I nodded.
“Well, there are only a few of us in the main family line, and we each have some quirk like that. If you’re wondering about poor, late Derrick, his was the ability to sense any extradimensional energy being used near him. He was drawn to that kind of crap like a moth to a flame. It got him all kinds of burned. I guess one time too many in the end,” Jack said, his voice growing rough on the last sentence. He ran one hand through his thick black hair and looked me straight in the eye.
“My brother died because he got caught up in one of the Sons’ schemes, the same one that cost you your wife. When I met you, I wanted to blame you, but even as I beat the shit out of you, I knew you were telling the truth. That’s my little gift. I’m like a human lie detector, except instead of interpreting a little squiggly line on a page, I can tell if someone is lying because of the torrent of shit, literally, that I see spilling out of their mouth as they talk,” Jack explained.
“What about sign language?” I asked.
“Huh?” Jack replied.
“Well, what if someone, like someone deaf, is using sign language? Do you see crap-covered hands?” I clarified.
“You’re an idiot,” Jack said. There was a long pause. “But the answer to your question is yes.”
“So are we like the X-Men or Harry Potter or what?” I asked, glancing at Olivia and wondering if she might have inherited whatever had made me what I am.
“Like I told you earlier, my family has been involved in this for a long time, but we usually provide a publicly acceptable, familiar face to the actions of people much, much farther down the rabbit hole. The simplest way to explain it is that people like us are…contaminated. Somewhere along the line, at some important stage of our development, we were exposed to energies that shouldn’t be in this world, and they left a mark,” the PI finished, waving one catcher’s-mitt-sized hand in the air.
“Great. Now I know that you get to stare at shit all day, and that I’ve been tainted by alien energies. How exactly does that help me get Dana back or even help me stop that asshole, the Senior Auditor, from running around the Dreamscape trying to kill bankers?” I said, curling my lip and letting an acerbic note slip into my voice.
“You do remember that I’ve slapped the shit out of you on multiple occasions?” he snapped at me.
“Yeah—and what’s up with all the slapping?” I asked.
“I don’t want to mess up your pretty face, Jules,” Jack replied, grinning. The tension went out of the room. “Seriously, though, I’ve busted my hand so many times that I’ve had to lay off the punches. Back to business—what I’m telling you is that the agency knows things about the supernatural landscape of London. Things like where the Sons of Perseus have their headquarters. Where you might be able to find a lowlife, oath-breaking, wife-disappearing, brother-killing piece of shit like Senior Auditor Brown,” Jack finished.
“Ummm…but won’t he know that you know and that you’ll tell me?” I asked, my interest piqued.
“Exactly,” Jack replied, a malicious grin spreading across his slab-like features. “And I have a cunning plan to get us into the Son’s Headquarters.”
**********
Jack’s plan was not cunning. The door rattled in its frame as Jack slammed it on his way out. It had taken us an hour to agree on a version of the plan that we could both live with, and the big man hadn’t left happy.
I had a lot of preparation to do if I was going to be ready with my end of the plan, but first I popped my head into the kitchen, where I could hear Olivia playing. There was a metal saucepan on the floor, and two plastic, cartoon-pig-covered cups were placed on either side of it.
“Whatya doin’, sweetheart?” I asked, squatting down, my knees popping like tiny gunshots.
Ollie smiled up at me. “Tea party,” she explained.
My heart melted, and I sat down. “Can I join you, Ollie?” I asked, smiling back.
“No, Daddy, there’s no room for you,” she said, a fierce scowl wrinkling her cherubic features as she pointed at the cup in front of me. “That’s Mommy’s spot.” Where was her mommy, and what was happening to her? I thought, trying not to let fall the tears that welled up in my eyes…
**********
I prepped and got dressed on autopilot. There was a feeling of dread hanging over me, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. A lot of the pieces of the puzzle were starting to fall into place, and I had a plan, so I should be feeling better, but there was something that I was missing. That line of thought terminated as I heard the doorknob rattling and took three long strides into the hallway, putting myself between Olivia and whoever was at the door.
