“How?” he demanded. Miranda tried to say something but could only manage an inarticulate sob.
I needed a lie, and I needed it fast. “Just how you’d think,” I whined, my expression as blank and stupid as I could make it. Luckily, if there was one thing that dealing with salesmen for years had taught me, it was how to lie. The best lies are always the ones that we tell ourselves, based on the facts as we understand them.
The Anarchist stepped back and threw out an arm wildly. “He is desperate for a hint about my identity. I bet he’d pay a fortune for any information that you might pick up in the process of protecting his people, and of course he’d want you to give him the information in person, at the bank,” he said.
I got the feeling that he expected me to say something, and I could feel his unseen eyes boring into me, but I knew when to keep my mouth shut, so I just nodded, and he kept speaking. “If you can get me something of Dennis’, then I could finally reach into that paranoid hermit’s cave. However, you didn’t seem to care very much about your Australian friend, and you’ve also proven that I can’t trust your promises, so what am I to do, Mr. Adler?” he mused, his voice controlled once more.
“I didn’t think you’d follow through with Toscan, but I don’t care about Dennis. He’s just some old nut-job cultist.” Miranda squealed and thrashed on the pole impaling her, but I avoided looking at her and continued speaking. “Dennis offered me money, just like you said, but I don’t care about money. I’ve never cared about money—anyone who does is an idiot,” I lied. Money is awesome. “Please, sir, I just want to get my wife back.”
“Yes, that’s all very well, but what can you give me to make me trust you?” the Anarchist asked, stepping toward me again.
“Please—please, just let me go. I can give you the message for Dennis that the dumb whore over there gave me before you came in. I’m not sure I understand it,” I claimed, playing on his general disparagement of my intelligence, “but I think that they have some kind of desperate last-ditch ritual they can do to stop your plans. I’ll betray Dennis and tell you everything; just let me go,” I sniveled. Involuntarily, I glanced at Miranda. Her face was a rictus of shock and hate; she had planted both hands on the rod pinning her to the wall and, convulsing with each tug, was dragging herself along it.
I forced my eyes closed so hard that tears welled at the corners and ran down my cheeks. I tried to pretend that it was out of pity for myself and not because of the torment I was putting the Mammonite priestess through. I was jolted out of my guilt and self-pity by the feeling of being yanked into the air; the Anarchist had grabbed my trench coat and hoisted me up so that I dangled, held up only by the arms of the jacket.
“Dana really was your better half, wasn’t she, Julian? You have power, but no backbone. Well, that’ll work in my favor this time,” the Anarchist said, and a little titter of glee that couldn’t have come from anyone entirely sane escaped from behind his mask. His face was only inches away from mine; I tried to lean forward to see through his disguise, but I recoiled in disgust at his stench of brimstone and rotten fish.
“Yes, I need her back. I miss her so badly, and I’m so afraid of what might be happening to her Please let me go…just put me down, and I’ll give you Miranda’s message, and I’ll get you a connection to Dennis,” I whined again, the words flowing easily, and fingered my wedding ring. Come find me.
“No! Lord Mammon…help your worthy servant,” Miranda managed to burble before pausing to spit a mouthful of blood. “Give me the power to protect you, oh golden one,” Miranda begged, dragging herself, bone scraping on metal, to the end of the lamp, but she couldn’t push past the flared base. Yet she didn’t stop trying to reach her enemy; hands sticky with her own fluids, she clawed at the empty air in his direction.
The Anarchist saw where my gaze had landed and waved his tentacle dismissively while glancing over his shoulder at me. “Ignore her. Her godling has no power here.”
When he glanced back, I was smiling.
“Her god has no power here, but she does, asshole.”
“Huh?” he replied, with the kind of eloquence that only I could usually muster.
Gathering my mental powers, I reached toward Miranda and temporarily reestablished the connection that we’d shared, speaking directly into her mind. “Miranda, use what I showed you, use your memories and your emotions!” I blasted out at the speed of thought, just before the Anarchist snarled and brought his hammer whistling down at the top of my skull. Using my good friend gravity for an assist, I shrugged my shoulders and slipped out of the trench coat to land on the ground in a boneless heap, exhausted again.
