by A. J. Aalto
That made a lot of sense to me, but I hadn't placed a silver cross next to my bare skin since I removed my own crucifix at seventeen, the day I'd inherited Harry from Grandma Vi. In the time since, I'd been thumbing my nose at the consequences of sin at nearly every opportunity. Surely, if I stepped inside a church I'd burst into flames? I lifted the silver chain over my head and laid it gingerly atop my shirt. Golden, watching me, flinched. De Cabrera fidgeted anxiously from one foot to another.
Declan nodded for me to tuck it in. I said a short please don't let it burn me, Green Man prayer, and did so. Much to my amazement, I didn't burn, sizzle, or even so much as blister. The cross was cool, heavy, reassuring. I watched de Cabrera fiddle with the chain at his neck, flash us a gold cross, and then re-tuck it under his white t-shirt.
“What about you, Declan?” I asked. “Got an extra crucifix?”
“I'll be fine.”
I gave him a doubtful lift of my brows, but he looked certain of things. The four of us faced the house with hands on hips and studied it for a long moment, none of us wanting to rush, conflicted by the pressure of time. I didn't need the Blue Sense to tell me that everyone was wondering where the hell Batten was.
“Wanna fill us in, Geek Squad?” de Cabrera asked.
I nodded. “In short, Batten went after the hybrid zombie-revenant, and we think it's here. But he's gone in alone. We're going in after him.”
De Cabrera said low, “We sure he's even here? It's not like that four-wheeled cohete he drives is hard to miss, and it sure the fuck ain't here.”
“Also,” Golden said, “we can't just bust into a private residence, can we?”
“This is the house of a revenant,” I pointed out. “Revenants don't have legal rights, including the right to hold property.”
Golden made fancy hand-gesture motions toward the back of the property at de Cabrera, who touched the butt of his gun and nodded. She said to me, “We'll cover the back.”
I tilted my head toward Golden's. “No. We cannot afford to split up.”
“We should have waited for morning,” Declan said. “It's dusk, Dr. B. Malas will rise soon.”
“Batten forced our hand by going off on his own,” I said, starting toward the front door, determined to get into this house if I had to bust a basement window and hurl myself in. “We can't wait.”
The front door wasn't even locked, which was not comforting. A mouse in a house belongs to the housecat, and I was feeling the need to squeak and hide. After pausing to listen for echoes of someone's untimely death and being reassured by a wall of silence, Declan and I pushed onward side-by-side, the two Feds moving soundlessly ahead of us through each room on the main floor before stopping in the front foyer once more.
“Up or down?” de Cabrera asked, and then eyeballed the cellar door under the stairs, answering his own question; revenants preferred to be underground, in the safety of darkened quarters.
The cellar door was a stern cherry affair, peaked like a church door, which, despite my nervousness, sort of amused me. Heavy but well-greased, the door made no sound on its hinges. De Cabrera sidled up beside me and aimed his mini Maglite down the stairs. The steps dropped off into a dark abyss beyond the circle of white light; they were gleaming cherry to match the door, polished to the point they almost looked wet. My mind played tricks on me, turning the reddish wood into a bloody omen. The lack of a bulb in the fixture above made sense: Malas wouldn't need light to see. Revenant eyes weren't perfect: they didn't see in absolute darkness, but like cats, they simply required far less light than humans to see well.
Declan's voice was hushed. “Is this going to work, Dr. B?”
“It almost has to work better than most of my plans,” I whispered back.
He squelched a snort-giggle, but not before I heard it; it bolstered my spirits.
The smell wafting out of the basement was an interesting — if mostly repugnant — mixture of odors: charred molasses, musty felt, damp wool, old flowers, and cheesy putrefaction. A revenant does not rot, and, aside from the burnt-sugar smell of undead magic, a revenant does not stink, not even a four thousand-year-old revenant with withered pieces-parts. (“The four is a lie,” Declan had said.) Malas definitely had something else with him down there; I was hoping it was only Anne Bennett-Dixon.
“This one time, I asked Ruby Valli for help,” I confessed, looking over my shoulder at Golden. “She pushed me down her basement stairs and tried to feed me to a wrath demon after poisoning me with shitty tea.”
