Harvester

by Erik Henry Vick

  Shannon nodded, trying to keep the disappointment off her face.

  But I imagine SPECTRe can help there.

  Shannon looked at Kristy. “I was beginning to wonder if my memory was playing tricks on me. But why would you think I have‍—‍”

  No. It seems like it is a surprise side-effect of having a demon for a boyfriend.

  “‍—‍anything to do with this SPECTRe thing.”

  “Must have been something your friends said.” Kristy cocked her head to the side and smiled. Who else would be behind it?

  “My surprise was different. But we can talk about that after I get home.” She turned her face toward the window. “And Greg?”

  “Joe is out of surgery.”

  “And?”

  “He’s in recovery. The bleed was a bad one, but they’ve got it stopped.”

  “And?”

  Kristy drew a deep breath and let it out all at once. “His prognosis is guarded at this time, Shannon. His recovery will be long and difficult.”

  18

  “I don’t know about this, Benny,” said Mike.

  The two men stood outside their newly rented storage space on the outskirts of Erie. A delivery truck drove back up the alley between rows of garage-like storage units toward the exit. A logo reading, “The Safe Place” was emblazoned on its back and sides.

  Benny pointed his chin at the back of Mike’s Cadillac. “We have to do something with it. And it’s better if it’s not where we are. Right?”

  “Yeah, I have enough of the temptation bit.”

  “Me, too. Let’s get it in the safe.”

  Mike opened the trunk of his Cadillac and lifted a cardboard box. “Do we remove the box or put it in as is?”

  Benny tilted his head to the side, staring at the box for a moment. “Hmm.”

  “Let’s leave it in. What can it hurt?” Mike turned and entered the four-foot-by-six-foot storage area. Their new safe sat in the very back, its massive refrigerator-sized door hanging open. Mike put the cardboard box inside the safe, closed the door, and spun the dial. “I sure hope you memorized the combination.”

  Benny tapped his temple with his finger. “It’s all right up here.”

  “I have to tell you, Benny… I feel out of my depth here. I have no idea what we should do.”

  “Well, the first thing we need to do is find out what the hell that lamp is.”

  19

  Delo shrank back into the shadows as Mike Richards drove his Cadillac to the main gate. It wouldn’t do for them to see him. Not after all the trouble he’d taken to keep an eye on them for thirty-six hours.

  With one side of his mouth curled upward, Delo dialed Brigitta’s number once again. When Brigitta herself answered, his grin broadened.

  “Delo,” she said.

  “Mistress. The talisman is stored in bay 19 of the You Lock It Tight self-storage yard in Erie.”

  “Good work.”

  “Would you like me to retrieve it? It would be a simple matter.” When she spoke, Dan could hear her smile in her voice.

  “Not at this time. Let them think they have the advantage. For this, all is forgiven.”

  “I never betrayed you, Mistress.”

  “Oh, I know that, Dan. I meant this cloak and dagger bullshit you undertook instead of explaining yourself and coming to our aid at the park.”

  “Oh.” His voice sounded petty and weak, and he hated it. “Yes, thank you.”

  “Can you stand to keep watch over their house for another day or two? Things are in flux at the moment.”

  “Of course, Mistress. I’m yours to command.”

  “Unless you think I’m mad at you,” she said.

  His heart thudded in his chest, but the teasing quality of her voice reduced his fear. “I didn’t think. I‍—‍”

  “Relax, Dan Delo. I’m teasing you.”

  “Of course, Mistress.”

  20

  Sean rubbed his gritty, burning eyes. He hadn’t slept at all the previous night. He hadn’t left his computer chair since the call for research came in. The call’s priority code was the highest Sean had ever seen, and it bore the coded marks of one of SPECTRe’s founders—a mark Sean knew belonged to Benny Cartwright.

  In the previous nineteen hours, Sean had examined the detailed photographs of the lamp, including the maker’s marks on the bottom of its stand. The request had said to ignore the shade, to even ignore the colors, which was how many Tiffany lamps were identified—the antique coloring, the patina.

