisp, his suit impeccable, his eyes an arresting shade of blue. Much of the blonde in his hair had been displaced by gray, but he cut no less an imposing figure for it.
“Have you met Mr. Watt?” This is Dr. Dulcé Calavera, the eminent anthropologist.”
“Winston, please,” the tall, balding Englishman who’d been talking with Vreke said.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?”
“I’ve seen it,” Dulcé said. “That thing we discussed.”
Vreke paused. “Have you?” He nodded to Watt, who shuffled away to give them some privacy without a word spoken. Vreke motioned for Dulcé to sit and waited to retake his own seat until she perched herself on the edge of the Englishman’s vacated chair. He leaned in. “When was this?”
“Last night.”
“And here you are already.”
Dulcé made herself sit back as though she were comfortable. This top floor of the Aurea Catena’s marble mausoleum was outfitted as a gentlemen’s lounge, complete with a bar behind which a bartender stood, quietly polishing glassware. Watt had taken up residence on a stool, with his back turned to them.
A brass plaque on the wall near the elevator read ‘The Dashwood Club.’
Dulcé had no idea what Vreke and his coterie of idle rich dilettantes got up to on the other nine floors of their fortress. Access to those lower levels was granted only as initiates progressed through the Order’s ten degrees. The idea was that you descended physically as you ascended spiritually, with each grade marked by the presentation of a brass key that let you off the elevator one floor closer to ground level. Dulcé, a mere first-degree Neophyte, could only visit the social club, while Jacobus Vreke—a tenth-degree Ipsissimus as well as the Outer Head of the Inner Order—could go anywhere he damn well pleased. Even down to the basement, presumably, or into the women’s water closet. He possessed a whole ring of keys, some ornate, others plain.
“Tell me what it is you’ve seen.”
Dulcé glanced around. She couldn’t help it. “The Tree,” she whispered. “The Cathedral Oak, three times taller than an ordinary tree. Just like in your stories.”
Vreke nodded. “Come,” he said, rising and offering a hand to help her up as well. “We should not discuss this business here.”
***
Winston Watt watched them step onto the elevator, Vreke with a guiding hand placed between the anthropologist’s shoulder blades. The liveried lift operator drew an accordion gate closed and started them descending.
Watt knocked back the last of his gin and left a moment later, opting to take the stairs.
Dulcé’s stomach sank along with the elevator when it passed the ground floor. They were going down to the basement after all. She should’ve been excited at the prospect of gaining premature admittance to the Order’s privileged spaces, but she dreaded the thought of being buried beneath this tomb of a place.
Vreke said nothing more until they reached the lowest sub-basement.
“Where are we going?” Dulcé asked, trying to sound conversational.
“To the Archive of the Inner Order,” he said, leading the way. “You should feel most fortunate. Many of our brethren practice for decades, yet never attain the right to see this place.”
And wouldn’t this endear her to them, jumping ahead like the teacher’s pet. The cattiness these people indulged in despite their spiritual pretentions made Dulcé glad she’d be getting away from them, and from Los Angeles, very soon.
Vreke let them into a hushed gallery of curiosities. Dulcé saw old books with crumbling bindings and an eccentric collection of artifacts. She spotted a skull inlaid with silver and turquoise. An obsidian scrying mirror. A mummified hand that sat under a bell jar, raised in an eternal wave. Vreke saw her staring at it.
“Lurid, yes? You are not the first to feel disconcerted.”
He went to a wooden cabinet inset with shallow drawers, of the sort used to store blueprints or drawings, and withdrew a document.
“You mentioned money, when we spoke of this before,” Dulcé ventured. “One hundred thousand dollars.”
“I would gladly pay this,” he said, “to find the Tree Below the Hole in the Sky.”
“I can tell you where it is.”
“I have been told where it is, by the man from whom I purchased this.” Vreke showed her the hand-drawn map he’d pulled from storage. It showed a tall oak tree at its center, with the ocean in the west and the city in the east. It looked accurate enough, at a glance. “And yet it hides behind hexes,” Jacobus Vreke said. “It eludes me, even when I follow every direction to the letter. If you have been there, Dr. Calavera, and stood before this Tree, then I would much prefer you to show me.”
