by Butcher, Jim
“Okay,” I told him, walking to the door myself. “Listen up. Things are about to get sort of risky.”
Chapter Thirty-five
I looked at Luccio’s still-unconscious form. The stress of coordinating the search for Morgan for who knows how long before he showed up, coupled with the pains of her injuries and the sedative effect of the painkillers I’d given her, meant that she’d never stirred. Not when the gun went off, not when we’d been talking, and not when we’d all had to work together to get Morgan back up the stairs and out to the silver Rolls.
I made sure she was covered with a blanket. The moment I did, Mister descended from his perch atop one of my bookcases, and draped himself languidly over her lower legs, purring.
I scratched my cat’s ears and said, “Keep her company.”
He gave me an inscrutable look that said maybe he would and maybe he wouldn’t. Mister was a cat, and cats generally considered it the obligation of the universe to provide shelter, sustenance, and amusement as required. I think Mister considered it beneath his dignity to plan for the future.
I got a pen and paper and wrote.
Anastasia,
I’m running out of time, and visitors are on the way. I’m going someplace where I might be able to create new options. You’ll understand shortly.
I’m sorry I didn’t bring you, too. In your condition, you’d be of limited assistance. I know you don’t like it, but you also know that I’m right.
Help yourself to whatever you need. I hope that we’ll talk soon.
Harry
I folded the note and left it on the coffee table, where she’d see it upon waking. Then I bent over, kissed her hair, and left her sleeping safe in my home.
I parked the Rolls in the lot next to the marina. If we hurried, we could still get there before the witching hour, which would be the best time to try the invocation. Granted, trying it while injured and weary with absolutely no preritual work was probably going to detract more than enough from the ritual to offset the premium timing, but I was beggared for time and therefore not spoiling for choice.
“Allow me to reiterate,” Murphy said, “that I feel that this is a bad idea.”
“So noted,” I said. “But will you do it?”
She stared out the Rolls’s windshield at the vast expanse of Lake Michigan, a simple and enormous blackness against the lights of Chicago. “Yes,” she said.
“If there was anything else you could do,” I said, “I’d ask you to do it. I swear.”
“I know,” she said. “It just pisses me off that there’s nothing more I can add.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you’re going to be in danger, too. Someone might decide to come by and try to use you against me. And if word gets back to the Council about how much you know, they’re going to blow a gasket.”
She smiled a bit. “Yes, thank you. I feel less left out now that I know someone might kill me anyway.” She shifted, settling her gun’s shoulder harness a little more comfortably. “I am aware of my limits. That isn’t the same thing as liking them.” She looked back at me. “How are you going to reach the others?”
“I’d . . . really rather not say. The less you know—”
“The safer I am?”
“No, actually,” I said. “The less you know, the safer I am. Don’t forget that we might be dealing with people who can take information out of your head, whether you want to give it or not.”
Murphy folded her arms and shivered. “I hate feeling helpless.”
“Yeah,” I said, “me, too. How’s he doing, Molly?”
“Still asleep,” Molly reported from the back of the limo. “I don’t think his fever is any higher, though.” She reached out and touched Morgan’s forehead with the back of one hand.
Morgan’s arm rose up and sharply slapped her arm away at the wrist, though he never changed the pace of his breathing or otherwise stirred. Christ. It was literally a reflex action. I shook my head and said, “Let’s move, people.”
Molly and I wrestled the wounded Warden into his wheelchair again. He roused enough to help a little, and sagged back into sleep as soon as he was seated. Molly slung the strap of my ritual box over her shoulder and started pushing Morgan across the parking lot to the marina docks. I grabbed a couple of heavy black nylon bags.
“And what do we have in there?” Murphy asked me.
“Party favors,” I said.
“You’re having a party out there?”
I turned my eyes to the east and stared out over the lake. You couldn’t see the island from Chicago, even on a clear day, but I knew it was there, a sullen and threatening presence. “Yeah,” I said quietly. A real party. Practically everyone who’d wanted to kill me lately would be there.
Murphy shook her head. “All of this over one man.”
“Over a hero of the Council,” I said quietly. “Over the most feared man on the Wardens. Morgan nearly took out the Red King himself—a vampire maybe four thousand years old, surrounded by some disgustingly powerful retainers. If he hadn’t bugged out, Morgan would have killed him.”
“You almost said something nice about him,” Murphy said.
“Not nice,” I said. “But I can acknowledge who he is. Morgan has probably saved more lives than you could count, over the years. And he’s killed innocents, too. I’m certain of it. He’s been the Council’s executioner for at least twenty or thirty years. He’s obsessive and tactless and ruthless and prejudiced. He hates with a holy passion. He’s a big, ugly, vicious attack dog.”
Murphy smiled faintly. “But he’s your attack dog.”
“He’s our attack dog,” I echoed. “He’d give his life without hesitation if he thought it was necessary.”
Murphy watched Molly pushing Morgan down the dock. “God. It’s got to be awful, to know that you’re capable of disregarding life so completely. Someone else’s, yours, doesn’t really matter which. To know that you’re so readily capable of taking everything away from a human being. That’s got to eat away at him.”
