by N. P. Martin
“I’ll do my best, Ethan,” Larry said, his gloves already on as he examined Scarlet’s body.
“Hello?” a voice said down the phone.
“Ms. Turner,” I said, turning away from Larry. “It’s Detective Ethan Drake here.”
“What the hell do you want?” She sounded drunk, depressed. Bitter.
“I need your help, Ms. Turner.”
She snorted down the phone. “My help? I asked you for help, Detective. Help in saving my son. And you let him die.”
“I did everything I could to save your son,” I said, doubting my own credibility at the same time.
“Did you, Detective? Did you really?”
I paused before answering. “Yes. I’m sorry, Ms. Turner. Unfortunately, we can’t always save the ones we love.”
I heard her sniffling down the phone as she lapsed into silence for a long moment. It was tempting to push her out of it, but I resisted the urge and allowed her to have her moment. “What is it you want, Detective?” she asked finally, a note of tired resignation in her voice now. It was a feeling I knew well.
“I have someone here who will die if she doesn’t get urgent medical attention,” I said.
“And I’m assuming since you called me—a woman you hardly know—that you cannot take this person to a hospital?”
“That’s right.”
“Does this have anything to do with that…darkness my son was involved in.”
“Yes, it does.”
She went silent for a second, then asked, “What are her injuries?”
I turned to look at Scarlet as Larry was tending to her. “Multiple stab wounds,” I said. “A lot of blunt force trauma, extensive bruising, probably internal bleeding. Gunshot on one arm. Burn marks. Fractured ribs. That’s just what I can see.”
“I’m sorry, Detective, but that person needs a hospital,” Jacklyn said. “Even if I wanted to help you, I couldn’t.”
“Jacklyn,” I said. “Please. She’ll die.”
Again, she went silent for a moment. “Alright, look. There’s a doctor in Wilshire General who’ll probably treat her, but you’ll have to pay him. A lot.”
“Fine. Who is he?”
“I’ll arrange it. Just get her to Wilshire.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not doing this for you, Detective.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “But at least tell me how you know about this doctor, and why you haven’t reported him.”
“My son wasn’t the only one with secrets, Detective. Get your friend to Wilshire. Park around the back of the disused wing. The doctor will meet you there.”
“Thanks, Jacklyn. I’ll owe you for this.”
“You already owed me, Detective,” she said before hanging up.
I drove as fast I could to Wilshire General with Scarlet lying across the back seat, Larry in there with her keeping her steady and doing his best to stem the blood flow from her various open wounds.
As instructed by Jacklyn Turner, I drove around the back of the disused wing of the hospital, a wing that was shut down five years ago because of underfunding. In the small parking area, a red-headed man in blue surgical scrubs stood alongside a dark-haired woman, who also wore scrubs. Beside them was a gurney.
When I pulled up, the two of them immediately came to the car and opened the back doors, ordering Larry out. The red-headed man then leaned into the car and briefly checked Scarlet over before asking me to get her out and onto the gurney. The whole thing was a blur as I slid Scarlet out of the car and placed her on the gurney, at which point the man and woman in surgical scrubs rushed Scarlet inside the disused hospital wing.
“What the fuck?” Larry said as he looked at the dilapidated building with its grimy, broken windows.
“You should go, Larry,” I said. “Thanks for your help. I owe you.”
“You sure you don’t want me to stick around and make sure those two strangers know what they’re doing?”
For whatever reason, I trusted Jacklyn Turner. “It’s fine, Larry. I’ll make sure you’re paid as soon as I can.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “Just let me know if she pulls through.”
“She will.”
Larry nodded but said nothing as he walked away.
I thought I’d seen it all in this city until I walked into the empty hospital wing—which was like a setting from a bad horror movie, dark and rat-infested—to find that one of the old rooms had had a makeover at some point, turning it into a fully equipped operating theater.
Scarlet now lay on an operating table surrounded by state-of-the-art machines and gleaming trays filled with shining surgical tools. The red-headed man seemed to take the lead as the doctor, with the dark-haired woman assisting him. Both seemed highly capable and experienced, I’m glad to say, and soon they had Scarlet hooked up to various drips and machines. She seemed to get the same care and attention here in this grimy shit hole as she would’ve gotten in Salem Hospital. It said a lot about Wilshire’s continual decline as an institution that this unsanctioned operation was going on within its walls, albeit walls that were no longer in use, except it seemed, by these two otherwise normal medical professionals.
I stood outside in the dark hallway looking through the glass in the door as I thought about entering the room. But I decided against it, knowing my presence wouldn’t be welcome. Scarlet’s life was out of my hands now. It was up to the doctors to try to fix her, and they didn’t need me hanging around distracting them.
So I found an old plastic chair in the dank hallway and sat down, rummaging inside my trench until I found the small hip flask there, which I’m glad to say was full. After taking a swig, I took out my phone and called Hannah’s phone, but there was no answer, and the call soon went to voicemail. The same thing happened the second and third time I called her. After the third time, I knew she wasn’t going to answer, so I stopped trying after that. I’d seen the way she was back at The Brokedown Palace. I’d seen who she was—Xaglath, the demon she had become after her fall to Hell. My worry now was that Hannah had slipped irrevocably back into being the demon she used to be. Despite telling me she could handle it, the violence and bloodshed at the club had drawn Xaglath out of her again. If Hannah wasn’t answering her phone, it was probably because Xaglath was still in control.
