by John Everson
He crept up the stairs slowly, pausing at every step. He realized at the fifth step that he was holding his breath. He forced himself to let it out, and then drew in a new breath until his chest stopped burning.
The upstairs was as quiet as below, and he peered around the doorjamb into Ceili’s room. It, too, was not the way he’d left it.
The closet doors were open, and the drawers to the small bureau were all open as well. He stepped inside and confirmed that Ceili’s clothes were missing, not simply disrupted.
Regina had been here, he knew it. And he’d been gone, damn it! But the fact that she’d been here meant that she was still close, right? And that Ceili was okay if she was grabbing food and clothing.
Austin went to his bedroom and retrieved the card that Wolff had left him. Then he went downstairs and picked up the phone. When he heard the dial tone, he began to punch in the numbers on the card. He didn’t want to touch anything else in the house until the police had been notified. Maybe they would find a clue somehow in the mess she’d left.
He paused mid-dial without completing the call. The image of the girl with the cut throat played over again in his head. He couldn’t call them. His finger hovered over the keypad, frozen. He didn’t know what to do. If the police could find anything here that would help locate Ceili…. He shook his head and hit the next number. He was calling them, to hell with Regina and her photos.
The line went dead.
He pressed the number again on the keypad and there was no beep. He pressed the receiver to his ear and heard only silence. Damn it! Fine time for the phone to go dead. Austin got up and started to walk toward the kitchen to get his cell phone.
Before he could reach the door, three men in black bodysuits came through it from the other side. Two of them grabbed and pinned his arms, while the third dove for his feet.
Austin tried to break free of their grasp and started to yell but something was suddenly shoved in and around his mouth. A gag. He grimaced as his tongue pushed against the cotton. Before he knew it, both of his hands were tied behind his back and something was cinching at his feet. He wrestled against the men but after they pulled his bonds fast, they stepped away from him and Austin fell to the floor.
He kicked and jittered there, rolling onto his side and then facedown in the carpet, before rolling back to his side. He screamed in frustration, but the gag kept most of his anger contained in his throat.
The men in black stood around him, arms crossed, watching his reaction. Austin continued to thrash around on the floor for a bit, struggling to loosen the bonds on his feet or hands to no avail. When he finally stopped bucking and shifting, and lay still for a minute, looking from one captor to the next, one of them finally took pity and bent down. One of them reached over to the phone and picked up Wolff’s business card. He shook his head sadly.
“If you yell, I will kick you in the balls,” the man said. He held Austin’s gaze for a minute as he said it, as if to underline his point. Cross me and you’re fucked worse than you are already, that look said.
Austin nodded, and did not try to scream from beneath the gag.
The man reached down and with both hands undid the knot that held the gag on. When Austin looked up, the man grinned.
“You obviously didn’t understand the text you received,” he said, waving the card in front of Austin’s face. “It’s really best for everyone if you don’t make any calls right now. We’re here to take you to Equinox. The ropes are just a precaution. Maybe you want to go. But we do not take chances.”
“I want to go if my baby is there,” Austin said. His voice caught and he almost choked as he said it. His mouth tasted awful now that the gag was removed. He swallowed and blinked hard, clearing his throat and his vision. “Do you have Ceili?”
The leader of the trio nodded. “Your baby is safe. She’s waiting for you in the secret heart of Equinox.”
“Will you take me to see her?”
The man grinned.
“Not only will you see her,” he said. “but you will eat of her flesh at the height of the Devil’s moon.”
Chapter Twenty-One
They didn’t blindfold him. Which meant that they didn’t expect him to ever leave the club once they reached it.
That was one of his first thoughts as they pulled away from his house in a large SUV. They had parked it in the open space in Austin’s garage and had quickly muscled him through the door and into the middle seat in the back. Two of the three men in black sat on either side of him, while the third took off his mask and drove.
Austin watched as they turned right out of his neighborhood and then shot down 8th Street toward downtown – he’d guessed that the club lay in that direction, when he’d tried to retrace Regina’s route to Club Equinox earlier.
They crossed the tracks at Nineteenth and turned right, moving into one of the blocks that Austin had been to just an hour before. And then they parked in front of a nondescript brick building. It might have been one that Austin had walked in front of earlier, but he couldn’t be sure.
The man nearest the sidewalk opened the door, stepped out, and then reached back into the car to pull Austin after him. The other two joined in, and together they steered Austin through an unmarked wooden door. As soon as it shut behind them and they moved past a second, inner doorway, the familiar club sounds assaulted them.
Heavy pounding beats, flashing blue and white and red lights. Austin saw the undulating bodies on the dance floor ahead of them. A DJ stood on an elevated riser with a stack of black electronic equipment and a microphone to the right. But the men in black weren’t interested in that side of the club. They pressed Austin to the left, and in moments, they were past the throng and moving through a narrow hallway in the back.