“For so long there’s not a lot left, maybe,” I said. “I think you’re right about the killer acting in desperation. This situation got way too confused and complicated for it to be a scheme. It’s just . . . a big confluence of all kinds of chickens coming home to roost.”
“Maybe that will make it simpler to resolve.”
“World War One was kind of the same deal,” I said. “But then, it was sort of hard to point a finger at any one person and say, ‘That guy did it.’ World War Two was simpler, that way.”
“You’ve been operating under the assumption that there is someone to blame,” Murphy said.
“Only if I can catch him.” I shook my head. “If I can’t . . . well.”
Murphy turned to me. She reached up with both hands, put them on the sides of my head, and pulled me down a little. Then she kissed my forehead and my mouth, neither quickly nor with passion. Then she let me go and looked up at me, her eyes worried and calm. “You know that I love you, Harry. You’re a good man. A good friend.”
I gave her a lopsided smile. “Don’t go all gushy on me, Murph.”
She shook her head. “I’m serious. Don’t get yourself killed. Kick whatsoever ass you need to in order to make that happen.” She looked down. “My world would be a scarier place without you in it.”
I chewed my lip for a second, feeling very awkward. Then I said, “I’d rather have you covering my back than anyone in the world, Karrin.” I cleared my throat. “You might be the best friend I’ve ever had.”
She blinked quickly several times and shook her head. “Okay. This is going somewhere awkward.”
“Maybe we should take it from ‘whatsoever ass,’ ” I suggested.
She nodded. “Find him. Kick his ass.”
“That is the plan,” I confirmed. Then I bent down and kissed her forehead and her mouth, gently, and leaned my forehead against hers. “Love you, too,” I whispered.
Her voice tigh
tened. “You jerk. Good luck.”
“You, too,” I said. “Keys are in the ignition.”
Then I straightened, hitched up the heavy bags, and stalked toward the docks. I didn’t look at her as I walked away, and I didn’t look back.
That way, we could both pretend that I hadn’t seen her crying.
My brother owned an ancient battered commercial fishing boat. He told me it was a trawler. Or maybe he said troller. Or schooner. It was one of those—unless it wasn’t. Apparently, nautical types get real specific and fussy about the fine distinctions that categorize the various vessels—but since I’m not nautical, I don’t lose much sleep over the misuse of the proper term.
The boat is forty-two feet long and could have been a stunt double for Quint’s fishing boat in Jaws. It desperately needed a paint job, as the white of its hull had long since faded to grey and smoke-smudged black. The only fresh paint on it was a row of letters on the bow that read Water Beetle.
Getting Morgan on board was a pain—literally, in his case. We got him settled onto the bed in the little cabin and brought all the gear aboard. After that, I climbed up onto the bridge, started the engines with my copy of the Water Beetle’s key, and immediately realized I hadn’t cast off the lines. I had to go back down to the deck to untie us from the dock.
Look, I just told you—I’m not nautical.
Leaving the marina wasn’t hard. Thomas had a spot that was very near the open waters of the lake. I almost forgot to flick on the lights, but got them clicked on before we got out of the marina and onto the open water. Then I checked the compass next to the boat’s wheel, turned us a degree or two south of due east, and opened up the engine.
We started out over the blackness of the lake, the boat’s engines making a rather subdued, throaty lub lub dub lub sound. The boat had originally been built for charter use in the open sea, and it had some muscle. The water was calm tonight, and the ride remained smooth as we rapidly built up speed.
I felt a little nervous about the trip. Over the past year, Thomas and I had gone out to the island several times so that I could explore the place. He’d been teaching me how to handle the boat, but this was my first solo voyage.
After a few minutes, Molly came partway up the short ladder to the bridge and stopped. “Do I need to ask permission to come up there or something?”
“Why would you?” I asked.
She considered. “It’s what they do on Star Trek?”
“Good point,” I said. “Permission granted, Ensign.”
“Aye aye,” she said, and came up to stand next to me. She frowned at the darkness to the east, and cast a wary glance back at the rapidly fading lights of the city. “So. We’re going out to the weird island, the one with that big ley line running through it?”
“Yep,” I said.
“Where my dad got . . .”
I tried not to remember how badly Michael Carpenter had suffered when he had gone there with me. “Crippled,” I said. “Yeah.”
She frowned quietly. “I heard him talking to my mom about the island. But when I tried to go look it up, I couldn’t find it on any of the maps. Not even in the libraries.”
“Yeah,” I said. “From what I hear, bad things happened to everyone who went out there. There used to be some kind of port facility for fishing and merchant traffic, big as a small town, but it was abandoned. Sometime in the nineteenth century, the city completely expunged the place from its records.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t want anyone to go out there,” I said. “If they merely passed a law, they knew that sooner or later some moron would go there out of sheer contrariness. So they pretty much unmade the place, at least officially.”
“And in more than a century, no one’s ever seen it?”
“That dark ley line puts off a big field of energy,” I said. “It makes people nervous. Not insane or anything, but it’s enough to make them subconsciously avoid the place, if they aren’t making a specific effort to get there. Plus, there are stone reefs around a big portion of the island, and people tend to swing wide around it.”
