“Hold on.” She flips up the dust ruffle on the bed, reaches underneath and pulls out a medium sized duffle bag. Seems like a small amount of space to pack the foundations for a new life, but since I used to be able to fit everything I own into an overnight bag maybe I’m not the one to judge. She pops up. “Ready.”
I stand by the door and wave her over next to me.
“Ready?”
She nods, her eyes wide, nostrils flaring. I can see the pulse jumping in her neck.
“Okay,” I say, cracking the door and peeking out into the hall. I’m confident it’ll be empty, because if the door guard was noticed to be missing the alarm would have been raised, but there’s always the chance their head of security would have silently loaded the hallway with muscle and waited for us to come out.
It’s empty. I open the door and usher her out, then close it again and lead her down the hall. We’re down to the end of the time window I’d envisioned, so I take the stairs two at a time, Celeste a scented shadow behind me until we hit the second floor and find the automaton waiting for us in the landing.
With startling fluidity for something made of rock it whips its sword out of its scabbard and makes a leaping thrust at my belly. I dodge, hip-checking Celeste clear of the strike she can’t even see, but when it brings its blade around for an overhead strike she steps in front of me. The automaton hesitates, evidently recognizing her, and she reaches out cat-quick and pats it on the head. Instantly it relaxes its guard and moves to a standing position next to the nearest wall. Celeste looks at me with satisfaction.
“I may not know their names, but I know how to turn them off.”
“Yeah, I bet you do. Come on.”
We take the next two floors in hopping steps until we reach the ground floor. I pull her aside.
“Through the garage, around the corner and straight for the gate. Kenta’s there with my car. Remember the plan – any trouble, any alarms, and we run. Got it?”
“Got it,” she says. She’s smiling now. I envy her. She’s about to make the big leap into adult life. Everything will be different after this, and she knows it. The cynic in me is well aware of the fact that the odds are staggeringly against them succeeding, that in all likelihood Romeo and Juliet will be back at their parent’s doors in months, begging for reacceptance. Hell, maybe Celeste sees that as a possibility as well, she certainly seems smart enough. But she’s still determined to go where angels fear to tread. I wish I had a tenth of her optimism.
Maybe it’s wearing off on me, since I lead her out into the gallery-like hallway without checking first. As a result we almost run headlong into two of the guards I saw outside coming in through the garage, looking chastised and sheepish. Their eyes go wide in shock at the sight of Celeste and her masked companion stepping boldly into their sight.
“I’ll be totally honest here,” I say quickly, before they can process what’s happening. “This is exactly what it looks like.”
I flash a one-two punch combo at the closest man, catching him cleanly on the point of the chin with both shots. His head snaps backwards as he stumbles back on his heels, and when he collides with the other man they both go down in a jumbled heap. The hallway fills with shouts of alarm from the second man, now pinned underneath the groggy punch recipient.
I wheel back on Celeste, yank my gloves off and grab hold of the cobalt bracelets, not because I’m worried about the alarm now but because I’d be surprised if they didn’t have a tracking spell worked into them as well. They don’t fracture at my touch, so I have no way of knowing how total their breakdown is. I trust that they’re completely offline, though, so I take Celeste by the hand and pull her into the garage
One of the other guards from the lawn is just coming inside. He sees us and starts coming our way at full speed, so I grab Celeste’s hand and run straight at him. As we run I bring my right hand up, fingers curled, index finger out and thumb cocked. I point my imaginary gun at him and shout, “Down!”, and he obligingly throws himself out of the way before he can realize he’s been duped. He’s scrambling for his feet when we run past him and out the door.
We race across the lawn, and hell breaks loose behind us. No sirens blare, but I can hear a growing number of voices raised in alarm, panic, and fury as they boil after us. We run, but in a second I can feel Celeste pull into the lead, her hand now tugging on mine. I let her hand go, and without my holding her back she bounds across the lawn like a deer, way more graceful than even someone as young and fit as her should be able to be. She’s enhanced herself somehow, and good for her. Still, unwilling to let myself get shown up by a sorority girl, I dig deep and hit the gas. I don’t exactly close the distance between us, but I don’t lose any more ground.
