by Russ Linton
Maybe I’d have to call this one a coincidence. Those still happen around Caleb, or whatever.
Sykes felt my grip loosen and tried to worm away into the car. “I’ve got to get back to work—”
“No, you need to get back your old job. I need you to find somebody.”
“My employer—”
I cut him off with another shove. “Your employer is conducting his own business meeting. Like us. I’m your employer now, you feel me?” I placed a hand on the hilt of the Shaw Sword. A blade through the chest hadn’t killed him, but he didn’t seem eager to roll the dice one more time.
“Shall we discuss fees?” he asked.
“How about I don’t strip you naked, tie you to the hood of my ride, and take you down to Vilano Beach to get a tan? How’s that for a fee?”
He stopped squirming. “You wouldn’t.” I gave him a second to read my expression. “Who do I need to locate?”
“Araceli. She’s a friend of mine. An alchemist.”
He gave a dismissive huff. “There aren’t any...”
“There are. What do you need? Full name? An item she’s handled?”
I saw his free hand fidget nervously near his jacket pocket, the other plastered over his exposed eyes. I kept close track of his movements. He fished out his monocle. I grabbed it and he flinched.
“This what you use?”
“As a focus, yes. But I need more. I mean, people...people are tricky. Things, those I can find.”
“What about finding something you used to own then?”
“Oh, yes! Much easier,” he said, a nervous smile behind the mask.
“She’s got your Corpses for Dummies book. The grimoire.”
He risked a peek between two fingers. “She does?”
“She does. And you’re going to tell me where she is.”
He nodded eagerly. One problem solved. We needed Araceli and the book to make this happen. I only hoped she hadn’t already gone in after Caleb without us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Sykes took me on a drive over the Matanzas River and then south on Highway 1, peering through his monocle the whole drive. When we pulled up in front of Flagler Hospital, I couldn’t help but stare.
“You better not be bluffing.”
I stepped to the curb in the shadow of the seven-story building. Sun going down, the white exterior wore an orange stain, countless windows glinting fire. They’d slapped on a few mission style porticos to match the old town on the other side of the river. If you’re gonna get sick, might as well get sick in style, right?
I couldn’t help but worry. Had one of the undead roaming the city got the drop on her? Had she been hurt?
Sykes rolled down the Bentley’s window as I approached. “You better not be fucking with me,” I said.
“She’s there! Or at least the book is! You said you wanted the book, right?” His lips stretched in an oily grin beneath the milky sheen of the mask. “The book will be here in one piece at least.”
I drew aside the heavy wool jacket and exposing the sword on my hip. Sykes got humble real quick.
Bubonic’s horn honked behind us. “Want me to park the ride?” Atofo shouted from the driver’s seat, engine gunning.
He’d begged. He promised to wash it. The Bentley, he’d said, offended his cultural sensitivities. Some wack argument not even he could make sense of. Plus, he wanted us to have a “mount” nearby when the pale face ultimately betrayed us.
I don’t know why I gave in.
“I’d better leave. My employer will be wondering where I’ve gone,” Sykes said quickly.
Instinct said to keep him here. If he’d bopped my ass across town for no reason, he’d have to be dealt with. Hell, even if he’d been straight with me, he’d have to be dealt with. Maybe he wasn’t a demon, maybe somewhere in between, but he was a monster. Another blast from Bubonic’s horn and she lurched forward, tires burning an inky stain on the pavement.
I stepped away from the Bentley and Sykes took that as his cue. The limo lumbered off toward the street and Bubonic jerked its way up beside me with Atofo hunched over the wheel, his neck craned forward, intense concentration on the pavement which he was chewing up one halting inch at a time.
On open roads, he hadn’t done half bad. Slow and steady cruising. That was his problem.
When he got close enough I leaned through the window and slipped the shifter into neutral. The engine roared while the car continued to coast.