  The maker’s mark had also proved problematic. It wasn’t one associated with Tiffany, and what was worse, the mark bore no characters of any alphabet the researchers could recognize.

  Sean believed it was cuneiform, something old. It was a long string of marks that almost looked like chicken scratch. He’d copied it to a blank sheet of paper so he could see it all in a line. It read:

  He took a photo on his phone and texted it to an old anthropology professor at his alma mater, hoping she could translate it. Next, Sean uploaded the picture into the SPECTRe app and sent it off, searching for similar images.

  He sat back and stretched. His eyelids seemed to weigh twenty pounds apiece, and he longed to shut them. He stood and stretched more, then turned to go to bed.

  He had just laid his hand on the doorknob when his phone played its email chime. The email was from his former professor. It said:

  “Easy. This says, ‘Hail Lilitu, Bearer of Chaos.’ You were right about the cuneiform. Akkadian cuneiform to be precise.”

  He turned back to his computer and sat down, reinvigorated. He passed the translation on to the other SPECTRe researchers, then started poking around the web, looking for the phrase.

  21

  Toby had waited throughout the day for Lily’s return. Then he had waited through the evening and through half the night. Still no Lily.

  He’d learned his lesson about walking during the day and about dehydration and heat stroke. The water barrel Lily had left seemed bottomless. No matter how much he drank, it remained full.

  The same was not true of the grill, however, so by the time he gave up and decided to get some sleep, his stomach felt like someone had dug out his innards with a melon scooper.

  She’d left him shelter, water, and the means to cook food, but no food, and perhaps worse, nothing at all to do. Toby had spent the day ruminating in his own thoughts, playing the shoulda-woulda-coulda game, racking his brain for memories of what might have happened the previous morning.

  Toby didn’t know what to do next. It seemed reckless to set off blindly again. It seemed stupid to leave the only water source he knew of within six thousand miles. But sitting there, alone in the desert, while who knew what was going on back in New York, well, it seemed…irresponsible.

  Bādiyat al-Shām Lily had called it. The Syrian Desert. Toby didn’t know much about it, but what he knew gave him pause. He knew it stretched from Syria through Iraq, Jordan, and into Saudi Arabia, where it merged with another desert. He had no idea where in that vast area he was.

  He moved to the water barrel and drew another dipper of water, swishing the cold liquid in his mouth before he swallowed. His stomach growled; water wasn’t what it wanted. He moved to the edge of the pavilion and stared out into the desert.

  Despite how silly it would be to leave a water source that seemed infinite, Toby couldn’t stay there. His friends back in New York would be continuing the fight, and he needed to be there.

  If Lily doesn’t show up by nightfall, I’m leaving without her.

  He snapped his tongue against the back of his teeth and sneered at his own bravado. The truth of it was that fear of the desert’s killing power had sunk its teeth deep into Toby’s flesh.

  He no longer wondered if the desert were real because it didn’t matter. Real or all in his mind, it still had the power to kill him. Lily had proved that to him.

  But she’d also proved something else.

  Toby’s life depended on
remaining in Lily’s good graces, and she had no compunction about leaving him to his own devices—all of which seemed likely to kill him.

  He wondered yet again whether Shannon and Greg had survived, whether Mike had gotten the rest of them out of there and back to safety. His memory showed him Scott’s broken body, and he began yet another round of shoulda-woulda-coulda.

  Chapter 3

  Monday

  1

  She appeared in the center of the intersection, evoking the screech of rubber and the crunch of bent sheet metal as a car swerved into the wrong lane to avoid her. Lily smiled at the driver and tipped him a wink—though both wink and smile were ugly, malignant. With a flick of her fingers, she sent the car careening up onto the sidewalk, its rear quarter panel smashing the big plate glass window of Mel’s You Need It store. The driver froze with both hands locked on the wheel, his gaze stuck on Lily, his lips quivering.

  “Ay, que chulo,” she sneered. With a flip of her vermilion hair, she turned and walked up the double yellow lines painted in the center of the road. She gazed straight ahead, not acknowledging the open stares and whispers of the people and mazzikim out and about in Oneka Falls.

