by Domino Finn
I immediately wanted to be rid of him. He was right about labels, but the Taíno had clearly gone to great lengths to entrap him. There had to be a reason.
Artifacts are tricky to destroy. Part of it is the enchantment, of course, but many never consider the unintended consequences of destruction. Case in point was the Horn. An elaborate mousetrap. Destroy it, or the seal, and instead of destroying the wraith, he might just be set free.
I stomped to the safe in the corner and reverently placed the object inside.
"What are you doing?" asked the Spaniard.
"Locking you up again. With any luck, the lead lining will dull the Intrinsics and keep you quiet."
"But I can help you, Master. Anything you want. Ask three favors of me and I will comply."
I clenched my jaw, feeling the power flow from the Horn. This was the artifact I'd been killed for. The Covey wanted it because it must be powerful. My instinct was to use its power to help me, but I never played with fire without reason. I wasn't that stupid. I had to do research first. To learn what I had. The old Cisco—power hungry, naive—not so much. But I knew the inherent danger now. Danger that had gotten my family killed.
But that wasn't all. Any arrangement with the wraith would suit his ends. I knew a Faustian deal when I saw one.
So instead of making my strongest move up front, it was smarter to make a bunch of smaller plays. Research. Investigate. Even if it meant playing politics. After ten years, surely I could wait.
"Sorry," I said. "I'm kind of a solo act."
I slammed the safe shut, clicking it locked and pulling the key. With a wave of my hand, I drew the darkness over it, in case any curious explorers found this hideout. The shadow wouldn't stand up to the effects of a flashlight, but it was better than nothing.
When I turned around and pocketed the key, the apparition was gone.
Just my luck. Not only was I investigating my own murder, but I needed to keep tabs on a city commissioner, watch my back for assaulting poltergeists, and now an ancient wraith wanted to serve me. I ought to get a personal assistant because this was getting difficult to keep track of.
Chapter 10
Analysis paralysis. That's what they call it when people have so many options they don't know what to do. With an abundance of choice, most of us balk at deciding which course of action to go with. Often, our hesitation leads us to doing none.
I pulled my truck out and locked the boat house behind me. Recognizing that I was in the grips of analysis paralysis, I put motion before thought. I didn't have a clear plan of action, but it was enough to get as far from the wraith as possible. As I drove along the swamp path, I pulled out my burner phone and called Evan Cross.
"Cisco?" he asked. To him, the number was unidentified.
"You got it," I answered. I was hoping the city commissioner hadn't seen me and tipped Evan off. If you thought Evan had been ornery before you should wait till he really gets upset. "Tell me you found the boat."
"Don't say I never did anything for you," he said, apparently oblivious to my indiscretions. "The paper trail was recently digitized, so it was easier than I thought."
"It's gonna take a little more than one easy win to improve my record."
Evan chuckled. "I hear you. The boat we found at Star Island was moved to a consignment warehouse in Homestead. It was there less than a year when a hurricane ravaged the whole neighborhood. It was all scrapped."
"Hauled to a junkyard?"
"No. It's a multi-million-dollar cleanup job. Everything's still there, but abandoned." I could hear the squeak of Evan's office chair as he leaned back. "The entire site is pending demo, but it's a low priority. Since the bottom fell out, construction in this city is just starting up again."
The recession sounded bad, but zombies don't follow the stock market. I'd picked a good decade to die. "Okay, so I can still access it?"
"The question is how useful that would be. Everything was flooded. Vandalized. Evidence was tampered with. None of it's any good anymore. And since nobody was stupid enough to claim a pivotal piece of evidence in a murder investigation, the boat was just forgotten."
"I beg to differ."
Evan was still thinking like a cop, concerned with physical evidence. His methods had a definite place in today's world, but they didn't always work in mine.
"What about the boat registration?" I asked. "Who owned it?"
"I thought you just wanted the address."
"That's what I asked, but I figured any real detective worth a damn would go above and beyond."