“Feet off the gas,” I said. Nothing happening as he pulsed the pedal, he gave in. I opened the door, pacing alongside as he scooted over. I dropped in, got her back into gear, and found a parking spot.
“Your crazy Alchemist in there?”
“That’s what we’re gonna find out.”
He stared at the building and wrinkled his nose. “Smells like death. And horse cartilage.”
I didn’t bother to reply. Atofo was on my heels to the lobby entrance. When the automatic doors opened he stopped to stare and I left him behind. Without looking up, the guy at the reception desk handed me a clipboard.
A patient admission form. I could’ve chuckled but that might have loosened more of the sludge in my lungs. I gave it back to him.
“I’m fine,” I said.
He pulled himself away from his terminal and gave me the stink eye, a critical look sweeping my colonial coat. “You sure?”
“I’m looking for somebody. Brown wavy hair. Might be in a ponytail. She’s got these intense eyes. Wears leather. Mouth like a sailor but it’s all in some crazy ass language nobody knows.”
The receptionist nodded. “You and me both looking.” He slowly pointed behind me.
Araceli was in a corner under the television. She’d picked a spot where she could see the door and the admissions desk without being too obvious. Geared up in her leathers, her tool satchel sat at her feet.
“Where you been?” I asked crossing the room. A big, elderly gentleman in a sweater eyed me and went back to his magazine. The only other people, a younger couple, hadn’t looked up from their cellphones.
“Aneu a escampar la boira,” she mumbled.
“English,” I said, moving through the aisle between the chairs. “Please.”
“Leave me the fuck alone,” she translated. She spoke loud enough to show she didn’t care if anyone heard. Only the older gentleman had turned his head. “None of your business,” Araceli told him. He started to turn away when she pinned the old man with a glance. “Wait, why are you here?”
“And that’s somehow your business?” he snorted.
“Are you dying?” She sounded strangely hopeful.
The man cringed, visibly offended. “No!” He spun and slapped his magazine back open on his lap.
Araceli slumped back with an angry frown. I took the seat next to her.
“I went by Caleb’s,” I said. The mention of his name had her sullen look on the verge of tears. “Ida said we needed a personal item for the spell. I got Kitterling’s too,” I said, patting my coat pocket with a muffled jingle. “But you have the book, so...”
Her feet protectively surrounded the leather satchel. “Circumstances were different for the spell at the college. But the principles are the same. The book does detail a ritual which should bring them back.”
“And?” I asked.
She turned her head and all the steely anger melted away. “We need a sacrifice.”
I pursed my lips and sunk into the chair, an invisible weight crushing me down. Atofo walked back and forth through the door, the metal rails hissing along their tracks. I paid him no mind.
“See, this is where this partnership really shines. Blood I got plenty of. Nothing I haven’t done before.”
“Not blood. We need a life.”
I leaned forward, elbows on knees to keep that weight from pressing me all the way to the floor. I didn’t want to hear what she was saying. “A rat then? Stray cat? I mean, that’s some shady ass cruelty, but I’ll do it for Cal
eb.”
“Won’t work. We need a human sacrifice.” She was quiet for too long. “It was either here or the prison, you know, do society a favor. But I’m no judge.”
Was she serious? “And you ain’t no Gallu.”
“No, I couldn’t do it. Never. But this is exactly why I worry about your hanging out with—” her eyes went to Atofo and she shook her head as he continued his dance in the doorway. “So, there are many reasons why I worry about your association with him. But murder is very often the ultimate blood sacrifice. A loss of life is the supreme expression of most magic.”
I slumped again in the chair. I wanted to argue with her but I couldn’t. I’d seen a ritual like that at Duncan Correctional. Two, actually. Tlatoani gave himself up for the sun to be reborn. And the Sunset King’s ritual had been enhanced by the deaths of those who bled and died on that same land before. If I believed Jabir, the oil pumped out of the Earth had a similar power, a sludge of former life burned in ritual.