“You're not thinking about pushing me down these stairs and feeding me to Anne Bennett-Dixon, are you?” Golden asked.
“I wasn't before, but you've got to admit,” I said, “it's a damn good Plan B. The boys can decide who tea-bags you.”
She blanched. “Glad I brought it up, then.”
“Did anyone think to call Chapel?” de Cabrera asked us.
I dug out my cell, removed my glove to use the phone, and did a signal-bar dance. “It's ringing, but Chapel's not answering. Probably, he's still unconscious. Can we go now?”
“Text him,” de Cabrera insisted. The glow from de Cabrera's flashlight cast funny shadows across Declan's face.
“Am I your fucking mother, caballero? Text him yourself.”
Despite my objection, I texted: Rescuing Batten. Smells bad in here. Broke in. I felt it necessary to add: Sorry.
De Cabrera turned off his flashlight and reached for his own phone, and I gazed into the abyss, hoping like hell that nothing in it was gazing back.
“Man, that's no diet gloom down there,” I whispered. “That is full-fat darkness.”
I should have turned my phone to silent. The brrrip of Chapel's return text combined with the sudden vibration startled a breathy gasp from my throat; I fumbled my phone, but Declan snatched it before it hit the stairs and handed it back.
It's full-fat dark, my brain taunted. How did he catch it? Leprechaun vision? No, you idiot, it lights up when you have an incoming message. Doesn't it?
I looked at my dark phone with freshening unease. The feel of the device in my hand was no longer reassuring, like a connection to the outside world should be; I was standing in the dark with a creature — yes, creature, he's no man, he's never been a man, you knew that, you sensed it all along — who could see well enough (like a cat, Marnie, like a fucking cat) to catch things. And by the sound of it, he was fast, faster than I'd noticed before. Was I just keyed-up and seeing things through a timid lens? Neither de Cabrera nor Golden seemed to have noticed.
I put my thumb on the screen, swiped, and accidentally-on-purpose dropped it again, this time flinging it with a quick sideways flick of the wrist.
I heard Declan move and the slap of plastic into skin. This time, de Cabrera jerked with surprise. Declan whispered a curse at me, his Irish accent suddenly strong.
“Be careful,” he warned under his breath. “You drop it down the stairs, it'll smash. You're going to alert anything alive or awake down there.”
I went still. He had no trouble locating my left hand in the dark, though I made no effort to put it out for him. He pressed the phone into it and said, “Two hands, clumsy.”
“Okay,” I barely whispered, trying not to appear alarmed. Declan turned his back on me to look down the stairs watchfully. I brought the phone up and read the glowing-in-the-dark text.
Good heavens, woman, where are you, and are you quite all right?
Harry, back from his ride, answering Chapel's phone. No, I thought. No, I am absolutely not all right.
“It's Harry, isn't it? Tell him yes,” Declan advised. “You're fine. We can't have him interrupting us, here. Not now.”
My eyes sank closed. He didn't have to look at the text… his back is turned… oh, Dark Lady, defend us.
I texted: I'm fucking peachy.
“Dr. B.,” Declan said softly, “if I wanted to hurt you, don't you think I'd have done it by now?”
I swallowed hard, my breath catching at the back of m
y tongue. “What are you, Declan Edgar?” My tone must have alarmed de Cabrera; the Fed's Maglite flicked on again, and it lit Declan's face like a child's game, casting eerie shadows and making his whole face a horror-trope mask.
“I am nothing to be worried about, Dr. B.,” Declan said. “Really, I'm nothing at all.” His eyes flashed again, wet and wide in the dark, the emerald green streaked with black barbs like thorns, and there was nothing human in them but sorrow. For two seconds, he was neither short nor tall, his appearance jerking up and down before me like a TV set on the fritz. Most of my body froze in place, but my right hand inched around to my back; unfortunately, all the weapons were in the backpack, and the zipper was up high near my shoulder blades. There was no way to be subtle about reaching for something, and he was mere inches from me, now, gazing up at me from the steps below.
Golden barely breathed, “Marnie?” while de Cabrera un-holstered his gun.
I shook my head at them to tell them not to freak out.