She frowned. “Couldn’t that be a problem for us?”
“I’m pretty sure I know where to get through them.”
“Pretty sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
Maybe she looked a little paler. “Oh,” she said. “Good. And we’re going there why?”
“The sanctum invocation,” I said. “The island has a kind of spirit to it, an awareness.”
“A genius loci,” she said.
I nodded approval. “Exactly that. And fed by that ley line, it’s a big, strong one. It doesn’t much care for visitors, either. It’s arranged to kill a bunch of them.”
Molly blinked. “And you want to do a sanctum invocation? There?”
“Oh, hell no,” I said. “I don’t want to. But I’ve got to find some way to give myself an edge tomorrow, or it’s all over but the crying.”
She shook her head slowly. Then she fell silent until we actually reached the island a little while later. It was dark, but I had enough moonlight and starlight to find the buoy Thomas and I had placed at the entry through the reef. I swung the Water Beetle through it, and began following the coastline of the island until I passed a second buoy and guided the boat into the small floating dock we’d constructed. I managed to get the vessel next to the dock without breaking anything, and hopped off with lines in hand to tie it off.
I looked up to find Molly holding my ritual box. She passed it to me and I nodded to her. “If this works, it should take me an hour or so,” I told her. “Stay with Morgan. If I’m not back by dawn, untie the boat, start the engine, and drive it back to the marina. It’s not too different from a car, for what you’ll be doing.”
She bit her lip and nodded. “What then?” she asked.
“Get to your dad. Tell him I said that you need to disappear. He’ll know what to do.”
“What about you?” she asked. “What will you be doing?”
I slipped the strap to the ritual box over one shoulder, took up my staff, and started toward the interior of the island.
“Not much,” I said over my shoulder. “I’ll be dead.”
Chapter Thirty-six
Grimm’s fairy tales, a compilation of the most widely known scary stories of Western Europe, darn near always feature a forest as the setting. Monstrous and terrifying things live there. When the hero of a given story sets out, the forest is a place of danger, a stronghold of darkness—and there’s a good reason for it.
It can be freaking frightening to be walking a forest in the dark. And if that isn’t enough, it’s dangerous, to boot.
You can’t see much. There are sounds around you, from the sigh of wind in the trees to the rustle of brush caused by a moving animal. Invisible things touch you suddenly and without warning—tree branches, spiderwebs, leaves, brush. The ground shifts and changes constantly, forcing you to compensate with every step as the earth below you rises or dips suddenly. Stones trip up your feet. So do ground-hugging vines, thorns, branches, and roots. The dark conceals sinkholes, embankments, and the edges of rock shelves that might drop you six inches or six feet.
In stories, you read about characters running through a forest at night. It’s a load of crap. Oh, maybe it’s feasible in really ancient pine forests, where the ground is mostly clear, or in those vast oak forests where they love to shoot Robin Hood movies and adaptations of Shakespeare’s work. But if you get into the thick native brush in the U.S., you’re better off finding a big stick and breaking your own ankle than you are trying to sprint through it blind.
I made my way cautiously uphill, passing through the ramshackle, decaying old buildings of what had been a tiny town, just up the slope from the dock. The trees had reclaimed it long since, growing up through floors and out broken old windows.
There were deer on the island, though God knows how they got there. It’s big enough to support quite a few of the beautiful animals. I
’d found signs of foxes, raccoons, skunks, and wildcats, plus the usual complement of rabbits, squirrels, and groundhogs. There were a few wild goats there as well, probably descendants of escapees from the former human residents of the island.
I began to sense the hostile presence of the island before I’d gone twenty steps. It began as a low, sourceless anxiety, one I barely noticed against the backdrop of all the perfectly rational anxiety I was carrying. But as I continued up the hill, it got worse, maturing into a fluttery panic that made my heart beat faster and dried out my mouth.
I steeled myself against the psychic pressure, and continued at the same steady pace. If I let it get to me, if I wound up panicking and bolted, I could end up a victim of the normal threats of a forest at night. In fact, that was probably what the island had in mind, so to speak.
I gritted my teeth and continued, while my eyes slowly adjusted to the night, revealing the shapes of trees and rocks and brush, and making it a little easier to move safely.
It was a short hike to the mountain’s summit. The final bit of hill was at an angle better than forty-five degrees, and the only way one could climb it safely was to use the old steps that had been carved into the rock face. They had felt weirdly familiar and comfortable the first time I went up them. That hadn’t changed noticeably in subsequent visits. Even now, I could go up them in the dark, my legs and feet automatically adjusting to the slightly irregular spacing of the steps, without needing to consult my eyes.
Once at the top of the stairs, I found myself on a bald crown of a hilltop. A tower stood there, an old lighthouse made of stone. Well, about three-quarters of it stood there, anyway. Some of it had collapsed, and the stones had been cannibalized and used to construct a small cottage at the foot of the tower.
The silent presence of the island was stronger here, a brooding and dangerous thing that did not care for visitors.
I looked around the moonlit hilltop, nodded once, marched over to the flat area in front of the cottage and planted my ritual box firmly on the ground.