Dark Prophecy

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  Hilda was unfazed by the question. “No more bullshit than what’s out that front door.”

  Dark had to admit—she was good. He supposed you had to be, to make a buck in a shop like this in the middle of crazy Venice Beach, relying on tourists who were busy deciding between SPIRITUAL ADVICE and a temporary henna tattoo they could show their coworkers back in Indianapolis.

  Hilda pushed the cards across the table. “Cut the deck any way you’d like.”

  Dark paused, then lifted a pile of cards, put it to the side, and repeated the process a few times.

  “Have you ever had a reading before?” Hilda asked.

  “No,” Dark said. “I came close once. This joint, actually, but . . . didn’t happen.”

  “Maybe you weren’t ready.”

  Dark didn’t reply. He thought about Sibby. Her beautiful eyes, squinting in the sun. Come on. It’ll be fun.

  “Here’s how it works,” Hilda said. “I’ll deal ten cards face up. I’m not a fortune-teller. I’m a reader. The cards aren’t meant to make predictions or offer false promises. They’re only meant to guide you. Add clarity. You can draw from it what you will. So ...”

  Hilda took a small stack of cards and pressed them to her chest.

  “What do you need to know?”

  Dark sighed, then decided to cut through the bullshit. He didn’t have to get himself wrapped up in the mysticism. This was no different from a cop talking to an informant.

  “I need to know how it all works. If I can get a better understanding of your world, maybe I can catch him.”

  chapter 37

  Now Hilda smiled again, but it was a weak, uneasy smile. “I don’t know if I can help you, but I suggest we start with a personal reading. See where it takes us.”

  The last thing Dark wanted was a personal reading. His whole career was an unholy mix of the personal and the professional, and it had taken everything important away from him. But before Dark had a chance to reply, Hilda began dealing the cards in the shape of a cross. First:

  The Hanged Man

  Followed by:

  The Fool

  And:

  Three of Cups

  Dark stared down at the table. He couldn’t breathe. Someone had siphoned all of the air out of the room. Even the flickering lights seemed to writhe around on their candle tops, gasping for oxygen.

  Hilda noticed his discomfort and stopped the deal. “Something wrong?”

  Three of the murder scenes, in the exact order. Either this was a setup, or this woman read the papers really carefully and was fucking with him. The odds of these specific cards being dealt, in this order, was . . .

  “These cards match up to the murders so far,” he muttered, then looked up at Hilda. “What’d you do? Rig the deck?”

  Hilda leaned back in her chair. No smile now. Either she was a skilled actor, or she truly didn’t realize the importance of the three cards on the table.

  “I’m not a magician, Mr. Dark. You cut the deck. All I did was shuffle the cards. Now it’s up to fate to tell the story.”

  Hilda finished forming a Celtic cross with three more cards:

  Ten of Swords

  Ten of Wands

  Five of Pentacles

  —before placing four more on the table:

  Wheel of Fortune

  The Devil

  The Tower

  Death

  Dark quickly committed them to memory. Ten, five. Wands, pentacles. That was easy. So was the final sequence: Wheel, Devil, Tower, Death. He put together a quick word association to cement it in his mind. If you spin the wheel against the devil, you’ll end up in the tower where you’ll meet your death. Also easy enough.

  But now Hilda was the one with the stunned expression on her face.

  “Something wrong?” Dark asked, mocking her a little.

  “Look at this Celtic cross. Six Major Arcana and one from each Minor. In all my years of doing this, I’ve never seen that before ...”

  Dark stared at Hilda. “What does that mean?”

  Hilda paused before she answered. “You were meant to be here.”

  chapter 38

  The reading lasted until sunlight broke over Venice the next morning. As promised, Hilda gave him a personal reading, taking care to explain the meaning behind each card to Dark before moving on.