  Her thing with Toby Burton wasn’t going as she had planned. Her charms had worked on him, but not to the extent she considered a success. She’d spent the last sixteen hours walking the streets of New York City, trying to lose herself in her memories, but Toby’s resistance lurked in the back of her mind, spoiling everything.

  The worst part about it was that Lily couldn’t figure out the source of his strength. He was a male, and all males should be putty in her hands. It wasn’t fair that he could resist her.

  “Mistress?”

  Lily came back to herself with a start. She stopped walking in favor of just standing in the middle of the road, arms akimbo, staring off into space. This won’t do. This won’t do at all. She turned toward Abyzou. “Where is Naamah?”

  Abyzou extended her arm and swept it toward the glass door with the words Oneka Falls Town Hall emblazoned on it in gold leaf. “She’s inside, Mistress. Come, I’ll take you to her.”

  Lily narrowed her eyes and studied the ifrit. Concern was written in the set of her flame-borne features. Lily motioned Abyzou to proceed and followed her into the building.

  Abyzou led her to the office of the town manager and pushed through the closed the door without knocking. Naamah sat in a chair that was twice again too big for her, swiveled to face the floor-to-ceiling picture window, staring out at the maple tree that grew in the lawn. The shrapnel of broken decorations and tchotchkes lay in the corner, and every surface inside the office had been swept clean as though Naamah had gone from place to place, flinging whatever had rested there into the corner.

  “I suppose these trinkets must serve some purpose,” said Lily.

  Without turning, Naamah said, “Must everything I do become fodder for one of your speeches?”

  “Don’t‍—‍” began Abyzou.

  “Can we not?” Lily strutted into the room and sat in one of the empty chairs across the desk from Naamah. “Can we forgo the normal mother-daughter tit for tat? It wearies me.”

  Naamah’s only response was a snort.

  A sigh gusted from Lily. “Tell me the others have been handled.”

  As slow as a glacier, Naamah spun in the chair to face her mother. She lifted one eyebrow. “Don’t tell me that the great Lilitu has failed.”

  Lily grimaced and turned to Abyzou with a long-suffering expression on her face.

  “Neither Naamah nor Lamia succeeded, Mistress.”

  Stone-faced, Lily nodded. “And the talisman?”

  “I don’t know how they figured it out,” said Naamah. “We gave no clue, and yet as soon as Benny Cartwright caught on that I was in his head, they hustled the talisman away.”

  “Why isn’t this good news?” asked Lily. “Why haven’t you sent someone to retrieve it?”

  Naamah took a deep breath. “Wherever they took it, I can no longer feel it.”

  Again, Lily turned to Abyzou, this time arching her eyebrows.

  “Don’t look at her! You don’t need her confirmation that what I say is true, Mother!”

  Lily turned a wry expression on her daughter. “I merely wanted to know if Abyzou could sense it. She has a special link with the talisman, after all.”

  Abyzou crossed one arm made of golden flame over the other and gave herself a little hug. “I can touch it, Mistress. I can enter it. But they put it in some kind of container, and that, I can’t breach.”

  “And that doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Naamah. “If you can touch it, enter it, then why can’t you say where it is?”

  “Abyzou and the talisman share a chthonic link. It isn’t a thing of this universe.”

  Abyzou uncrossed her arms. “Yes, I touch the talisman as though traveling through a tunnel. It serves me as a doorway back into this realm.”

  “So break out of the tunnel when you are near.” Naamah closed her eyes and rested her face in her hands. “I wish things could go back to how they were.”

  “Wish in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up first,” said Lily.

  “Helpful, as always, Mother.”

  Lily pursed her lips and scowled.

  “If you want to be helpful, tell me what to do next‍—‍” Naamah swiveled her chair and returned to staring out the window. “‍—‍because I don’t have a clue.”

  2

  Toby woke to the sound of the pavilion walls flapping and snapping. Outside, the wind carried streamers of sand aloft, then flung the sand earthward once more. Dark, angry clouds covered the sky, obscuring the sun.