***
Some hours before Tom expected Dulcé to return, Los Gatos brought to his attention a two-wheeled gig harnessed to a single horse that pulled off to the side of the wagon road. He recognized the bowler-hatted driver as el Rey’s Englishman, Winslow. Or whatever the hell his name was. (Tom was never going to do the usurper the honor of getting it right.) In any case he was already striding up the path, across the field.
Tom came out to the front stoop and was waiting when he emerged through the trees.
“What do you want?”
“To know what in the name of bloody fuck you were thinking.”
“About...?”
“The anthropologist, Tom. The one to whom you showed the Tree. I know it was you—there isn’t anyone else left. And do you know where your friend is right now? At the Templi Aurea Catena, selling our secrets to the highest bidder.”
Our secrets. That was rich. But the revelation hit Tom like a sucker punch. He knew the OAC, or at least knew of them. They were a cabal of old-world ceremonialists, washed into the city on recent waves of American immigrants. They knew of him, too. Several years ago a fancy importer of patent medicines named Jacobus Vreke had come sniffing around, offering cash for ‘initiation,’ as he termed it. Tom had turned him down flat. But of course he and his cronies were still out there, titillating themselves with their wickedness in the marble edifice they’d planted on Wilshire Boulevard.
“I know you believe me,” the Interloper said, deflating all the arguments Tom was trying to muster. “You must have wondered how I ever found it myself.”
In truth, yes. But Tom said nothing.
“They have a map. Bought from one of us, from a man of knowledge. I copied it from the Archive, and I doctored it so that damned Dutch freak would come up short when he tried to match it to the territory. But if your tart knows the whole procedure, then they might be standing at the door to the King’s Chamber right now.”
***
Vreke drove them west through endless vineyards and citrus groves in his new Daimler auto-mobile until las cienegas, the swamps to the south of the mountains, threatened to bog the horseless carriage down. After that they were on foot. Dulcé knew the Tree wasn’t far, but Vreke was right—it hid. Following the map, she kept expecting to find it right around the next ridge or over the next foothill, only to be dead-ended by an impassable marsh or an overgrown arroyo.
Dulcé had hoped to exchange a simple list of directions for her thirty pieces of silver, but she could see now why that would never have worked.
Vreke had tempted her into stealing for him what he hadn’t been able to buy from the author of his map. Her relationship with the Outer Head had begun professionally enough—he was on the board that oversaw the grant she’d received to research her book. He’d invited her to observe his own order of rich mystics, which could only be done by taking their first-degree initiation. Then he’d dangled the legends of the Hole in the Sky and the necromanticos who guarded it in front of her like a twist of string in front of a cat, knowing full well she’d find her way to Tom. He may even have hired detectives to look into her financial situation, to help choose the best bait.
She felt like a pawn in a game being played on a scale she hadn’t properly imagined, and her number of possible moves was running dangerously low.
She no longer believed in the money. Not after catching a glimpse of the pistol Vreke wore in a shoulder-holster underneath his sporting jacket.
One of the instructions written on the back of the map contained a mistake. It called for an evocation of Teonanactl, not an invocation. Dulcé found a sample of the relevant mushroom for Vreke, but he didn’t trust her enough to eat it. He insisted she do that, like a royal food taster testing for poison. Now, after more than an hour, Teonanactl still hadn’t opened her eyes to the correct path.
“I am beginning to think you have lied to me, Dr. Calavera,” Vreke said, taking note of the afternoon’s lengthening shadows. “If you can deliver what you promised, I suggest you do so now.”
“I told you it might not work for you without the mushroom.”
“And I told you I will not eat an unidentified fungus out of the ground. The dangers are immense. Besides which, I believe this excuse is what the Americans call ‘horseshit.’ So, if you cannot—”
Dulcé saw him reaching under his tweeds, presumably for his gun. But at the same moment she also saw the deepening shadows beneath a copse of trees behind him seem to shift and draw together, and she felt a desperate burst of hope.
“¡Sombra!” she cried. “¡Ayúdame!”