  But the session took all night because each card seemed to trigger an explosive memory. With each card, Dark became convinced this was no sleight-of-hand card trick. These ten cards were tied into his life in a very real and fundamental way. It felt more like a counseling session than it did an occult reading. At first Dark tried to dismiss the cards, joke their implications away. The card means all that, huh? But Hilda held firm, taking her time, asking simple questions that opened the floodgates in Dark’s mind. At what key moment in your life were you the Fool? When you finally got into Special Circs, how was it? Celebratory? Are you prepared to discuss your worst memory?

  The cards also, chillingly, provided insight into the first four murders.

  The Hanged Man, Hilda explained, represented the story of Odin, the god who scarified himself to gain knowledge—which he then shared with humanity. His suffering was for a greater good. So Martin Green—a member of a high-level think tank—had gained some kind of knowledge. His death, presumably, was for the greater good as well.

  The Fool was embarking on a new journey, his worldly possessions slung over his shoulder, the sun of enlightenment shining down upon him, white rose of spontaneity in his hand. But the dog at the Fool’s side is the voice of reason, urging him to be careful. If not, he may walk off the edge of a cliff . . . or his own rooftop, in the case of newly minted Special Circs agent Jeb Paulson. What was the voice of reason trying to tell Paulson? Had the killer attempted to warn him away from the investigation? Did Paulson ignore the warning, and end up paying the ultimate price?

  The Three of Cups and the murders of the MBA students in West Philly came into sharper focus, too. The card about celebration, exuberance, friendship, camaraderie—forming a bond for a common goal. However, Hilda explained, the cards can be reversed, and the celebration can turn to self-absorption and isolation.

  And finally the Ten of Swords represented the futility of the mind, a failure of the intellect to save you. A man like Senator Garner thrived by his intellect, brokering deals and changing the course of the nation. But in the end his intellect had failed him, because his base urges had stabbed him in the back. The pleasures of the flesh versus the logic of the mind.

  Just as the sequence of cards fit Dark’s life, they fit each of the murder victims perfectly. The victims and killing methods were not chosen at random. They were perfectly suited for each other. There was a pattern, a story being told.

  But what linked them all together? And how would it end?

  For that matter, what linked Dark’s life to this string of murders? Was it merely fate that caused his life to intersect with these killings?

  Or something deeper?

  A while later Dark found himself at Sibby’s gravesite. Even though it was just a few miles away, he’d hadn’t been here in a long, long time. Sibby always had the uncanny ability to pull Dark out of his own head and help him see things more clearly. His wife soothed his soul like no one else. And ever since Sibby died, looking at her grave was a painful reminder of how utterly lost Dark felt without her.

  But things felt different now. Dark lit a smoke and thought about the events of the night. About how much Hilda had opened up inside of him, how much he’d been forced to confront. Then Dark smiled ruefully.

  “You knew all along, didn’t you,” he said softly.

  The grass stirred around her headstone.

  “I know, I know . . . I refused to go. You pleaded with me to at least try it, and I acted like a stubborn ass. I was pretty good at that, wasn’t I?”

  Sibby—if she was listening somewhere—declined to respond.

  But it was true. Dark should have listened to
her all of those years ago and followed her into that tarot shop. Maybe he would have taken a good look at his life a lot sooner. Maybe he could have saved himself a lot of suffering . . .

  Dark flicked away his smoke and crouched down, touching the top of Sibby’s headstone. It felt warm from the sun.

  “I’m sorry,” Dark whispered.

  Sibby never liked what Dark used to do for a living. She was creeped out by all of the serial killer books in his apartment, and she never wanted to hear about old cases. But Sibby also knew that he was the best at what he did.

  Dark looked at his wife’s name etched in the marble.

  Had she nudged him into Hilda’s shop? Was she giving Dark the reassurance he couldn’t give himself?

  If so, that was all Dark needed.

  The knowledge that he could catch this killer without losing himself in the process.

  chapter 39

  Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

  By this point Riggins was working on practically zero sleep, so the last thing he needed to see was some dead senator’s flabby naked pale ass. Especially a senator like Garner. Riggins never liked him much when he was alive, and it was hard to work up sympathy for the man now that he’d been found butchered in some high-end “spa” in a resort town. The man looked like a chicken roll left out on a deli counter too long.