Of course, that wasn’t human and maybe not even animal or dinosaur or whatever. Just biological gunk. Couldn’t we find a substitute too?
“There has to be another way,” I said. “We could ask Jabir—”
She flashed an icy glare. “Tricking an undead adulteress into giving useful information is one thing. Do you really think you could trust any advice this necromancer gave you?”
“I already am,” I said. She started in with her beef again and I shut it down, fast. “Listen, he’s got some ideas that got me thinking. He says the Castillo itself could be the phylactery for these undead soldiers. When Sykes fumbled his way through his first legit spell, he might have set all this off by accident. Like an explosion in a lab that had a leak in one of those Bunsen burners, you feel me?” Araceli fought to hide her interest. “These undead might have sundered themselves but they got to follow similar rules.”
“There still needs to be a controlling element, like the clock at Flagler, not just a phylactery,” she said. “And we still need a sacrifice.”
I slouched in the chair, trying to figure out what I was going to say next. Or how.
“Maybe it could be me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Hold up. I need you to trust me. But first, I need to trust you.
She could sense our conversation from the parking garage creeping up on her. That same trapped and haunted look came to her eyes which started to avoid me. I kept on.
“Remember how I said I died in that prison? Inside the rooms you could see what was there in This World. One of the cells had this dude named Triple H, only he wasn’t a person. He was a skull.” She dipped her eyes and I charged ahead. “You asked him questions, any question, and he had the answer.” I watched her shrink inward, her hands coming together and nervously kneading. “His full name was Thrice Great Hermes.”
“Hermes Trismegistus was the first of us, you know,” she said quietly, hands in her lap. “Mary the Prophetess came after him and established a field he’d only hinted at. When the library at Alexandria burned, so much of the teaching of early Alchemists was lost. People wanted a way to restore that information and protect it. They started talking about creating a Brazen Head. An idol that could recall and speak knowledge. And then, somebody succeeded.”
She knew her secrets had been laid bare. Far from satisfying, it was somber. Things she hadn’t told me, she’d kept to herself as a protection, a talisman.
“The Brazen Head seemed like a great plan at first,” she continued. “Eight centuries ago, Doctor Mirabilis finally succeeded. A friar, the catacombs below his monastery inspired the plan. We kept the bones of saints for their miraculous properties, so he reasoned, why not alchemists? From them, he could tease the secrets their spirits held and process them through his mechanical wonder like a switchboard to the dead. Many didn’t approve of the fusion of alchemy and spirit magic. We soon understood why.” She took in a deep breath and her leather creaked under the drone of the television above her. “Mordecai came into possession of the skull not long after. It was during the Inquisition when demonic forces infiltrated the church. But he wasn’t content to have the wisdom of the ancients. He wanted more.” She swallowed and her shoulders tightened. “So he came for us, one by one.”
I could feel her loss. Her people, her family, hunted down.
“Why lie to me?”
Angry eyes flashed. When I noticed the tear trickling down her cheek, she looked the other way. “I was lying to myself, not you. I always held out hope I wasn’t alone. That as I tracked down Mordecai, I’d find survivors.”
“Your religious order then? Is that even real?”
She pursed her lips. “The order is very real. Thousands of members strong, their churches still stand in Rome. But the secret society which once thrived there is gone. My father and I were the last.” Her lip crept upward into a forlorn smile. “Growing up in the Basilica de la Mercè made it easy to believe I lived in a different world. Pare told so many stories about the universities of Rome, Byzantium, Dublin, I could imagine they were still there. After he died, I searched for them.”
Her head dropped and I could tell she was struggling. Answers I’d demanded, I didn’t need anymore. I touched her shoulder to let her know she didn’t have to continue. Tears flowed in earnest. She lightly brushed my hand away.
“We don’t have much time,” she said, staring into her hands. “The longer Caleb and Kitterling stay gone, the less of them left to save.”
Not great news for Kitterling. Caleb had just been nabbed hours ago, not days. He’d make it, I was certain. And I damn sure wasn’t going to give up on him.
