by David Risen
A long front porch stretches the length of the three-story edifice complete with a bench swing and rotten rocking chairs.
From the shadowy road, Rider sees his target sitting on the bench swing as he climbs out of the manhole.
The hulk of a man Cassandra calls Hayden rocks slowly, sitting in the center of the bench swing with his muscular arms stretched out on the top of the backrest. He appears to be looking nowhere in particular.
Rider crouches at first, but then he decides to face him head on. He rises to his full height, somewhat emboldened by the darkness of the night, and crosses the lawn. It must have been the most well-manicured lawn in Skitts mountain at one time with a cobblestone walkway starting by the mailbox and stretching all the way to the steps of the porch, but now that lawn is a field of waste-high reeds.
Rider traverses the weeds and climbs the stairs.
Halfway, Hayden catches sight of him. Hayden says nothing. He merely stares at him as if trying to decide who he is.
But as Rider steps up onto the thick, wooden planks of the porch, Hayden’s eyes bulge with fear.
Rider stops in his tracks and holds his hands out in a stop motion.
“I’m just here to talk.”
“And what ill wind whisked you to my door?” he says.
Rider ignores the question. “I’m looking for someone you may have seen.”
Hayden’s glowing eyes – eyes that look as though a fire burns behind them – search Rider’s face, and finally he seems to relax a bit. “Do I look like a receptionist?”
Rider grimaces, but ignores Hayden’s sarcastic banter.
“I’m looking for a young woman. She appears to be in her mid-twenties. She has dyed-black hair, pale white skin, green eyes, and she usually wears bright red lipstick.”
Realization dawns in Hayden’s eyes. “You’re looking for your spiritual mate, and the girl you speak of is the one.”
Rider shrugs.
Hayden’s eyes glaze over and he seems to go inside himself. He nods slowly as if making some kind of internal realization. Then he stares at Rider’s feet for a moment and furls his eyebrows. Rider sees anger seething just below the surface – anger that Hayden tried to conceal.
Hayden points his intense eyes back at Rider’s face.
“The woman you know as Cassandra had us all ready to kill each other. She played each of my sentries against one another. Seduced me, and made sure that my wife found out. I was coming for her.”
Rider frowns. “Why would she do that?”
Hayden crumples his nose in an expression of contempt. “Because she’s Lilith, cursed by God himself. She hates all men, and enjoys wreaking havoc. She revels in the misery of men.”
“What does that have to do with the person I’m trying to find?”
Hayden gives him a stormy look then seems to recede inside his own thoughts.
“She caught wind of my wrath, and she took almost half of my protectorates with her when she fled. The girl you speak of is among them.”
Rider leans closer to Hayden like he’s about to tell a friend a secret.
“I’ve been in her camp, and I didn’t see her.”
Hayden gives him a sardonic grin. “That’s because she intended to do to the girl what she accused me of wanting to do.”
He points his eyes at Rider. “Lilith is clever, just like her mate. Cunning. And now that I know who this girl – who called herself Raven – was, I completely understand.”
“What do you mean was?”
Hayden signs. “I’m very old and very powerful – just like your friend, Lilith. I was among the elder children that father placed here as an immortal. My job was to teach and help heard the young children for whom this mortality was created, but you and the like of you are far older. Neither I nor any of my peers have the ability to destroy you.”
Rider sneers. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Hayden gives Rider a look of exasperation. “She can’t kill her. What she can do is imprison her and feed off her powers – a task that has been made much easier by the witches.”
Rider squints. “Any idea where she might be keeping her?”
Hayden sinks back inside himself and nods. “Close to her. In her own residence. Hidden from wondering eyes.”
Rider nods. “Then that’s where I’m going.”
Rider turns to start down the porch.
“Father Fury?”
Rider turns back to face Hayden.
“When you free your mate, you may return here. My wife and I will offer you quarter.”
Rider nods.
Hayden reaches forth and touches Rider’s chest with his palm and then withdraws his hand. For a moment his black, leather coat blazes in the shape of a handprint.
“That’ll get you through the warded gates,” Hayden says.
After leaving Hayden’s quarter, Blake Rider made his way quietly back across town and slipped in through the magic barrier surrounding Cassandra’s sector of the city through the woods.
The first light of morning is just beginning to brighten the streets through the overcast dome of souls when Rider approaches the modest red brick building that once served as the Skitts Mountain Community Center. In fact, some of the white, wooden lettering on the outside of the building remains above the door.
Making use of the cover of the receding shadows, Rider stalks around the building looking for an alternate way inside.
On the backside of the two-story, brick building he spies his entry point. A square, eight-pane window with an aluminum frame made in a style consistent with the 1920s and 30s presents his opportunity. The window opens into the basement rising only a few inches from the grown-up weeds.
It is the type of window that props open with a single metal shaft at the bottom.
Like many windows of that style, the mechanism that held it open broke off long ago.
Rider looks left down the side of the building and then right.
No one.
He slips out of the shadows and approaches the bottom of the building sitting with his back to the brick wall. He looks around again, and then he raises the window gently and climbs through the opening head first.