  Yet, that was precisely what Constance was asking him to do—stare closely at the man’s ass.

  “Stoop down so you can see this,” she said.

  “Can’t you just tell me?” Riggins said. “This job’s given me enough psychological scars to last me a second lifetime.”

  “Will you just stoop down and stop being a baby?”

  So yeah, sure, Riggins stooped down. They had managed to clear the room of the local police for a few minutes, which was fortunate. They wouldn’t do their usual banter in front of anybody else. And the banter sometimes did a lot to keep their emotions in check, their heads clear. Constance took Riggins on a tour of the daggers, starting at the head, working its way down the senator’s spine, and ending in one of his tough old thighs. Of the ten blades, the first nine were buried in the senator’s body up to the hilt. The last one, in the thigh, had been rammed through a tarot card first—the Ten of Swords. You know, just in case they couldn’t figure out the reference, Riggins supposed.

  “Look at the blade itself,” Constance said, wonder in her voice.

  Above the blood-flecked card, you could see about an inch of the blade and the elaborate designs on the steel.

  “I’m guessing that’s not Ginsu,” Riggins said.

  “This isn’t something you pick up at any old occult shop. Look at the artistry, the detail.”

  Of course Constance was right. The detail was intricate and elaborate as the tattoos on a Yakuza gangster. Clearly, their perp hadn’t gone rifling through a silverware drawer for the murder weapons. These were unusual, which was a good thing—because it meant they would be traceable. You want to kill someone and get away with it? Go to Target or Walmart. Don’t get cute with exotic knives or drugs like this killer did. The problem was, the killer didn’t seem to give a shit about being traceable. He—or she—had taken out six people in five days in four different cities. Given all of the time in the world, sure, they’d find out where these daggers were made. But in the meantime, this nutcase could take out a half dozen more people. From all indications, the killer was escalating. Three college girls in a dive bar is one thing; taking a stab at a U.S. senator, with a complete, armed, taxpayer-funded security detail, puts you in a whole new league.

  Riggins pulled his face away from the senator’s corpse. “Who found him?” he asked.

  “Nikki. Real name’s Louella Boxer. She says she stepped into the other room to prepare for their session, to get into character, as she explained, and someone walked in.”

  “Could she give a description?”

  “Sort of,” Constance said. “Boxer claims it was a woman, naked from the neck down. Olive skin, athletic build.”

  “And what was from the neck up?”

  “A gas mask. And that was the last thing Boxer remembers. When she woke up, she came screaming into the room and found the senator like this.”

  “You know, I was turned on until the gas mask part,” Riggins said. “How long was she out?”

  “She has no idea.”

  “The killer’s using his fancy knockout shit again,” Riggins muttered. “What, did he find this stuff on sale? We need to have Banner check the tox screens for that military stuff he found in Paulson’s blood. See if we can trace it back to a military base somewhere.”

  “You mean she,” Constance said.

  Riggins nodded. “Gas mask and tits. Right. And I thought the freak in the full-body condom was strange.”

  V

  ten of wands

  To watch Steve Dark’s personal tarot card reading,

  please log in to Level26.com and

  enter the code: wands.

  TEN OF WANDS

  Transcript from Flight 1015, private charter plane from Denver International Airport to Southwest Florida International Airport.

  PILOT: This is Captain Ryder in the flight deck. Sorry, folks, it looks like on our approach to our final destination we’ve encountered some bad weather. If I had a magic wand, I’d make it go away, but alas, I don’t. Please return to your seats.

  PILOT: And why don’t you go ahead and fasten those seat belts.

  PILOT: And while you’re at it, I’d like you to think about your lives. The people you hurt. The policies you enacted. The schemes you hatched.

  PILOT: The actions that brought you here, now, to meet your fate . . .

  Confusion spread throughout the small cabin:

  “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “Is this somebody’s idea of a joke?”