“We’ll find another way,” I said. “I’ve got an idea.”
She gave me a sideways glance through wet and swollen eyes. “I won’t lose Caleb and I won’t abandon my duty.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
Atofo tired of the door and wandered into the lobby. He sat down beside the old man who crowded as far as he could into the opposite arm of his chair. Undeterred, Atofo shoved his face up in the man’s personal space.
“What are you reading?”
“Time,” the old man said from his precarious lean.
Atofo gave a thoughtful frown. “Ugh. White people and time. You know it doesn’t work the way you pretend it does? No,” he said, pointing a claw-like fingernail which sent the old man cross-eyed. “You really want to get deep? Metaphysical and shit? You should read Cosmo.” He finished with a smile, those filed teeth a box full of razors.
The old man stumbled out of his chair and bailed.
Atofo got up and came over to us, still smiling. “Why the face of the turtle?” He put on an exaggerated frown. “You should try this door,” he added, smiling again. “It has self-preservation technology. It moves before you can smash it open!”
“Aneu a escampar la boira,” she muttered, this time to him.
“Come on,” I said, standing up. “Let’s go.”
Deep in thought, Araceli wiped her eyes and got to her feet. “I’ll need to go to the forge and prepare.”
I tugged at the collar of my fancy coat. “We’ll pick you up there. I’ve got to call in some backup.”
Atofo’s eyes flared with anticipation. “Code red, homey?”
I bowed my head and started walking. “I can’t even with you right now.”
Somehow, we got through the door without defeating the self-preservation technology. If only the Castillo would be that easy. We’d need an army and thanks to Caleb, I knew where to find one.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I dropped Araceli off at the forge like she asked. She even took Atofo’s broken knife off his hands. He laughed, but gave it to her, saying something crude about her lady parts. He’d kept his man parts after the comment so I should’ve been worried about Araceli. The whole ride she stayed distracted, distant. No questions about my plan. That part, I was down with.
Atofo and I drove to Fort Mose. Or where it used to be.
/> We stood at the end of a raised boardwalk stretched out over mudflats and tufted with wiry grass. Scraggly pines and anemic palms grew as far out into the river bottom as they dared then gave way to a brackish sludge, rich in the way only mud can be rich.
“You sure this is the spot?” I asked Atofo.
He nodded gravely. His mouth had stopped spewing nonsense on the drive here. I almost started to worry about him too.
The Fort Mose visitor’s center hadn’t been much help. Lots to read, but we didn’t have time for history lessons. They’d built a fort here once defended by free slaves from the British colony of Carolina. You wanted to get all scholarly, this was the first official settlement of freed Africans in the United States.
“Free.” What a joke.
Free because they had to live out here, on the marshy edge of the Saint Augustine suburbs and take the brunt of any initial attack from the British. Free as long as they didn’t try to leave their mud huts and earth walls to go live in the city. Once, when Fort Mose had been burnt to the ground, the citizens sought refuge behind Saint Augustine’s walls only to be chased out as soon as the siege was over. Driven back to their own trenches — literal fucking trenches.
“The place didn’t gentrify so well, huh?” Atofo launched his cruddy remark with less venom than usual. He sounded almost sad. “You know, maybe we could just take out the castle by ourselves. The Lady clearly has some anger issues. She’ll be good for a dozen soldiers or so. You...you got nothing to lose.”
“Just us and your dried up rain stick?”
He ignored the attack on his shamanhood and closed his eyes. A brief calm overcame his features and he slowly raised his eyelids. “I can pass over here with you, but only with you. We’re tied together. A package deal.”
I folded my arms and squared up with him. “How so?”
He fumbled for the right words. “The apprentice thing,” he offered, uncertainly. “And you bleed too much. Like a woman.” He snarled out the word woman. Wasn’t sure where the sudden burst of misogyny came from but Atofo was an equal opportunity offender.