Vreke whirled to see the ink-black stallion charging toward him. He drew his gun but Dulcé kicked him in the back. She leapt when Sombra feinted around the unbalanced Dutchman, catching a stirrup with one foot and swinging herself into the saddle without the horse having to break stride. It was not a feat she could ever hope to duplicate, but in the moment it almost seemed easy.
She felt something swat her in the lower back seconds before she heard the shots Vreke fired after her, but Sombra never slowed down, racing in the direction of the Tree.
***
Tom didn’t expect he’d ever see her again.
He’d been pacing around his living room in a rage since goddam Winthorpe (or whatever) departed amidst a hail of harsh words, but now feelings of general foolishness were taking over. If Dulcé really had sold the key to the wards to the OAC, he didn’t know what to do about it. The whole city of Los Angeles might now be fucked in unimaginable new ways.
A sudden clatter of hooves accompanied by a wild neigh caught him off guard. He hurried outside and stopped short at the realization that Sombra had no rider. The bulky horse reared and snorted, pawing at the ground, but Dulcé wasn’t on his back. He whinnied again, tossing his mane at Tom. Could she have sent the shadow horse for help? He had no idea, but Sombra’s intentions seemed clear. Tom hauled himself into the saddle. He didn’t ride often but he did know how, and still it was all he could do to hold on when the powerful stallion leapt forward.
***
Dulcé was already gone by the time he found her, sitting up beneath the Tree.
From a distance she might’ve been meditating like a Buddha, but up close her skin was gray. Where it wasn’t red with drying blood. It looked like she’d been shot, possibly through the liver, and her blood was everywhere. It had soaked her clothing black. She couldn’t have lasted long. Maybe she fled here to hide from Vreke, or maybe this was just where Sombra had carried her.
Who in hell could know, other than el Rey?
Tom closed her glassy eyes, sat down beside her, and cried.
***
He buried her as far from the Tree as he could carry her. Los Gatos had followed him out from the Cat Ranch and they ringed around, observing in solemn silence as he assembled a cairn of stones. He balled up the shadow-cloak that hadn’t saved her and shoved it back into Sombra’s saddlebag before swatting the apparition on the ass to send it back to wherever it came from in the first place.
The cats bled away int
o the encroaching evening when he slung his cane across his back on a piece of twine and began the arduous climb up the Tree. The stick was a nuisance, but he’d need it just to stand by the time he reached the Hole in the Sky, and on this night of all nights, Black Tom meant to stand before his King.
If the Aurea Catena wanted to know, he would show them what el Necromantico could do.
***
She was standing beside Mictlantecuhtli when Tom approached, framed in the doorway to the Inner Chamber. Her black hair was the same, and her clothes were like those she died in, but the rest of her was bleached white bone. She looked like one of those political cartoons by José Posada. Los Muertos always did.
The Aztec God of the Dead appeared as he always had—as a skeleton freshly flayed, shrouded beneath a heavy cowl and wearing a garland of glistening human eyes around his collarbones. A blood caked altar sat behind him. This was what lay beyond the Hole in the Sky—the sacrificial chambers of an ancient temple. One room in this world and one in the next, with a rough-hewn door between them.
“Vreke?” Tom said to Dulcé, and her ghost or her bones or whatever it was that traveled on to Mictlan nodded sadly.
“Why doesn’t she speak?”
“Because I do not wish it, Tomás Delgado,” Mictlantecuhtli said. “You sought to abandon your covenant with me, for a second time now.” The tall skeleton glanced at Tom’s cane. His hip was a bolt of agony. “This I have seen in her memory.”
“I changed my mind,” Tom said. “And I humbly beg for your forgiveness once again, Mictlantecuhtli.”
“Amends must then be made, Tomás Delgado. What will you offer to regain my favor?”
“What you have never known before. A visit to the living world. I offer myself, of my own free will. Walk in my skin, Mictlantecuhtli, when the worlds align tonight. But I do have one condition.”
“Yes?”
“I want to kill them all. The people who did this to her. To us.”
Dulcé was shaking her skull, pleading with her empty eye sockets for him not to make this deal, but it was already done.
“This I accept,” Mictlantecuhtli said.