When we’re almost at the gate I can see Kenta beyond it, waving like a maniac. When we get close he grabs the bars with both hands and hauls the heavy iron gate open. Celeste, with a good twenty-foot lead on me, practically flies through the gate and right into Kenta’s arms, the impact almost sending them both sprawling, but he manages to stabilize them before they drop. They squeeze for all they’re worth, him swinging her around so romantically I can almost hear the theme music. I’m almost even with them when the something crashes into me from behind with monstrous force.
Wildly off balance, slave to the forces of momentum and inertia, I sprawl awkwardly, painfully into the unyielding stone pillar supporting the gate, rebounding wildly before crashing to the ground in an untidy heap. My breath rushes out of me as I land hard on my back, and before I can move what feels like a dozen bodies pile on top of me with crushing force. I’m able to make out Kenta and Celeste, still holding hands as they run down the driveway. Nobody else even bats an eye at them. They must be under some kind of cloaking spell.
“Good luck, kids,” I cough with the last of my breath.
I’m basically powerless to resist as the mass of rented muscle pinning me down wrests my arms into awkward angles behind my back. Once secured I’m hauled gracelessly into a kneeling position two of them standing on the backs of my knees while my locked arms are hauled to a level plane with my head. My shoulders scream and I choke back a pained grunt. Never let them see how much it hurts.
Locked rigid, I can’t avoid seeing the man striding our way. My first thought is relief that it’s Calvin who is coming to clean house, but I quickly see that this man is several inches shorter and far more imposing physically. Backlit by the house I can see that he’s leaner than Calvin, but his movements belie a great deal of strength held tightly in check. He stops in front of me so all I can see is his basic silver belt buckle.
My hood came down when I got tackled, and the hands that tear off my ski mask are none too gentle. Neither are the ones that relieve me of the Springfield, my cell phone, car keys and the rest of the knickknacks I’d packed just in case. I do my best to put on a casual, may-I-help-you expression that evaporates when I see the face of the man in front of me.
“Hollett?” I say, dumbfounded.
“DeLong,” he says, glaring down at me like a furious stone idol. “You damned fool. You’ve just doomed your whole town.”
Seven
After being trussed up like a game hen with black plastic zip ties, hauled bodily by half a dozen thugs and thrown none too gently into what looks like a windowless cargo van, I have a lot of time to think.
It’s been years since I’ve seen Andrew Hollett, known more commonly in our sphere by his nickname, Scalpel. The nickname came as a byproduct of his reputation. He won’t bash his way blindly into a situation, favoring instead to use his uncanny knack for strategy and the application of specific skills on specific targets to get results. He’d once told a prospective client that he wasn’t a sword, he was a scalpel. It stuck.
He’s a mercenary, and he’s been a bit of a Catch-22 when it comes to the Aegis, sometimes enemy and sometimes ally. Hollett is the man you call when you need a very specific job done. Found the location of a centuries-lost artifact in the middl
e of a lost city? Andrew Hollett will retrieve it. The leader of your coven thrown in prison? Andrew Hollett will get him out. Need a potion slipped into a very particular glass at a highly guarded embassy, or a sunken galleon located and plundered, or are you out for revenge on someone the law (or the Aegis) can’t touch? Call Andrew Hollett and get your check book out. He’s stolen, lied, and killed, but since he’s done all of that for the good guys too he gets a bit of leeway, at least until it can be proven that he’s done something that can’t be overlooked. It helps him a lot in the eyes of the Sovereigns, the Aegis’ upper layer of command. It also helps that he’s slow to anger and slower to drop a body.
That’s the reason I’m not panicking now, despite being expertly bound and being smuggled away to someplace I can’t predict. Hollett isn’t the kind of tiger that’ll change his stripes. He may kill me yet, but not now. He’s acting under orders, so I have some time to work with. Unfortunately, the last time I’d seen him hadn’t been exactly pleasant, so if he gets a kill order I don’t think he’ll hesitate.