Evan mocked me with a sarcastic laugh. "One step ahead of you, cowboy. The Risky Proposition was registered to a charter company out of the Cayman Islands. Jurisdictional disputes gave investigators the run around, but the short story is that no individuals were ever tied to the boat."
"But we know the business—"
"The company shuttered weeks before the crime, and regulations in that country aren't exactly bona fide. There were no records of the vessel in that period, meaning it was most likely stolen. So the registration was a dead end."
He flipped through a couple papers before continuing. "You saw the report, so you may have noted the forty-two biological samples taken from the boat. The lab found some contaminated DNA, and a lot of fish matter. Forensics couldn't pull any matches. Even if they did, it wouldn't prove anything anyway. All kinds of tourists and fishermen had legitimate access to the Proposition."
I sighed. "So it all comes down to what I can scour from a flooded piece of wreckage in a junkyard."
"The property's still off-limits, Cisco. You'd be trespassing. Not to mention, the structure is unsafe. It might fall on your head, if it hasn't collapsed already."
"Danger's my middle name."
"I thought it was Desi."
I sucked my teeth. "So what? My mom liked I Love Lucy."
"Don't I know it, buddy." There was an element of mirth in his voice. A moment when everything that had happened between us was forgotten and we were just two high school kids again. But Evan quickly cleared his throat and read off the address of the warehouse in a professional tone. "That's what you wanted, Cisco. Now you need to do something for me."
"What's that?"
"Don't fucking blow the place up."
I grimaced. "Funny."
"I'm just saying. It wouldn't kill you to be discreet once in a while."
"You forget," I told him. "I'm already dead." I ended the call. After pulling the battery, I chucked the burner out of the broken passenger window. It plunked into the Everglades canal.
It might be obvious by now, but I couldn't trust my friend anymore. If he ever tracked me down I might find myself the guest of honor in a SWAT parade. Still, I had to hand it to him. Evan Cross had come through for me, allowing me to stave off analysis paralysis for a little longer.
The sun went down before I arrived. Shadows are my friend. I'm not exactly ethereal like the wraith, but I can phase under and past objects, given enough clearance. The darkness also lent itself well to not being seen. If nobody saw me, I wouldn't need to blow anything up. A win-win for everybody.
Not that it mattered when I arrived at the Homestead neighborhood. The area was empty. No longer storm damaged, but still plenty run down. Derelict buildings lined open roads. The lot matching the address was a set of several warehouses. Temporary fencing had been installed after the hurricane but it hadn't done a good job of keeping anyone out. The building walls were tagged with various gang signs and messages. None of them looked magical.
Navigating the property without being seen and slipping inside was easy. The cheap walls were ripped. Even though a piece of the roof was missing, it was dark now. I let the shadow slip into my eyes and observed the absolute clusterfuck of debris within.
Flooding doesn't convey the full scope of the situation. Submarine battle aftermath might be more apt. The warehouse interior was muggy, with mosses and grass along the walls. Tadpoles flurried beneath in pools of wate
r where the floor had collapsed. Caked mud plastered the walls and every confiscated vehicle in the place, most of which were missing tires and stripped of parts.
Evan was right. There'd be nothing of value left here.
And forget about organization. The debris was strewn about and piled so wildly you'd need a black hole to clean it out. Finding the boat based on the crime scene picture could take days.
Days, I had. But I also had plenty of shadow.
My eyes sucked in the blackness and everything grew a little sharper. I scanned for faint traces of spellcraft as I climbed over and weaved through the junk of justice. The storm had likely washed the remnants of magic away, but the area was private and enclosed. It was possible something persisted. After the better part of an hour, just as I could no longer deny the frustration, I felt something. Not an afterimage of spellcraft so much as something still active. Something... familiar.
It wasn't exactly a GPS with a pinpoint map location, but some part of me, if I relaxed my eyes, was guided by it. And whatever was there led me true because in another five minutes I'd found the charter boat.