My heart pounded as the door cracked open. “Julian, what the hell are you playing at!” Becky half shouted, jumping in surprise as she came into the house. Her reaction confused me until I looked down and saw that I’d drawn the reproduction gladius that had come in the mail earlier in the day. “Have you lost your fucking mind?” she continued as she barged past me into the house, her arms overflowing with shopping bags. I took a deep breath, sheathed the short sword with a satisfying ring of metal on metal, and fastened the belt on my trench coat.
“You do remember that we’ve had someone break into the house and try to kidnap my daughter?” I called defensively to her retreating back.
“You know, that coat is the only piece of clothing you own that shouldn’t be thrown in the trash, doused in gasoline, and burned,” Becky said as I joined her in the kitchen. “But you don’t even know how to wear it properly. You don’t actually buckle it, you just loop the belt through and pull it tight,” she said, and then proceeded to “fix” my outfit. I was pretty sure that this was her way of trying to be conciliatory, so I humored her and left the belt undone.
“I’m going to need to go out for a couple of hours, but I should be back by this evening,” I said carefully.
I expected a sharp retort, but maybe the huge bundles of cash I’d been doling out lately were buying me some goodwill because the petite blonde unzipped her tight-fitting leather bomber jacket and replied in a neutral tone, “I have a date tonight, so you’d better be back here to watch Ollie by seven.” I dispensed a hug for Olivia and trudged back out into the chilly, drizzly October afternoon without another word, fastening my belt.
**********
An hour later, I was sitting on the passenger side of a black Mercedes C-Class and looking at the exterior of a building on Temple Avenue. “Are you serious? The London headquarters of the Sons of Perseus is disguised as a publishing company, with almost the same name as the organization, located on Temple Avenue?” I asked incredulously while gesturing at the neoclassical frontage. “I mean, come on! There are even two heroically proportioned statues of kings on the outside of the building, and we’re less than two blocks from a church founded by the Knights Templar! It’s like they aren’t even trying!”
“Did you find this place on your own?” Jack said to me with raised eyebrows as he loosened a paisley silk tie from around his bull neck. “This is London; you can hide anything in plain sight here,” he finished, and got out of the car.
We trotted toward the glass doors, but before we’d even reached the other side of the narrow “avenue,” Mia, wearing a form-fitting, charcoal-gray suit jacket and skirt, clacked down the stairs in a pair of black heels and blocked our entrance. “I’m surprised to see you again already, Mr. Adler. Jack, was our hospitality so superlative that you’d like to return? You know there’s always a permanent place available here for you and yours if you want to join us,” she said, smiling broadly. “As I’m sure you’re both aware, the Senior Auditor isn’t available, and we’re not accepting any visitors at the moment. Is there something else that I could help you fine gentlemen with?” She arched one shapely dark-brown eyebrow.
“Well, Mia, I don’t think that’s any way to treat an old friend, is it?” Jack said, a broad smile, looking as natural as tits on a boar, plastered across his face as he sashayed forward, t
hick arms held wide to sweep the athletic younger woman into a hug. Mia stepped back into the office, letting the door bang shut.
“Nice try, boys,” she said through the glass, “but I’m not interested in Mr. Adler being the man of my dreams tonight,” she finished smugly, throwing the security bolts.
“You know that there’s only one woman whose dreams I’m interested in, Mia, and it’s not you,” I said, and saw her superior exterior crack for just a moment. “Anyhow, we’ve got what we came for.” I tossed a small chip of masonry with my left hand and swiped it out of the air with my right before pocketing the fragment of the building that I’d hacked off with a small chisel while Mia had been distracted.
She reached down to her hip, and her fingers were inches from an ID card that likely had an embedded panic button when Jack’s baritone rumbled, “Before you call any of the goon squad, you might want to look around.” He nonchalantly moseyed back to the sedan with the kind of confidently rolling gait that would have looked more natural in a pair of jeans and cowboy boots than it did in the smart salmon-colored suit that he had on. A dozen seemingly random passersby stopped what they were doing and fell into step with the big man.