  “Did he just say fate?”

  A few minutes ago, life had been pretty damned fantastic for the ten passengers of Flight 1015. They were headed to a corporate retreat on a secluded playground on the golden Fort Myers coast. On the official agenda: brainstorming the future of the company and reintegrating the core values of Westmire Investments. (Hey, it sounded good on paper.) On the unofficial agenda: sex, booze, coke, massages, more coke, and quite possibly an orgy, depending on the amount and quality of coke at hand.

  Tiffany Adams had been to these “retreats” before, so she knew how they could run hot and cold. Sometimes, the newbies wanted to focus a little too much on work, which totally killed it for vets like Adams. Fortunately, this flight contained six vets (herself, Ian Malone, Honora Mouton, Warren McGee, Shauyi Shen, Corey Young) and only four newbies (Maryellen Douglas, Emily Dzundza, Christos Lopez, Luke Rand). The retreat could go either way, but Adams liked the odds. She also liked how the morning was unfolding. It was friggin’ seven in the morning, and already the kids were at it.

  Emily Dzundza, she of the ample chest and blow-me lips, was already on her second bourbon—and she’d seemed like the biggest stick-in-the-mud. Maryellen Douglas was off somewhere with Warren, and Christos Lopez was holding forth on a recent bottle-service binge he’d gone on at his last company, racking up a $135,000 tab within a matter of hours. Atta boy. Just what Tiffany liked to hear.

  When the pilot started talking about fastening their seat belts however, it made no sense. Crystal blue skies, no turbulence whatsoever, calm, flat brown flyover country beneath them. Was this a joke? No. Pilots didn’t joke. Not in the post-9/11 world.

  But then, without warning, the horizon tilted violently, and the plane began to nose-dive. Drinks were spilled. More of her coworkers screamed. None of this made sense. You didn’t get this kind of crazy maneuvering on a commercial flight, let alone on a private luxury jet where the pilot’s job was to make the trip so smooth; none of them were supposed to realize they were even in the air.

  Some pilots, however, were assholes on purpose. Maybe he didn’t like rich people. Tiffany wasn’t going to sit bac
k and let this pilot fuck around with them. She should march up there, pound her fist on the door, and tell the pilot to knock this crap off.

  And she intended to do so. Only now, suddenly, Tiffany felt lightheaded. Probably the sudden change in pressure. Goddamn this pilot. She wanted to knock his teeth in, but she also wanted to ease back into her seat, just for a minute. Just until her head cleared . . .

  A bump woke her up. As did the breeze across her face.

  A breeze . . . inside a jet?

  Tiffany felt dizzy and nauseous. She saw that everyone else was still passed out in their leather seats. Nothing made sense. What, were they all drunk? Tiffany unbuckled her seat belt, stood up on shaky legs, and started to move toward the front of the plane. Ahead, weird, wild patterns of light and shadow danced across the tops of the empty seats and the door to the cockpit. The wind was stronger, as if the pilot had somehow cranked up the AC to full blast. A few steps later, Adams saw where the light and rushing wind was coming from.

  The passenger door of the plane was open.

  Oh, fuck me . . .

  She grasped the tops of the seats closest to her and craned her neck to look outside. The tops of trees whizzed by, far too close to be real. This plane couldn’t be flying this close to the ground?

  Getting closer with every second . . .

  Tiffany swallowed hard, then propelled herself forward, aiming for the cockpit door. Don’t look outside, she told herself. Don’t even think about what’s going on out there. Get to the pilot. Ask him what the fuck is going on.

  Once she reached the door, Tiffany pounded hard. She was going to open this door, FAA rules or not.

  To her surprise, the door popped right open.

  The next few seconds were a blur to Tiffany. She stepped into the cockpit to see a rush of green and brown filling the front windows, the array of instruments and flashing lights on the control panels, the empty pilots’ seats, chairs gently rocking back and forth, a pair of headphones dangling from the stick. And a playing card of some kind, jammed onto a metal switch.