The Risky Proposition was a disappointing piece of shit. Looking at it, I knew why the Cayman Islands company that had once owned it was now defunct. For an island that catered to expensive tastes, this boat was forgettable at best. I'd been considering tracking down former employees of the business, but I wouldn't be surprised if the vessel had just been abandoned at sea or sold for scrap.
So the open mystery had to be linking the boat to Miami. For that matter, there was the lingering question of why I was on the boat to begin with. That link might be more meaningful than the Star Island house, since the house was just a safe location the vampire had brought me to, seeking privacy for the ritual.
I closed my eyes and sighed, trying to remember. It was unlikely I ever would. I climbed over the hull of the boat and began my investigation.
First thing, there were no lingering spells, ritualistic or otherwise, but I didn't need magic to see the horrors that had played out here. The deck was caked with dirt and blood. According to the report, it was my blood. I had seen it in the pictures, but it hit me here, when I was surrounded by it in real space, crawling up the bulkheads. The full scale of what had happened hit me.
Boarding this boat had been a risky proposition indeed. After losing that much blood, I was surprised I had any steam left going into the house.
I stepped into the open cabin. The boat was old, weathered before being stored here. Plastic bands along the overhead appeared newer. Some of the panels were now cracked, and underneath were strings of halogen bulbs. They ran along the bulkheads as well. A custom, aftermarket job that must have lit the cabin like an operating room.
No doubt, an anti-shadow measure.
That meant whoever had led me to the boat knew of my power and how to counter it. Light didn't render me useless, of course, but it declawed me somewhat. More importantly, it left me with nowhere to hide.
A chill ran down my spine as I imagined Tunji Malu cornering me in this berth. He'd been a swift and deadly opponent, problematic to kill in an open space while I'd been cloaked in darkness. On this small boat, it was no surprise I succumbed to him.
Something else was strange about the vessel. Isolated burn marks on the deck. They'd been caused by intense heat, not simply a firearm, but I couldn't place the signature. I wondered what Evan had made of this evidence.
Searching the crevices of the boat didn't turn up anything. Like everything else in the warehouse, anything of value had been stripped by vandals and urban explorers. The chain of evidence had been obliterated, which is why the police had left these items to linger.
My boot scuffed a patch of mud in the corner between the wall and flooring. I clicked my heel against it. The substance was hard. Upon closer inspection, it wasn't mud at all. I dug at it with my ceremonial bronze knife. The rock-like material came away in chips, but it wasn't easy.
I stood and checked the other boats surrounding the Proposition. Some larger, some smaller, all stripped and weathered and covered in mud as well. None of the other vessels bore the blood, of course. Nor this petrified substance.
I examined it again, checking for traces of magic. Nothing came back. I couldn't guess what it was or how long it had been here. I continued poking at it with my blade. It wasn't long before I hit a small metallic object buried underneath.
Like an archaeologist, I scraped the fossil free. The object was a compass, and one familiar to my hands. I didn't remember the boat or bringing it with me, but I remembered it as my possession.
A darkfinder. An enchanted item rooted with charmed mercury. The compass was meant to point to anyone meaning the bearer serious bodily harm.
Fat lot of good it had done me.
I shook the compass and checked the hands. They hung listlessly. Apathetic. I shrugged and added it to my belt pouch. It might come in handy later.
I slumped to the deck and rubbed my eyes. The exhaustion was getting to me again. Creaks of wood echoed in the distance as the junk settled, and that stirred bad thoughts. I didn't want to stay here long. I was banking on the lead safe stopping them, but the poltergeists on my tail would have a field day with the crap in this room. Better not to present them with the opportunity.
The boat? I didn't know. Maybe Evan was right. This crime scene was dry. Dead. Ten years later, I was gonna have to deal with the living.
As I sighed, a spot of darkness caught my eye. I couldn't believe I'd missed it—the familiar shadow that had drawn me to the boat in the first place. Here, in the quiet, I could distinctly sense it. It was faint, but that spot of black was mine. I should've immediately recognized it.