Inside, he summersaults onto the concrete floor banging his head against the black, metal frame of a coal-burning furnace. The motion causes a bit of a clamor. He freezes listening hard and looking up to the wooden planks that comprise the floor of the building above.
He hears footfalls as someone paces, but no sounds of alarm.
Rider releases a shuddering breath and climbs to his feet, and then he inventories his surroundings. He stands in a dust-covered boiler room. The boiler itself is a tarnished, metal cylinder with two pipes coming from the bottom and snaking up to the floor above and two pipes rising from the top.
In the center of the wrought iron device, a small door no larger than a foot long and no taller than six inches opens to the coal compartment. Embossed in the metal just above the door is the company name “Sunbeam.”
Rider turns away from the furnace and eyes the rusted, metal door that opens into the rest of the basement. To the right of the door, one of the concrete blocks that comprises the wall broke away revealing the rotting, wooden staircase that rises into the rest of the building.
Rider starts for the door, but then presses his back flat against the concrete block wall to the right of it as he hears the door at the top of the staircase open.
Wraith’s voices – one man and one woman – sound at the top of the stairs.
He peeks through the opening made by the missing block as the two sets of footfalls descend the stairs.
“Close the door,” the woman says.
In a moment, Cassandra, still wearing the black dress she pilfered from the defunct clothing store two nights ago, appears at the foot of the stairs, and the hulking visage of Cain follows her looking glib.
“Mr. Rider did not return through any of the gates last night.”
Cain
shakes his head.
Cassandra folds her arms and gives Cain a look of scorn.
“And have you heard any news of him from your sources in Hayden’s camp?”
Cain shakes his head slowly. “Don’t know. Either one of your little angels got him, or Hayden himself cleaned his clock.”
Cassandra gives him a shrewd look. “What I find most surprising about you is that we’ve known each other in some capacity for more than ten thousand years, and you still don’t realize that I see everything and I trust no one, including you. I’m aware of your little fight with Father Fury and how you left him for dead.”
Cain smirks. “He’s a shit sent by the biggest shit of all. He needs to be a lot deader.”
Cassandra licks her voluptuous lips. “You will return to the sewage treatment plant. You will find Father Fury, and you will heal him.”
Cain laughs humorlessly. “Or you’re gonna do what? I’m just as powerful as you. I’m also the baddest sombitch you’ve got around here. If it weren’t for me, Hayden would have got you a long time ago.”
Cassandra shakes her head and props her hands on her hips. “I have powers you don’t even know about.”
Cain huffs. “Gonna kill me, huh? That’s rich considering that I’m protected by a curse from God himself.”
Cassandra shakes her head more vehemently. “No, I won’t kill you, but there are far worse things than death.
Cain huffs again. “Worse than every man hatin’ you? Worse than bein’ cast out by your own father and havin’ to roam a world that you cain’t even grow your own food in? Worse than starvin’ but not bein’ able to die? Bitch, you don’t know shit.”
She gives him a smug look. “And you do?”
Cain cocks his head. “I know a few things. I know that the reason you want him so bad is that you think he parked his body around here somewhere. You’ve had people out lookin’ for ‘em for two days, but you won’t find ‘em. You need him to spring you and only you out of this joint. You also want to do the same thing to ‘em that you did to little chicky in there.”
Cain points past Cassandra’s shoulder to the other side of the basement.
She scowls at him. “What I do is for the betterment of all of us.”
Cain waves. “What you do, you do ‘cause you want out of here so you c’n go back out to the big, bad world and fuck shit up.”
Cassandra says nothing.
Cain turns his palms up. “That’s fine with me. Do watcha want, but I’ve got my belly full of beatin’ up on decent folks. I’d rather be in here whoopin bad folks.”
She gives him a wry look. “Well, I don’t share your crisis of conscience.”
“Ain’t got nothin’ to do with conscience. I’m sick of watchin’ little boys and girls cryin’ over the bodies of their dead mommies and daddies, and me havin t’ kill ‘em out of mercy. In here, I don’t get spat on. People don’t try to beat me. You want that back, go ahead. I’m just fine, thanks. But you ain’t gonna skip away and fuck all of us in the process.”
She points at him. “I want Father Fury back.”
Cain gives her a smug look. “He’s prob’ly dead by now.”
She shakes her head and looks down at the concrete floor. “You can’t kill him. Go find him, or I’ll show you how bad things can really be. And if you don’t believe me perhaps it would serve you well to keep in mind who my mate is.”
Cain gives her a dismissive look. “Lucifer? That scrawny bastard ain’t got nothin’ on me. That might work on the young’uns, but I know a lot more about ‘em. I’d be more afraid of Hayden.”
She grins balefully. “It’s funny you should say that. Should Father Fury die, or you fail to recover him, Hayden is exactly whom I intend to turn you over to.”
Cain scowls.
She gives him a smug look. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m late for my evening meal. Since Father Fury arrived, I have to feed six times a day to keep her weak.”
Cain looks as though he’s about to retort, but finally, he sighs and turns back up the stairs.