The Anarchist had humiliated, beaten, and abused Miranda earlier; yet she’d had the strength of will to hold on to her sanity, and that had been before I’d poured a river of knowledge into her and whipped her into an enraged frenzy. Grasping my meaning but not calming down at all, the priestess howled, set her feet against the wall, and, with a crash of crumbling masonry, hurled herself at her tormentor. The flared base of the lamp hit the Anarchist’s chest like a battering ram, and he impacted the floor with a whooping exhalation, spinning end over end and slamming into the wall. Miranda landed on her side with a clang. I continued to lie on the floor like a two-hundred-pound sack of crap.
There was a moment of silence before Miranda clambered to her feet. With a grunt, but almost no blood, she ripped three feet of metal out of her sternum and hoisted it in her right hand; the ends came out glistening with golden light. Lips peeled back from her teeth, eyes boring into her tormentor, she stalked forward. Shaking his head, the Anarchist rolled over and braced his hand against the floor. Miranda growled, raising the jagged chunk of metal over her head, and then she used supernaturally powerful muscles to bring it flashing down at his cranium. The Anarchist spat a word that made my ears burn and managed to flick his tentacle into the path of the wickedly sharp spike, knocking it to the side and causing it to sizzle as his acid ate into it.
While I gathered my concentration and struggled to coerce my trembling body into a sitting position, the Anarchist lashed out with his foot at Miranda. She hopped back and conjured a ball of molten gold that hit the Anarchist’s robe and sizzled through to scald the flesh beneath—she was catching on to dream control impressively swiftly. They traded blows faster than my blurry vision could follow; golden blood and black ichor painted the room like Jackson Pollock on speed. My focus was on forcing a spasming right hand to brace against the ground, so I missed the strike that sent Miranda hurtling across the room to crunch against a metal table, leaving a her-shaped divot in the steel.
Head swimming, I staggered to my feet. The Anarchist had his hammer again and was slowly approaching Miranda. She peeled herself out of the table, and the Dreamscape dimmed momentarily. She shook her head and said, “Is that the best you can do, you pathetic, sadistic, third-rate warlock wannabe?” I’d stoked Miranda’s rage to fuel her assault, and I realized with a sick feeling in my stomach that she was trying the same thing—and succeeding.
The Anarchist rose up to his full, unnatural nine-foot height and yelled, “I should have burned you all to ashes years ago. You think that you can stop me? I started planning this back when your grandfather was only a glint in his pa’s eyes.” He brought the hammer down, literally, but Miranda’s augmented reflexes allowed her to dodge the pound of skirling steel, and sparks flew as he knocked a chunk out of the surgical table.
The priestess came up from a roll that would have done credit to a woman half her age, flung another ball of molten gold, and taunted her towering attacker again. “A bit slow on your feet? Are those even feet anymore? What have you traded for your knowledge?”
“Less than you have, Mammonite whore,” the Anarchist pronounced, twisting in place and lashing out with his inhuman tentacle. Miranda shrieked as it slashed across her shoulder. Skin blistered and bubbled where the appendage had touched, and once again the Dreamscape shivered and dimmed. The Anarchist paused m
omentarily. If he realized what Miranda was doing, then he’d pull back and use his spellcraft to fix her to the dream again; eventually, he’d wear the priestess down, and then we’d both be at his nonexistent mercy. I had to piss him off, and I had to do it fast. Finally—a chance to play to my strengths.
Thinking furiously, I backpedaled a few unsteady steps when a brilliant, illogical, idiotic idea popped into my head. “Hey—Squidward!” I yelled. His head turned in my direction, and I almost fell as his hatred hammered into me, cold, dark, and inky. “Look down,” I said, cocking my head to the side and grinning. I barely had enough willpower left to stay on my feet, and my last couple of attempts to use pop culture to influence the Dreamscape had been borderline disasters, but…what could be easier than summoning the most pervasive dream meme of all? I narrowed my eyes and pushed.
The air rippled.
The Anarchist looked down.