The hall emptied into another large room, but there was no modern sound system or electric spotlights here. They were back in the candlelit section of the building. Every few feet, one extended up from an inset in the stone face, and the flames flickered upward to throw orange shadows on the ceiling. A larger, singular torch lit the center of the room, in front of a large stone statue of a goat’s horned head.
Around the center, a series of crosses were anchored in the ground. In front of each one stood a naked man or woman, with chains leading from manacles on their wrists to hooks in the arms of the crosses.
Behind each nude figure stood another, each of them brandishing leather whips. The sound of their tips cracking against the damp flesh of the chained subjects echoed through the room. The snap of whips against skin was the music of this club within a club.
Austin looked at one of the crosses and saw a woman with shoulder-length black hair and arms completely sleeved in tattoos literally dancing as the woman behind her snapped the whip. As her flogger snapped the leather, the girl bent forward, absorbing the lash, and then came up to grin and laugh.
He stared hard across the room at her tattoos, trying to make out what the designs represented. He could see the eye hollows of a skull on the shoulder closest to him, but there was a rich tapestry of vines and thorns and who knew what else around it. The creamy globes of her breasts bounced in front of those tattoos, yet he barely even noticed as he stared at the design. The artistry fascinated him for some strange reason. But before he could decipher its meaning or inspiration, a hand slapped the back of his head.
“Eyes on the prize, pervert. This is not the room we have in mind for you,” one of the black-garbed men chastised. “Maybe you can come back here later, but there are darker things for you ahead.”
“Much darker,” one of the others laughed.
They walked through the undulating bodies writhing beneath the horsewhips of black-clad men, and suddenly the debauchery that Austin had seen in this club seemed somehow laughable. He realized that it was merely window dressing for a darker heart within, as they left the room behind and entered another hal
lway beyond, where Austin was pushed down a flight of rough-hewn stone steps. As he descended, the flight spiraled to the right and around. He didn’t count, but after a couple dozen steps, they finally reached the floor at the bottom.
It looked like how he imagined ancient Roman catacombs had been. Stone-floor hall. Torches on the gray block walls. Shadows in every corner. They walked for several yards, footsteps echoing eerily in the passageway. And then they reached an entryway. Heavy granite pillars flanked the opening, and the men in black pushed Austin through them.
The air inside was cool and damp. The light was low. Austin blinked after they entered, struggling to take it all in.
There was smoke in the air, maybe incense. He could smell a strange, pungent odor of burning. And as he strained to make out the layout of the room, he could see in the faintly blue light that there was a small crowd of people at the far end. And candles burning. A man wearing a tall ornamental hat and a vestment around his shoulders raised his arms and as he did, Austin could make out the fact that there was an altar beyond him.
And a nude figure upon it.
A familiar tableau from his past visits here.
“Where are we going?” he asked. But his question was only met with an elbow to the back.
“Just walk,” one of the men said. “You’ll get your answers soon enough.”
They walked through the blue gloom of the subterranean room, and then, when they reached the stone altar at the front, Austin gasped.
Brandy, his babysitter, was the naked figure on the altar. And his baby was lying there, also bare, in her arms.
Austin leapt forward, but six hands grabbed and held him back.
“Uh-uh-uh,” one of them cautioned. “Not until they’re ready for you.”
At that moment, there was a stir in the crowd beyond the altar, and sisters shifted and moved aside as someone pushed forward. Austin’s heart sank as he saw who it was.
Regina.
She stepped through the crowd and reached the altar with a wide grin on her face. She wore next to nothing – a sheer black vestment that draped across her shoulders and served not to hide, but to accentuate, the swell of her breasts and the shadowed V of her sex. Her bare skin glistened with the sweat of exertion. What exertion, Austin didn’t think he wanted to know.
“Necromancy told me you would return,” she said, leaning in toward him.
“You didn’t need magic to figure that out,” he said. “You took my baby; of course I’m going to return.”
Regina smiled. “I knew you would come. In fact, I banked on it. Because for the ceremony to be successful, we need your participation.”
She stepped past Austin and touched one finger to his lips. He could smell the sweat on her. The steam of sex, maybe.
“What ceremony?” he asked.
“The rite of the Devil’s Equinox.”
Austin didn’t like the sound of that.
“I just want my daughter back,” he said. “Just let us go and I won’t tell the police anything. I’ll say you left her on my doorstep and that will be the end of it.”
Regina walked past the altar and ran her hand across the baby’s head. Ceili lay quiet on Brandy’s breast; it could have been a Madonna and Child picture. Except that they were in a room with a demonic goat’s head as the centerpiece.
“You’ll make no deals with me now,” she said, holding up one hand. “Now is when you pay back your debt.”
“What debt?” he asked.
“You wanted your wife dead,” she answered. “And I delivered. Now it’s your turn.”
“What do you want?”
“The price of your wife’s life is the blood of your daughter.”
“No,” he said, straining against the hands that held him back. “I never asked you to hurt Angie. And I won’t let you hurt Ceili.”