Once she hears the door shut, Cassandra turns and walks out of his view. Rider hears her fumbling with something to the right of the metal door between them, and then he hears old hinges creak open.
Ten minutes later, Cassandra walks past the hole in the wall once again with her eyes glowing red. She climbs the rickety stairs, and closes the door at the top of the steps.
Rider listens as her footfalls cross the floor above him, and then he opens the rusty metal door leading out of the boiler room that only has a few traces of the powder blue paint that once covered it.
The main part of the basement begins to brighten now as the sun rises outside and the light drifts in through the windows.
And on the wall to Rider’s left, he finds another rusty door barring his way. This one is secured with an old padlock.
The abysmal spike snakes around his right arm. Rider swipes at the padlock and cuts it free. The rusty device clatters uselessly on the floor.
Rider flips the tarnished hasp away from the rough surface of the door and pushes it open.
The room beyond is pitch black.
The windows at the top of the wall in the back of the room have been painted black.
And the girl lay on top of an old wooden workbench.
Her nude body glows white in the blackness. Her skin is completely drained of color. She looks like a cadaver. Her body is much smaller than he thought. She doesn’t look much older than 19 or 20.
Rider approaches her, and he can’t help himself. He touches her face.
The moment his fingers touch her pale cheek, he disintegrates into smoke, and is sucked into her mouth.
Comfortably numb.
That is the music playing.
For the first time in a few days, Merissa Irons Mueller – known mostly as Raven – is not sick..
No anxiety.
No wanting to smash her face through a plate glass window.
Just at peace.
A heavy hand lands on her shoulder. Merissa opens her eyes, and the lights and colors bombard her senses. She scowls at the man touching her, but this man is the most beautiful version of Alex she’s ever seen. Pink light radiates from his rosy cheeks. His short blond hair billows and sparks like flames. His green eyes blaze like magic emeralds.
She can’t help but smile.
“Baby girl, you okay?”
“I’m great,” she says. The vibrations of her voice buzz through her entire body. The sound of it is angelic.
Her eyes drift shut again.
“What the fuck did you give her?” she hears Alex barking.
Merissa is only vaguely aware that Alex is talking about her. She’s busy falling through the deep darkness behind her closed eyelids.
Falling forever.
She hears the muffled, deep voice of a man somewhere far away, but the words sound foreign.
“You fucking dick,” Alex says. “She’s pregnant.”
“Baby,” a voice says.
Merissa knows the voice. It’s her husband of four years. The rock star Rhett Mueller.
She tries to open her eyes, but sleep has a deathly tight grip on her.
“She’s still out of it,” Rhett says. He sounds so far away.
She hears another muffled voice in the background – a woman with an educated, middle age timbre to her voice, but she can’t make out what she’s saying.
“Goddamnit,” Rhett says.
Merissa opens her eyes and harsh, white light pours into her irises causing her to clamp her eyes shut again.
“Finally awake,” a mousy voice says from beyond her footboard.
Merissa squints in the direction.
A very young girl with a body like a scarecrow wearing green scrubs with Nikes sits atop a stool fiddling around with a computer on a portable, metal desk.
“Where am I?” Merissa says.
The mousy girl holds up her finger and takes a cell phone from her desk. She dial
s a number.
The phone is turned up so loud that she hears the gravelly voice of a man answer after one ring.
“Yes, my name is Cindy Gowder from Emergency 2. I’m calling to let you know that your patient, Raven Mueller is awake.”
Merissa hears the man on the other end tell her that he’ll be up shortly, and then he hangs up.
The scarecrow girl calling herself Cindy Gowder presses a button on her phone and replaces it on her desk.
“Where am I?” Merissa repeats.
The scarecrow girl sighs.
“Bridgeton University Hospital.”
A chord of terror clangs through her chest. She sits up.
“I’ve got to get out of here!”
Scarecrow girl shakes her head. “You’re here on a 1013. Do you know what that means?”
Merissa glowers at her. “Do I look like a fucking doctor?”
“That means that you’re considered a danger to yourself or others, and you are involuntarily committed for at least three days.”
Merissa snarls. “We’ll see about that.”
Scarecrow girl places her hand on her phone. “I’ll call the orderlies if I need to. That’s why I’m here.”
“Do you know who I am?” Merissa snaps.
“I do,” a man says from the doorway. Her eyes follow the voice.
The man standing in the doorway of her hospital room is tall and slender. He has a kind face, and looks to be in his early to mid-fifties. Neatly-groomed sandy brown hair covers the top of his head with wings of gray wrapping around the temples. He wears a hunter green blazer with a black dress shirt and green tie, and he has a metal clipboard tucked under his arm.
“May I come in?” he says.
Merissa sinks back down into her uncomfortable hospital bed.
The man steps inside and wheels a short stool over to her bed and sits.
“My name is Dr. Ambrose. I’m the psychologist assigned to your case.”
Merissa leans close to him. “I’ve got to get the fuck out of here! Some very bad people are after me, and I’m a sitting duck in here.”