Four of the security goons have joined us in the van, two up front and two in the back. I’ve got one of them on either side of me, keeping me upright like a pair of crewcut book ends. They’re wearing the same thing the wisp-chasers had been: black slacks, black polo shirts, well-shined shoes. The official uniform of hired goons everywhere. Hollett has the seat opposite us to himself and I’m sure he enjoys that.
Everything about him is precise, from the top of his smoothly shaven coffee-with-milk head to the box-fresh black shoes. He’s wearing black slacks and a black polo shirt that hangs comfortably on his lean, toned frame. The goons are wearing the same uniform, but he’s got a leather pouch the size of a pencil case threaded into his belt that they don’t. There’s not a line on his face, though I know he’s closer to 40 than I am. The only thing about him that’s the slightest bit irregular is his mouth. It’s just a touch too wide, not enough to notice specifically at first but once you do you can’t escape it. It gives him an almost crocodilian air, especially in combination with his eerie personal stillness. Though I have no way to confirm it, I believe there’s something non-human in his not too distant lineage.
“I didn’t know you were in town,” I say to him.
“I didn’t see the need to tell you.” The years haven’t done anything pleasant to his voice. It sounds like a rusty rowboat hauled down a dry riverbed.
“You’re doing security for the Reeses?”
He blinks in answer. I don’t think it’s Morse. I press on, half to get answers, half to push his buttons.
“How’d you get hooked up with them?”
“The payment cleared.”
“That’d do it.” I turn my head, trying to see out the front windshield. The cargo van has no windows and I’m very curious where they’re bringing me. I doubt it’s to the police. If he wanted me arrested he’d have had them come and get me at the scene of the crime. The other option that springs to mind is the sickening thought that swamplands are just about the best body-disposal system Nature has apart from the deep blue sea and this area has its fair share of both, but while I’m less sure of this than I am about the police I have to think they could have killed me back at the house and nobody would have ever known. I ask Hollett. He almost smiles as he answers.
“You really stepped in it this time, DeLong. Clive Reese wants to see you personally.”
Which explains why I’m not arrested or dead and haven’t had the shit kicked out of me up until now. The big man himself wants to know why I did what I did before I’m too beaten to answer. I take a deep, slow breath, hold it, let it seep out between my teeth.
It’s going to be a long night.
I’m trying to come up with a snappy quip when the radio clicks itself on without a hand near it. It doesn’t break the concentration of anyone in the van. It happens around here. If you drive a vehicle of any kind in Superstition Bay, it’ll happen to you, too. A spook, whom I call Simon, likes to haunt the airwaves and mess with people by switching up their reception. This time he’s chosen to treat us to “You’re the Best Around” from the original Karate Kid movie. Without breaking silence, the goon in the passenger seat clicks the radio off. Maybe I’m an egotist, but I think Simon was aiming this one at me.
Maybe ten silent minutes later the van decelerates, makes a last, abrupt turn, and comes to a stop. Hollett and the goons stay motionless as the driver and the shotgun seater get out, come around to the back and open the doors. Hollett gets out and waits to the side, giving me a clear view of him drawing two matching three-inch blades from his pockets. They look like miniature flaying knives and they fit precisely in the curves of his index fingers. He looks like game warden watching his handlers clamp down on a particularly dangerous beast as the goons bundle me out of the van with military precision. The new evening air is as crisp as a fresh apple and I breathe appreciatively. The van had gotten stuffy fast with so many people in it. I look around at our destination, surprised.
The Superstition Bay Public Library has baffled archaeologists for years. The building itself is a large block of dark stone, plucked from the town’s soil ages ago and mortared in layers until they formed a three-story, impregnable keep that was renovated into a library by a Grey adept in 1912. Until 1975 when the Watershed Hotel was built down by the inlet it was the tallest building in town. The construction methods predate anything used in this area by centuries, but nobody can quite agree on who built it or when.
Nobody thinks too much about it anymore. It’s just the library. Nothing special. It’s common for people to accept a convenient lie over a bitter truth, particularly when it comes to the supernormal. Makes them sleep better at night.