The real question was: what was she going to do with that control now that she had it?
It didn’t take me long to drink all the whiskey in the hip flask, so once it was gone, I took out the Mud bottle and deposited two full doses into my mouth. My extreme tiredness, combined with the drugs and alcohol in my system, soon made everything around me take on a surreal, nightmarish quality as I continued to sit in the dark hallway, the only real light being the glow from the lights inside the operating theater where the doctors continued to work on Scarlet.
Sitting with my eyes half-closed, the dirty walls around me seemed to move with the shadows cast across them, the floor beneath my feet undulating in a way that made it feel like I was in the belly of some beast.
My eyes closed for an indeterminate amount of time, and when I opened them again, the shadows all seemed to have gathered in one spot in the dark corridor, coming together into some shapeless form that could have been a distillation of death itself, an entity created from the souls of everyone I’d ever killed, gathered together so they could stand there in common judgment of me.
My only defense against it was to close my eyes so I could no longer see it, but even as sleep pulled me down into its embrace, there was no escaping the nightmarish visions that came rushing out of my subconscious like waiting demons. In my dreams, they taunted me with visions of my dead daughter as she stood before me with her guts hanging out, soon joined by her mother, who stood with half her face in bloody tatters, though I could still make out the look of blame and hatred on her disfigured features.
“It should’ve been you,” they said, over and over. “It should’ve been you…”
My wife and daughter, they came together then, twisting themselves into some monster that rushed toward me to slash at me with its claws. Screaming, I tried to defend myself, even though I knew I deserved every ounce of the monster’s terrible wrath…
“Hey, buddy.”
I snapped my eyes open and almost went for the figure standing before me, who stepped back away from me in fear. It was the red-headed doctor, his blue scrubs now streaked with blood as a surgical mask hung around his neck. I stared at him, wide-eyed, as I regained my bearings and caught my breath. “What?” I said.
The doctor regarded me warily as he spoke. “Your friend is in stable condition,” he said. “We patched her up as best we could. She still has internal damage, but she should live.”
I nodded as I wiped sweat from my face. “Thanks, Doc.”
“No need to thank me.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Just make sure the bill is paid. I expect the money in the account within twenty-four hours. If you don’t pay up, there’ll be severe consequences for both you and your friend. You understand?”
“Nice bedside manner, Doc.”
“You wanted that, you should’ve gone to Salem,” he said. “Your friend can stay here for another six hours tops until she regains consciousness. After that, you’ll have to take her elsewhere.”
“Sure thing. Thanks, Doc.”
Nodding, the doctor walked back into the theater again, leaving me to wonder how I would pay the five-figure sum written on the piece of paper he’d given me.
11
I didn’t know where else to take Scarlet after her six hours were up at the hospital, so I ended up taking her to my trailer at Cal’s scrapyard. She was barely conscious when I carried her out of the disused hospital wing—her wearing only a hospital gown—and helped her into the back seat of the Dodge. She groaned her sister’s name a few times on the way to the scrapyard, but apart from that, she said little else.
When I got to the yard, I carried her into the trailer and lay her down on the single bed. Her face was a swollen mess, and her body was covered in bandages, but at least she was alive, and as far as I could tell, in recovery. The doc told me she would need aftercare in the form of fluids and lots of rest. Medicinally, there were things I could do to help speed her recovery. I could apply ointment to her wounds to help them heal faster, and I could give her specific tinctures and home-brewed medicines to help with her internal injuries.
When I was sure she was comfortable, I left to get the supplies I needed from Cal, but as I did, Scarlet grabbed my hand, her grip still weak, though stronger than I expected. “Ethan…” she whispered.
I leaned over and put my face close to hers. She smelled like iodine. “Yeah?” I said.
She could barely open her eyes enough to see me, and her voice was faint. “Thank…you…”
I smiled down at her. “That’s okay. Just rest now and get better.”
“Charlotte?” she whispered.
“We’ll find her. Don’t worry.”
She barely nodded before closing her eyes again. “Find her…Ethan.”
I left Scarlet and went to find Cal, thinking he would be in his trailer, which he wasn’t. So after checking the smithy and not finding him there either, I went to the only other place where I thought he could be, and that was his underground bunker behind his trailer.
Finding the steel doors unlocked, I pulled them open and walked down the steps to the bunker which was just four large shipping containers buried underground, the inside walls cut out to create one massive space. This is where Cal kept his vast library of books, organized in rows of free-standing shelves that collectively hold thousands of tomes. Cal also had an armory and an apothecary down there.
As I weaved my way through the bookshelves to the open space on the other side, I wasn’t surprised to find Cal sitting behind a large antique reading table, his eyeglasses on as he peered into some dusty book.