He was naked.
He was also no longer a man. No, not that way. Well, yes—that way too, but what I meant was that he wasn’t human anymore. His nine-foot stature was only accomplished because his torso was horribly stretched, and from his hips downward he had been…changed. His legs had fused together and glimmered with mucus, pushing him forward with vile, sluglike contractions. The only parts of him that still looked human at all were his right hand and upper chest.
“This is why I must stop that wretched creature you worship! This is why I must kill them all!” he spat, whipping back around to face a gawping Miranda. “Mammon did this to me. He tries to twist my mind and corrupt my flesh, but I will not give in. I will slaughter you all, I will slaughter them all. I will cleanse this planet, I will—”
“You will fail, abomination,” Miranda interrupted coolly, scooped up her impromptu spear, which suddenly glowed with aureate light, and charged the freakish, ranting thing. She moved fast, still faster than any normal person could have, but she had used a lot of mental energy already tonight, and she was noticeably slower than a moment ago. Yet the Anarchist seemed to have an unending wellspring of mystic energy. His impossibly thin torso blurred, and the spear only drew a shallow trench just below his rib cage.
Miranda’s momentum carried her streaking past the Anarchist—until the appendage dangling from his left shoulder lashed out and wrapped around her neck, yanking her, thrashing, off of her feet. The man’s whole body shook with the effort of holding the priestess, and he made a keening noise as the band of muscle tightened around Miranda’s throat, but he held her.
I stepped in the combatants’ direction. Miranda tried to shout something to me, and the muscles on her forearms stood out like cables as she tried to pry enough room to speak, but she could only whisper a single word, “Go.” I understood and shuffled unsteadily a few steps backward; my throat clenched, whether in terror or grief I couldn’t be sure. She’d realized that there was no way out as long as she lived.
Miranda cursed, clawed, and spit, but the Anarchist tightened his grip inexorably on her throat, making her face turn red, then purple. The Dreamscape blurred; limping to the casement window, I could see the horizon disappear into a gray haze as the priestess’s mental hold slipped.
“Noooo!” the Anarchist wailed as he realized what was happening. His right arm clawed desperately at the tentacle around Miranda’s throat, but his warped form wasn’t under his control anymore; his momentary rage had allowed the extradimensional entity that was corrupting him to gain the upper hand. The wall of nothingness advanced to within a dozen yards of the house. “Before you die, I want you to know how I’m going to kill your god,” he growled, involuntarily snapping at Miranda’s blackening ear. I wanted to listen, but there was no time—the dream was on the verge of collapsing.
I lurched to the ledge of the window, spared one last look back at Miranda, and shouted, “I’ll deliver your message!” Then I flipped open the latch, flipped off the Anarchist, and flipped myself into empty air. Plummeting to the ground, I heard Miranda’s voice in my head:
“Dreamwalker—he’s going to sacrifice her!”
What?
Chapter 24 0712–1100, Sunday, October 4, 2015
I awoke. My legs cramped and my back spasmed, bending me backward until my joints popped. Olivia woke up and wailed. It felt like someone was sawing at my brain with a rusty fork. At least this time my sister-in-law didn’t make a sarcastic guest appearance. Hands shaking uncontrollably because of my failure to protect Miranda, I cleaned up as best I could and made Olivia breakfast.
I had just managed to get Ollie set up in front of the TV with a steady stream of cartoons when my phone rang. I saw the number and thought about just hitting “ignore,” but I took a deep, shuddering breath and punched “answer” instead.
“I am informed, Jules, that you failed last night. Spectacularly,” Jack Redderton said matter-of-factly.
I wanted to be angry, to hurl back my outrage at his blithe statement, to tell him that I’d skirted the edge of destruction, leaving nothing back, in the attempt to protect the priestess of Mammon. “I tried Jack. God, how I tried to save that poor woman…” I trailed off, my voice husky with emotion. After a minute of silence, I mastered myself and asked, “What was left of her?”