Along the opposite wall was a dark spot, blacker even than night. It was a shadow box, a secret hiding place I used to drag along with me. My connection to it had been severed after all these years. Long forgotten. But my signature was the same. Now that I'd found it again, it only took a little gathering of power to restore it.
I reached my hand into the blackness, straight through the deck like a well had opened up, and felt for it. When I withdrew my fist, it was wrapped around my trusty sawed-off shotgun. A breech-loading number with a single barrel—basically the oldest and cheapest shotgun you could buy—but great because it was simple enough to be stored in a shadow box.
The gun itself had been enchanted to sit in the ether, of course. It wasn't an easy thing to do. Or cheap. It had cost me a favor back in the day. But with it in my hands, that favor was the gift that kept on giving.
I didn't have any ammunition on me. I folded the barrel down, noting the single unused shell still locked and loaded.
I smiled. It felt good to have the weapon again. Like the compass, it was another piece of my old life returned to me. I would never have it all back, but it was a start.
I chucked the sawed off back in the shadow box and hopped off the Proposition, this time dragging the compartment along for the ride. The shotgun would always be at the ready. Hidden from law enforcement and prying eyes but, as long as there were shadows in this world, always within reach.
Chapter 11
I'm not gonna lie. Leaving the evidence lockup, I was crestfallen. Between the poltergeist interrupting my surveillance of Rudi Alvarez, hunting for the lead safe to contain the wraith, and the disappointing evidence on the charter boat, the entire day had been a push. I was running all over town with nothing to show for it.
I'm a smartass know-it-all who's made a lot of mistakes. I've let down my friends and family. That's not unusual for me. What I'm not used to is failure. There are only so many setbacks I can take in stride before I get desperate.
At least the Horn, the skeletal apparition, and the ghosts were out of play. But that wasn't enough. That was the detour. I needed to get back to politics. To City Hall. And what better time than now, when it was closed?
Yup, Evan would be pissed. But like I said, letting down friends is my MO.
I a
rrived from the south and parked a block away, making sure I didn't get anywhere near the last poltergeist attack. I was beginning to suspect that something was following me and the locations weren't important, but no point taking chances.
A security car was posted outside. A bored man with an LCD-illuminated face sat within, distracted by his portable DVD player. I skirted the grounds along the water, weaving between the trees and brush, using the shadows when I could. Another guard strolled along the front walkway, more robotic than alert. Unless anyone was inside, which didn't appear to be the case judging by the open view through the large windows, I only had to avoid the two rent-a-cops.
This was gonna be a piece of cake.
I made my way to the back without event. I crouched by the water and waited, expecting security to do a walk around on foot. It never happened. Maybe I was putting too much faith in them. Maybe they were holding hands in the front seat of their car watching Thelma & Louise.
My patience, however, paid off unexpectedly. The back access door that I'd been clocking swung open and a large man stepped out. Tyson Roderick, the Secret Service wannabe in the commissioner's employ, quietly shut the door and slunk away.
To see such a big guy acting light on his toes brought a smile to my face, but what really got me were the shades he still wore in the middle of the night. I had half a hunch to follow him, but I decided City Hall was the bigger priority.
Besides, when would I get a chance like this again?
Once Tyson was out of sight, I crept up to the door and tested the handle. Open. Looked like the big guy wasn't the most thorough head of security. But I wasn't one to question fortune.
The inner halls were barren, as predicted. The main lobby, visible from the facade, glowed with accent lighting. Everywhere else had been ignored. I moved in these neglected corridors, finding the commissioners' quarters and, specifically, the office of Rudi Alvarez.
The room was plain. Unimpressive by any standard. I wondered how much actual work the commissioner performed in this room. From what I understood, the political position was part-time. When he wasn't running the City of Miami, Rudi could've been up to anything. Fishing. Selling crafts online. Making deals with West African vampires. The options were endless.