Mia’s eyes squinted, and she stared daggers at me. I winked. “One last thing, Mia, if you’ll just humor me, when you go up to tell all of this to your boss—” I started, but she cut me off.
“I told you, he isn’t here,” she said, patiently but firmly.
“As I said, when you go up to tell all of this to your boss, just ask if you can take a good look under his bandages or even just see if you can shake his left hand,” I finished.
Mia pursed her lips ever so slightly, and I thought that perhaps I’d hit a nerve, but then she composed herself and plastered on her false smile again. “Good-bye, Mr. Adler,” Mia said, and turned away.
**********
“That was easier than I expected,” I commented to Jack as I climbed into the passenger seat while one of his men closed the door for me.
“As much as I’m normally a big fan of easy, I don’t like it,” Jack replied. “I’ve never seen it that empty. Mia shouldn’t have had to come greet us on her own. They’re up to something, Jules, mark my words.” He shook his head disapprovingly as he turned the steering wheel hard and cut through an alley so narrow that a pedestrian had to duck into a doorway arch just to let us through.
I pondered Jack’s words. I didn’t know enough about the Sons of Perseus to be sure if their activities were normal or not, but I suspected that the Senior Auditor wasn’t going to take my accusations lying down.
“Jack, this just isn’t adding up for me. If the Sons of Perseus were founded to protect society against the abuse of extradimensional entities, then who could they be targeting?” I speculated. Working from the assumption that their plans were related to the murdered bankers, I tried to work out the chain of logic. They weren’t arresting the Senior Auditor because they didn’t believe my accusation. They weren’t doing anything to the Mammonites because they had been left alone for thousands of years. They weren’t going to swoop down on some unknown party because otherwise Mia wouldn’t have reacted so defensively. The gears clicked into place. Shit.
Jack must have been pondering along the same lines. “I think that you and your family should come stay at our compound tonight. You can do whatever you need to do from there,” the big man said, whipping us out of the alley and onto Fleet Street where it turned into the Strand.
“I spent all afternoon prepping for my Dreamwalking.” Jack raised an eyebrow at the change of verb, but I continued without explanation: That would stay between me and Miranda. “It’s already nearly seven; I’ll never have time to get everything set up somewhere else,” I said, looking out the window and refusing to meet Jack’s eyes.
“Well, if you can’t come with me, then let me take your sister-in-law and Olivia. Our headquarters building is a fortress; they’ll be safe. We can’t get revenge on Brown if you’re distracted by looking after them, and me and mine can’t do anything else to help you with this next part,” Jack rumbled, and jerked the car aggressively through early-evening traffic as our path weaved down the Westway.
I thought about his offer. Olivia had already been the target of the Sons of Perseus when they tried to snatch her to gain leverage over me. Realistically, if Jack were offering my child a safe place to stay until this madness was resolved, then I should accept his offer and thank him twice, but some stubborn core of principle inside of me rose up, wailing. How could I try to protect other people, how could I look myself in the eye, how could I call myself a man if I wasn’t able to protect my own family? A cold shiver ran down my spine as the inevitable self-recrimination whispered into my ear that I hadn’t been able to protect Dana.
“Thanks, Jack, but I’ve got things under control,” I said.
“Bullshit,” he replied immediately, and paused for a moment before continuing. “You barely have the first clue what you’re involved in. Do you have any professionals watching the house? Have you fit new locks since you moved in? What security system have you had installed? What about a fire-suppression system?” He blasted out the questions in rapid succession. I winced at the last one; it was a low blow, considering that I was pretty sure his brother had been the one to burn down my house.
I clenched my fists and ground my teeth, but then I thought about my battle with the puca. I’d kept secrets and pushed away every offer of help, sending my wife across the Atlantic Ocean, yet I’d still lost her. I swallowed my pride. “Look, I’ve got money now. I’ll pay to send Ollie and Becky to stay at your headquarters, and then you can carry on, sure that your dancing bear here isn’t going to be distracted by anything so trivial as his daughter being kidnapped,” I replied.