“I am nothing,” Declan repeated, “but that's my problem, not yours. I'll never make that your problem and I will never hurt you, or make any decision that would put you in harm's way. Go ahead. Tell your Cold Company that we're fine. Chapel must still be out.”
I nodded, thumbing in: Returning a gift to an old friend. And then, with butterflies: I love you, Harry.
Harry's reply was instant. I see.
Declan's lips turned up into a sad smile. “I'll help you, Marnie, the best I can. But,” he paused to shake his head. “I can't have Harry here for this.”
I can't, not we can't. The funny, shaky feeling in my guts was not going away. There was nothing in the world I'd rather have done than take the Goon Squad outside, away from this stinking basement and the heavy cloud of death and this creature in front of me that I no longer recognized as human. But Batten could be down there in the dark, facing danger alone. Batten needed help, even if that help was only me.
“We're out of time,” I said. “Keep walking. Harry will send Chapel to find us when he's able.”
Declan seemed to weigh my seriousness and then nodded once. “I want a weapon in your hand.”
Thank fuck. I didn't waste a second arguing that one. I shrugged the backpack off and grabbed the altered Taser, shook the butane cartridge again to reassure myself about its fullness, and clicked it back into its modified compartment.
Another text vibrated in my hand but I didn't look at it. “We should hurry.”
We continued down again, letting de Cabrera's little Maglite lead the way.
CHAPTER 56
AT THE BOTTOM OF THE STAIRS, there was a long hall with horizontal cubbyholes up and down the walls, twenty or thirty of them; in each was a pine box big enough to contain a body. I wondered if Malas kept Youngers in his home. Certainly, he couldn't have this many. Maybe they were empty. Maybe they weren't. If Batten had come this way, it didn't look like he'd hauled any out to check inside.
Declan didn't pause to explore, either; my assistant was suddenly in a big hurry, moving forward on cat-quiet feet to the opening at the end of the hall, glancing over his shoulder to make sure we were still with him.
I put my go-bag carefully on the floor at the threshold, feeling the weight of Batten's life on my shoulders. We paused to listen, Golden at my side with her Glock in hand, de Cabrera bringing up the rear.
Barely visible at the end of the hall, one doorway was faintly lit by the waxy sputtering and hollow crackling of candles in hurricane jars. When the rest of us caught up to Declan, I could see that the room also housed a long dining table of glossy mahogany, freshly polished. The far end of the table was dominated by a high-backed armchair similar to the throne I'd seen in the dance hall. Behind it was a casket wrapped in chains.
Bodies sat propped in chairs along the table, eleven of them in all, propped up, heads down; some of the drier ones had been lashed with rope, spine-to-chair-back, the rope woven through gaps in the flesh. There was a smell here: dry decay, bodies tidily drained of blood mingling with the stink of vase upon vase of old flowers sitting too long in green water. Roses. They had once been red and orange and pink, now wilted and spoiled into crumbling, wrinkled blobs.
The body to the left of Malas’ throne was little more than skin stretched over a skeleton, dry and brittle, its hair smoothed in a golden waterfall across a plaid blouse in mustard yellow that was probably purchased in the late nineties.
“What are they?” Golden whispered. “Zombies? Vampires?”
Declan flashed her a chiding look at the V-word. “Just dead bodies.”
De Cabrera said, “You think.”
“I know,” Declan said.
“We're sure,” I said firmly, putting on a brave face. The Feds bought it, but Declan's lips did a little upward shift that he hid from them.
The body to the left of Malas’ throne creaked forward and her shoulders slumped. Simultaneously, Golden aimed her gun and I started back into a scrambling push against Declan. He roped me in tightly with one arm to keep me from fleeing.
“You're sure, huh?” de Cabrera hissed, his arm a hard, sturdy line behind gun and Maglite.
I gave him my best no-worries smile, but it came across shaky. “Pretty sure?”
“Oh, sweet Jesus, why am I here?” de Cabrera said, mostly to himself. “Geek Squad can kiss my ass.”
“Hey, where's that sunny positivity, Cuban?” I whispered.
“I'm positive I don't see Batten, and I'm positive we should go. Now.”