Who I was surprised to see, however, was Daisy, who was sitting on the opposite side of the desk with a dusty tome of her own. Cal noticed me first, looking up and staring at me for a second before saying with a smile, “Well, look what the cat dragged in.”
When Daisy turned her head and saw it was me, a broad smile crossed her face, and she got up and came to me, taking me by surprise by hugging me. “You’re alright,” she said, ignoring the fact that my clothes were covered in blood. “Where’s Scarlet? Is she okay? Did you save her?”
“Scarlet’s in my trailer,” I said. “She’s in bad shape, but she’ll be okay.”
“Oh,” Daisy said. “How hurt is she?”
“Enough,” I said. “What are you even doing here? How did you get here?”
“I got worried when you didn’t come back to the apartment building,” she said. “So I got a cab here to Cal’s to see if he’d heard anything.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry,” I said smiling at her, flattered as hell by her concern, but also worried that she was being drawn into my world, and we all know what happens when people get drawn into my world—they get hurt.
“Are you injured?” she asked. “You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s not mine.”
“You got it done then?” Cal asked, taking off his eyeglasses.
I nodded. “It wasn’t pretty, but yeah, we got it done.”
“We?” he said.
“My partner, the Hellbast—” I stopped and looked at Daisy, almost forgetting that she was still an Unaware.
“The Hell what?” she said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not stupid, Ethan,” Daisy said as she went back to sit at the reading table.
“I didn’t say you were,” I said.
“I’ve heard the noises from your apartment. I’ve heard you talking in there.”
“You’ve been listening outside my door?”
“Not all the time,” she said. “Just sometimes.”
I looked at Cal, who was sitting with a knowing smile on his face. “Like she said, she ain’t stupid.”
“I’ve noticed things,” Daisy went on. “Strange things that made little sense before, but now they do.”
“You mean now that Cal has brought you down here,” I said, throwing Cal a disapproving look.
“Yes,” she said. “Coming here has filled in the blanks. Plus, Cal explained to me what’s going on.”
“Did he now? That’s idiotic of Cal to do so.”
“Don’t be mad at Cal,” Daisy said. “I already knew there were monsters in the world from all the books I read. All those writers had to get their inspiration from somewhere, right? Cal tells me you call the monsters MURKs.” She looked at Cal. “What does that stand for again?”
“Monsters, Unnaturals, Reapers, and Killers,” I said, leaving out the Kunts part. “You don’t seem put out by any of this, Daisy.”
“Were you when you found out?” she asked.
“Not really, if I’m honest. It fit my view of the world.”
“Exactly,” Daisy said nodding as if she just realized this to be true herself, which given her life and the upbringing—or lack thereof—that she’d had, it was no surprise that she would grasp this new form of dark enlightenment with both hands. The fact that there were monsters in the world—and a formless Darkness behind everything—no doubt explained a lot to her. I felt sorry for her, though, for this knowledge she now possessed was a burden, and one she would have to shoulder for the rest of her life, even as most of the world remained blind and ignorant to it.
“Anyway,” I said, moving now toward the corner of the room dedicated to the apothecary. “There’s stuff I need to get for Scarlet.”
“Can I help?” Daisy asked, getting up to join me as I stood staring at the rows of shelves containing scores of medicinal ingredients and ad hoc medical supplies.
“You can grab that IV stand over there,” I said as I t
ook a bag of saline solution from a shelf, a jar of ointment and some bottles of medicine.
“I can be Scarlet’s nurse if you like,” Daisy said. “I look after my momma all the time.”
“I’m sure you do,” I said.
“You don’t like my momma, do you, Ethan?”
“Like has nothing to do with it,” I said as I turned away from the shelves armed with supplies. “You deserve better, that’s all.”
“She’s good sometimes,” Daisy said. “Like for my last birthday, she took me to see the Avengers movie. She left halfway through and didn’t come back, but you know—” She shrugged as if this was normal behavior on her mother’s part. “She tries.”
Not hard enough, I wanted to say, but didn’t. What was the point? It wouldn’t change anything.
“Here,” Cal said, handing Daisy a thick leather-bound book. “You can continue your education while you sit with the assassin.”
“Scarlet is an assassin?” Daisy looked delighted by this news as she took the book. “That’s so cool.”
I shook my head at Cal. “Me and you need to have words later,” I told him.
“Yeah yeah,” he said. “You’re not the only one who needs guidance, you know.”
“I’m not sure Daisy needs the kind of guidance that you or I can offer,” I said.
“Let me be the judge of that,” Daisy said, book under one arm as she held the IV stand in her other hand.
“Let the girl be the judge,” Cal said with a smile.
“You’re enjoying this,” I said. “You think you have someone else to mold.” I looked at Daisy. “Don’t fall for his grizzled charm. It’s all a sham to get you to trust him, and then he’ll try to break you.”
“Break me?” Daisy said, looking slightly worried now.
“He’s kidding,” Cal said, knowing full well that I wasn’t. “I’m too long in the tooth now to be breaking anyone. Just think of me as the wise old owl you can come to for guidance and advice.”