“Done. But because you had to be an asshole about it, and I know assholes, I’m charging you double. With what Dennis gave you, you can afford it,” he answered with a wink, and then added, “You’re gonna eat lightning and crap thunder tonight, Jules,”
I raised an eyebrow. “I pity the poor bastard with that power.”
**********
When I walked in, Olivia was plopped in front of the TV, and Becky was lounging on a leather sofa that had been delivered earlier in the week. Seeing Becky in profile, the resemblance to her older sister was so strong that a lump rose up in my throat, and I fiddled with my wedding ring. Come find me. No one greeted me, which was probably fair. It was probably also fair when Becky threw an absolute shit-fit at my suggestion that she and Olivia go spend the night under the protection of the Reddertons, but another five grand of Dennis’s money finally took care of that problem. A car pulled up a few minutes later, Olivia cried as I waved good-bye, and I slunk back to the bedroom that we had been sharing.
When I had told Jack that I didn’t have time to re-create my preparations somewhere else, I wasn’t lying—which was good, since he would have known. Hands on hips, I surveyed the fruits of my labor. With the exception of a small gap, the circle scorched into the floor around my bed was covered in salt. I’d tacked a picture of the Sons’ headquarters to the ceiling inside of the ring. And on the floor, I’d built, with Olivia’s help, a three-foot-high scale replica of the building in Lego. Scattered throughout the rest of the circle was garbage; in particular, it was refuse from the dumpsters outside of the Sons’ HQ. I bent down and added the purloined chip of stonework to the Lego model.
If ignorance is bliss, then when it came to thaumaturgy, magic, extradimensional energy, or whatever the hell you want to call it, I should have been called Blissy McBlissface—but I did know about dreams. I knew that people dreamt about the things that they saw just before they went to sleep—I’d dealt with enough midnight-movie monsters to be sure of that—so the picture was there to help focus my mind at the critical instant of transition to the Dreamscape. What little I did know about magic, like calling to like, had led me to build the model and get the small chunk of the building. The garbage had been Jack’s su
ggestion: “Well, you definitely need three focus items, it’s the magic number—and what you’re missing is something that’s been inside the Sons’ HQ but then got out again. You told me you’ve been trapped before. Can’t have that happening.” Still, I had to hope that no one else saw my setup, otherwise I’d have to add Child Protective Services to the list of people who wanted to snatch my daughter away from me.
Satisfied, I got ready for bed, closed the circle of salt behind me, and lay down to read until I could drift off to sleep.
Chapter 26 2100–0500, Sunday, October 4, 2015
I opened my eyes. My trench coat covered me shoulder to knee; I felt the familiar bounce of the sheathed gladius hanging off of my hip, and best of all—I wasn’t stuck in the goddamned little girl’s dormitory or bedroom or whatever the hell it was. No, I was exactly where I was supposed to be, standing on the pavement of Temple Avenue, just outside of the headquarters of the Sons of Perseus. “WHO’S THE MAN?” I shouted, thumping my chest and spreading my arms wide.
Then I looked up; instead of the well-made, five-story, limestone building that I’d stood in front of earlier today, a towering basalt edifice reared up at least three hundred feet.
“Shit.” I’d long been aware that certain structures, especially those like churches and hospitals, where strong emotions regularly occurred, held an extra portion of solidity or reality in the Dreamscape. That extra something could manifest in different ways, such as crystal-clear detail or the dreamer being particularly unlikely to be jolted awake by my actions. However, I’d never seen a structure undergo a transformation like the one that loomed before me.
I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders. The clock was ticking to find Brown before he woke up, so I swallowed, took a deep breath, and strode up to the wrought-iron portcullis covering the entrance.
**********
Twenty minutes later, I was still stuck outside of the gate, chest heaving as I stared at the pulverized pry bar that lay on the pavement, joining a smashed sledgehammer, an empty acetylene torch, a jammed jackhammer, a busted battering ram, and a scuppered skeleton key. I’d hoped to get in relatively quietly, but time was passing in the real world, so I decided to go for loud and fast.
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