Regina shook her head. “It won’t be me that holds the blade,” she said. “Ceili’s blood will open the door. Her flesh will bring us to the heart of dominion. And our power will grow deep in that moment when she transcends. But your blood will draw her blood. Your hand will give her over. That’s the crux of the ritual. And it is the only route to her salvation.”
“You’re insane,” he said. He spit the words at her. But she only smiled.
“I didn’t make the rules,” she said. “But I will do my best to enforce them.”
One of the ‘sisters’ walked up at that point holding a ceremonial dagger in her open palms. The knife was shiny silver, its haft encrusted with red and green jewels.
“At the height of the Equinox, you will enter Ceili’s heart, and release her life to us all. When the moon moves away from the center of the sun, the power of Selene will be ours. Your debt will be paid, and you can walk away free.”
“I don’t think so,” Austin whispered. “I won’t kill for you.”
Regina laughed. “You already have. Or didn’t you understand the photo I sent you?”
“You drugged me,” he said. “I would never hurt anyone intentionally.”
“Drugs, magic, your own brutality finally set free…it doesn’t matter why,” she said. “The point is, you have killed for me. And tonight, you will do it again.” Regina shrugged. “That’s the best thing that you could do. But there is another way.”
She walked over to Brandy and lifted the child in the air. As she looked up at Ceili’s face, the baby gurgled and smiled, her lips glossy wet and her eyes shining with happiness. The baby knew Regina.
“We can tie your life to hers,” Regina said. “It won’t bring as much power, but it should be enough. In that scenario, however, you do not walk out of here.”
“I am not walking out of here without Ceili,” Austin said.
Regina shrugged. “You might reconsider when you know more.”
She pointed and from the crowd, four women in black silk robes stepped forward.
“Take him downstairs,” she said.
Austin leapt toward Regina, struggling with all of his might to reach out to Ceili, but the women anchored him easily. The baby laughed and chirruped, thinking her daddy was performing some kind of joke for her.
And then a collar snapped around Austin’s neck. He felt them thread the strap through the metal hook, but he couldn’t lift his arms to stop them.
“That’s better,” Regina said. “You aren’t fit to be a master. So you can be a dog.”
Someone yanked hard on the chain, and Austin staggered backward choking.
Before he could regain his balance, two hands grabbed his arms and held them together behind his back. He felt the rope slip around his wrists but could do nothing to stop it from cinching tight.
One of the sisters took the leash and pulled on the chain, leading Austin through the throng of onlookers and out of the room. He tried to look backward, to see Ceili, but the woman only yanked harder on the chain, and he staggered and struggled to stay upright. Thick hands gripped his shoulders and pushed him forward. Seconds later they were walking through a dark empty passageway. And then he was pushed through a doorway and into a shadow-filled room. The visual echoes of orange flame flickered against one wall, illuminating an upside-down cross and several strange geometric designs that he knew meant something…but had no idea what. A woman attached his chain to the end to a metal hook sticking out of the wall. He heard something click.
His captors stepped back but did not instantly leave. Austin pulled as hard as he could on the chain, but it didn’t budge. He looked up to see that it was fastened with a padlock to the wall hook. Lovely. He was caught fast. He sat down on the low cot beneath the hook and stared back at the false nuns and priests gathered at his cell door. One of them – a broad woman with large nipples and an even larger mouth – stepped forward and spoke.
“The way is hard,” she said. “But the rewards are great. Reconsider, and remain a
live with the power of Selene at your call.”
“I don’t want power,” he said. “I just want my baby girl.”
“Then you will have neither,” the woman said, and turned away. The rest moved to follow her, and a moment later the heavy door slammed shut. He heard the key turn in the lock. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had left it unlocked; he couldn’t walk more than three feet from the small cot. He shifted the heavy iron chain attached to the collar on his neck so that it wound around his shoulder. Then he stood on the cot and turned his body slowly, wrapping the chain around to his other shoulder. He couldn’t give much pressure pulling with his neck, but with the weight of his full body?
Austin threw himself hard away from the wall, absorbing the tightening of the chain on his shoulders.
The metal dug into his arms but did not budge from the wall above.
Fuck.
He tried again, throwing himself against the chain with his right shoulder. He felt his skin crease and crimp and stifled a yell at the pinching pain.
Nothing.
Austin stood on the cot and twisted his body clockwise one more time, and then steeled himself to literally run off the edge of the bed. He could put his full weight into the action and bear the stress on his arms versus his neck. If that didn’t work….
He silently counted to three. And kicked off the wall.
The chain snapped hard against his shoulder and he lost his balance, falling off the bed. His body turned and twirled like a top. Austin’s hips hit the floor, but his neck yanked up instead of going to the ground. He choked and screamed with a throaty gasp. He had no hands free to grab the chain to relieve the strain. He pushed with his feet and flopped his body around until the pressure eased. When it did, he laid his head down on the cold cement ground and coughed until he thought he would puke.
When the stars cleared from his eyes, and his breathing eased, he finally lifted his head and looked up at the eyebolt that held him locked to the wall.
“You win,” he whispered. Slowly, he drew himself up and crawled onto the cot.