The library grounds are pristinely maintained, each bush and hedge trimmed to an exact flatness that can’t be natural. The lot the library was built on is a precise square a quarter of a mile wide, while the library itself rests in the center of a mammoth circle of flawless grass. Decorative crushed stone pathways trace gentle, appealing concentric rings at twenty-five-foot intervals, right up to the library’s walls.
They used to be protective circles of increasing strength, forged directly into the living earth. If you know what to look for you can even see them imprinted in the pavement of the parking lot. Whoever it was that built the keep was serious about protection. Unfortunately, the governmental overhaul had unwittingly cut gaping holes in the protective layers, rendering them all beautiful but useless.
“Why are we here?” I ask. “Got an overdue book? I don’t blame you for wanting to return it. You don’t want to know how this place collects its fees.”
“I return my books on time.” The goons on either side of me march me towards a side entrance while Hollett falls into step behind us and I try hard not to think about how neatly the curves of his blades would match the curves of the exposed blood vessels in my neck.
In keeping with the general atmosphere of the place they’ve never installed electronic doors out here. They’re heavy slabs of oak, beautifully polished with intricate iron door handles and small, square windows. Two of Hollett’s goons open the doors, one each, ushering the rest of us into the small, cave-like foyer. After that the modern age takes over. We cross the electronic eye, triggering two sliding glass doors on their silent tracks.
The inside of the library is another vast circle, three open floors lined with endless bookshelves. They hug the inside of the building in a graduating spiral, a twelve-foot walkway with soft industrial carpet that winds up the walls like a literary python, or an actual bookworm. The immense center space is open from floor to glass domed roof that lets in all the light nature wants to throw down at it. The stone floor has been covered with warm wooden laminate, matching the elegantly paneled walls and the endless arcs of hand-carved bookshelves.
The bottom level is a plain of cubicles, discussion alcoves and cubbies lorded over by a reference desk that sits atop a foot-high platform in the middle of the open space
. There are no holiday decorations visible here, and there never has been. There are no in-house rules against them, it’s just that nobody ever found a suitable decoration that would seem appropriate in such a draconian setting.
Normally Mrs. Flannery, currently riding a record twentieth year as Head Librarian, would be running the joint with the kind of authority you can only get by being on the job for two decades, but despite the early hour the place is deserted. Even though the SBHS students are currently on their winter break there’d normally be students in here working on some project or paper, young mothers browsing the kids section with toddlers, or some random person perusing the magazines or taking advantage of the free Wi-Fi. Right now, there’s nobody here but us.
Behind the reference desk is the largest alcove. It’s large enough that it’s frequently the location of town meetings and other governmental interactions. More than once Mayor Parkman has held press conferences from this space. There’s a large, comparatively new desk, several unforgiving couches, a few tables. Chairs are arrayed in an arc around the area, giving it the feel of an open-air stage. As I’m bustled past the desk I get a good look at the alcove and what’s waiting for me.
The fifteen or so people fit comfortably in the open space, but that’s the only thing comfortable here. There’s a harsh demarcation between them, roughly half of them on each side of the alcove’s center aisle. I’m marched down the aisle with a little more force than before. The dogs showing off for their masters. We come to a jarring stop at the foot of the end of the aisle, level with the front row seats.
Clive Reese is seated on the left side of the aisle, looking like everyone’s most hated boss. He’s wearing a gunmetal suit over a black on black shirt and tie. His sandy hair is fading in both color and amount, and his stare hits me like brass knuckles. Looking at him like this it’s hard to reconcile the hateful visage in front of me with the man who’s spent countless hours helping out the local school systems, donating cash for textbooks, band instruments, new goal posts for the Superstition Bay High School football field. There’s talk of renaming the middle school after him, and judging by his face he’d like to tear my eyes out with his fingers. There are six or seven of his flunkies and extended family around him, all of them devotedly ignoring the other side of the alcove.
No More Devils: A Visit to Superstition Bay Page 6