  Lily hadn’t shown up by nightfall, and he’d found a bevy of excuses to stay another day and night—not the least of which was the fear of leaving the water barrel behind. He’d tried to lift it, but it weighed too much.

  His stomach grumbled, hot and painful as though someone had stuck him with a fireplace poker. He’d taken a brief exploratory walk late in the previous day, hoping to find plant life—cactus at least—but all he’d found was sand and more sand.

  Toby got up and walked to the water barrel. He submerged the copper dipper, then lifted it to his mouth. The water even tastes good, but I’ve got to find something to eat.

  He knew he could survive without food for a long time. Far longer than most people thought. Plus, he’d had a lot of water—at least a gallon—and that had staved off some of the hunger. Even so, he felt good. No headaches, no nausea, nothing.

  Which isn’t to say that I wouldn’t destroy a juicy filet mignon right about now.

  The wind gusted, snapping the walls of the pavilion tight and flinging sand in through the opening. He had nothing to block it with, but at least it opened onto the face of a tall dune.

  How am I going to get out of here? I’ve got to get back to New York.

  He turned his back on the growing storm, already sick of looking at it.

  I wonder if calling her name would bring Lily? Toby frowned at the thought. But that would be like asking her for help, wouldn’t it?

  3

  Benny sat in the La-Z-Boy recliner while Eddie and Amanda sat on the couch. Mike stood opposite them, squinting down at the screen of his phone.

  “This is amazing,” Mike said. “It says here the first news clipping about the lamp is from 1895. That was the year that Tiffany created the first of his lamps, but there is no record that Tiffany created this one. The maker’s mark doesn’t match any of his known marks.”

  Benny rolled his fingers in a hurry-up gesture. “Keep reading. It gets even more interesting.”

  Mike glanced at him, then nodded and returned his attention to his phone. “Holy shit,” he murmured.

  “Exactly,” said Benny.

  “What?” asked Eddie.

  “The maker’s mark shows up on a Victorian lamp in the 1850s. Before that, the researchers found a record of it on a pair of decorative brass candlest
icks that date back to an estate auction in 1793.”

  “That’s insane.”

  “There is more,” said Mike. “According to this report, an ornate gilt bronze candelabra appears on a shipping manifest for a Portuguese ship sailing out of Lisbon in the early 1500s. The ship’s destination was Porto Seguro in Brazil.”

  “There is more, but that’s enough to paint the picture. This lamp has traveled the world.”

  “But you said the maker’s mark appeared on candlesticks and a fancy candelabra. So it wasn’t this lamp, just the mark.”

  “I’m not so sure,” said Benny. “This isn’t a random marking. In fact, one of the researchers went so far as to have the cuneiform translated. It says, ‘Hail Lilitu, Bearer of Chaos.’ That’s not something someone would stumble upon.”

  “Then what?” asked Eddie.

  “I think the lamp has been remade, again and again. It was probably separated out into its constituent parts, and then the metals were melted down and recast into a new form. The glass was probably used as decoration, no matter what its form.”

  A deep frown spread across Amanda’s face. “But why? Why not make something other than a lamp? Something that wouldn’t have to be remade?”

  Benny cocked his head to the side. “I have no idea, but I think it’s clear: the materials used to make this lamp are important at the very least.”

  “Then let’s destroy it.”

  “How?” asked Mike. “Since it’s not limited to any one form, if we melted it all down into slag, then we’re left with a magical lump of slag, and the demons go on as they always have.”

  “Dissolve it in acid,” said Eddie.

  “Are we then left with a vat full of magical acid?” asked Benny with a smile.

  “Who knows? It isn’t as if it came with an owner’s manual.”

  “What if we throw it down a bottomless lake or one of those trenches out in the ocean?”

  “Okay,” said Benny. “But how do we know what happens if we get rid of it? What if the demons only need it to exist for them to stay here?”

  “On the other hand, what if it’s the only thing on the planet that can hurt them?” asked Mike.