Jack must have sensed the truth in my words, because he continued in a softer tone, “According to the preliminary coroner’s report, Miranda died of asphyxiation in her sleep. That would be less weird if she hadn’t also had her head ripped off. It would have been even less weird if she hadn’t had two security guards who tried to wake her for the best part of four hours. They had to flee the room when furniture started exploding, but they swore that she was fine when they left and dead when the noise quieted a few minutes later.”
The only thing that surprised me about the information was that there was already a coroner’s report, but enough money can speed up any bureaucracy. “I have a message for Dennis,” I stated.
“He’s asked to see you anyhow. I’ll have a car there within the next twenty minutes,” Jack said, “but what in the tap-dancing hell happened last night, Julian?”
I described finding Miranda, trying to wake her, and the ensuing battle. I didn’t mention that it had also been a trap to catch me, and I didn’t divulge her final, cryptic message. “Jack, the killer claimed that he’d done something horrible. Can you get one of your team to look for anything last night?” I asked.
“Sure thing, Jules,” he agreed and hung up the phone so that he could do so before meeting me at the bank.
The aftermath of my failure dealt with, I sank into a pit of black despair. I thought about all of my recent failures and losses: I couldn’t go back to my job; I’d probably gotten a friend killed; I’d lost my wife; I’d failed in my attempt to get revenge; I’d failed in my attempt to protect Miranda; and I’d utterly failed to put a dent in the Anarchist. Hell, the only thing I’d succeeded at was getting innocent people killed. At least I had some money in the bank. After I got the message to Dennis, I could take Olivia and get out of this madness. I could take the money and run. I’d lose Dana, but at least I’d be able to honor her memory by looking after her daughter.
With the decision made, my head felt clearer, but I swallowed a few aspirin anyway. I was just opening my sock drawer when a draft blew through the room and raised a small cloud of ash—from the lock of Miranda’s hair that had been on my nightstand. I guess that makes sense, I thought. Perhaps it had just been too close, causing me to end up in her dream? I didn’t want to just leave the envelope from Father O., containing my link to the Senior Auditor, lying under my pillow. I reached down and grabbed it, intending to stick it in my jacket pocket. A trickle of fine dust poured out. That was odd…
The tingling of nascent realization crept up my spine with the cold tickle of a thousand millipede legs; as it reached my brain, my knees went weak, and I had to sit down on the bed. If both links had been used, did that mean that both people had been present? But that would mean…and he had taunted me about my relationship with
Dana, but how would he know about that…unless? Hands shaking and breath coming in shallow gasps, I picked up the phone to call Mia.
The phone rang ten times before going to voice mail. “Mia, I need to speak to you immediately,” I said, pausing before adding, “I think I have everything I need to identify the killer, but don’t tell anyone; I need to tell you in person. Meet me in two hours at the same place you last saw me.” If she picked up the message in time, and if my hunch was right, then events might be converging perfectly for me to cut through the mess my life had become over the last couple of days. A desperate hope bloomed in me, pushing away the dark, defeated notions of a few moments ago.
I closed the line and rang Becky. “How can I serve you, oh wise master?” she answered, popping chewing gum loudly in my ear.
“I need you to come home right away to watch Olivia; something’s come up that I need to deal with immediately,” I replied, tapping my foot while I waited thirty seconds for her answer.
“I just got to the gym. When I go back to Florida, I don’t want to look like some kind of pasty white slug,” she finally said.
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll make it worth your while. Again,” I growled through gritted teeth.
“Two hundo,” she said casually.
“Done,” I sighed, closing the call and instantly sending the money from my phone.
**********
I had to leave the Redderton car waiting for ten minutes before Becky arrived, and I watched as the police exchanged words with the driver and then nodded and went back to their post. Before sprinting into the waiting sedan, I hugged Olivia tight and handed her to Becky. I didn’t exchange any words with the driver, opting instead to close my eyes and pray that the aspirin would kick in. But, just as we were passing the BT Tower, my phone rang—it was Jack.
“I think we’ve identified your something horrible. Someone managed to convince a half dozen of the old dears that worked as volunteer guides at Ham House to”—there was the sound of a pained, indrawn breath—“to…nail themselves to the doors,” the PI told me.
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