I pressed along the wall, pulling Declan behind me, and the Feds stuck together in a line, staying out of the halo of candlelight. Gulping air through our mouths, we tried not to breathe through our noses, not that it helped much. The stench of dead roses and stagnant water clung to the roof of my mouth.
I glanced at Golden, and saw her face reflect the same horror that was rolling in my belly. “Why would Malas sit with the dead?” she asked, voice low.
“They're failed experiments,” I said. “Look at their necks.”
“Women. All of them. He tried to turn them,” Declan agreed, “and when he failed, instead of ditching the bodies, he kept them.”
“Why keep them?” de Cabrera wanted to know.
“Remorse?” I murmured, pushing further into the room. “Insanity?”
“Little of both?” Golden said. “What I want to know is, if Malas is as gross as you've described him, how could he have attracted Anne? Or any woman?”
“He's Telekinetic,” I explained. “With enough practice, he could have learned to control fluctuations in people's bodily fluids, flood the human brain with hormones and chemicals: dopamine, serotonin, prolactin, phenylethylamine.” I listed these on my fingers.
“English?” de Cabrera suggested.
“Love, lust, attachment, passion, contentment, affection,” Declan translated.
“Exactly,” I said. “With his particular psychic Talent, Malas could attract any human being he wanted. He could make their brain fake love.”
Golden nodded. “Heart rape.”
I thought that was apt, if harsh. Being lied to by the chemicals being pumped into your bloodstream was a bad scene no matter how you looked at it. “That's not even going into how he can thought-toss shit around and break faces with his mind,” I said.
We searched the room surrounding Malas’ casket, a polished ebony affair with brass rails that showed no fingerprints or smudges. The chains wrapping Malas’ casket were flimsy-looking, looped around and around, but it wasn't their thickness that would hold sway, here; every inch of the chain hung with a pair of tiny crosses.
“Solid silver?” Golden asked.
“Double-crossed,” I said with grudging appreciation. “Digging the symbolism.”
Declan let out a slow breath, seemingly transfixed by the casket. “Is this Malas Nazaire?”
I nodded. “You see what happened here, don't you?”
“Batten do this?” de Cabrera asked.
“You kidding?
Silver chains like this would cost more than Batten makes in a decade; he'd have to sell the Bugatti to afford this kind of hardware. This must have been Spicer,” I said, noting Declan's shift in mood. I watched the side of my assistant's face with interest as it went curiously slack. “Malas must have known who Spicer was all along. They were working together. A collaboration before the double-cross.”
I stood closer to Declan, felt what he must have been feeling radiating from the casket: a low vibration, the hum of kinetic power bundled up and packed tight, waiting to spring forth. When I nudged Declan, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“All right?” I asked him.
He nodded rapidly. “Just… so old. The crosses are moving.”
Golden moved to the other side of the casket, checking her blind spots, gun still leading the way. She checked de Cabrera's location in the room with a quick cut of her eyes, then glanced at Declan and I. She got close enough to the casket to watch the little silver crosses jitter and hear the soft tink-tink when they touched. Malas’ resting aura, even when he was still in VK-delta sleep, was full of potential energy, bubbling like a pot on rolling boil.
“Why didn't he notice Spicer coming in here and wrapping the chains?” she asked.
I shook my head. “If a revenant is deep enough at rest, you can pound a stake through his chest, he won't notice. Even right now, he's like-dead.”
“Why the hell would John Spicer help Malas Nazaire make a female revenant in the first place?” Declan asked.
“Spicer supplies the girls, Malas supplies the UnDeath,” I guessed. “When Malas finally succeeds, Spicer unleashes zombie plague on her. Turns her.”
“But Malas reclaims her from the hospital,” Declan said, “thinking she can still be his.”
“Or,” I said, “Malas comes for her to keep his creation out of the press, out of the spotlight. He's still trying to maintain a low profile, despite Spicer's making a mess of things and attracting the attention of the FBI.”
“There's conflict between them,” Declan continued with a nod. “Malas wants one thing, Spicer wants another. Spicer knows he can't overpower Malas, he has to pretend to go along with Malas until he gets a chance to double-cross him.”