by Alex Gordon
“He wants me to bring him his phone and his tablet. Like he’s going to try to work now.” Nyssa swatted Carmody with the cloth she had been using to soak his wounds.
“I just want—them here in case we need to—call for backup.” Carmody’s voice emerged gravelly, and he had to pause several times to clear his throat. “Do you have anybody—in the area?” He cast a long look at Peter. “Do you have anybody—anywhere? I can send a plane for them. The chopper. Anything you require.”
Peter nodded toward Stef. “We can pull together some names.” He caught Lauren’s eye and jerked his chin toward Carmody, then took out his phone and went to sit at the doctor’s desk. He motioned for Stef to join him, and together they got to work.
Lauren circled Carmody’s bed and studied his exposed skin. “How do you feel?”
“Lousy. Which is a helluva lot better than I felt—an hour ago.” He shuddered. “I think I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.” He pointed to his face, then to Lauren. “We’re a matched set.”
“No, I think you win this one.” Lauren bent close to a suspicious looking wound on Carmody’s arm. Felt the pressure of a stare, and looked up to find him eyeing her.
“What are you doing?” He leaned away from her, then looked down at the spot she had been trying to assess.
Lauren poked the injury, which turned out to be a scab. “Checking.” She told him about the black welts. “The venom works fast, I think. Sam disappeared an hour or so after we returned from Jericho.” She glanced at the wall clock. “So I would say that if you’re infected, you should be feeling it about now.”
Carmody stilled for a few moments, then shook his head. “Fernanda wouldn’t want me yet. She’d wait until the end, after she had gotten hold of Nyssa and destroyed everyone and everything else I cared about.” He swung his legs back and forth, like a little kid sitting at the edge of a pool. “If you’re not infected, she must not want you yet, either.”
“I think she just wants me dead.”
“It’s not true. What she said. None of it.”
Lauren nodded. She tried to think of the diplomatic thing to say, and decided that at this point, tact was a luxury they couldn’t afford. “Bottom line? It will always be your word against hers. Do I think she hates you enough that she would lie? Yes. Do I think it possible that you killed her and managed to justify it to yourself, or call it an accident? Yes.” She felt his stare like the rake of nails down the side of her face. “I don’t mean to sound brutal, but you two deserved one another.”
Carmody scanned the room until he spotted Nyssa, safely out of earshot on the opposite side. “Don’t hold back, Lauren.” He started to say more, then just shook his head. Lay back and closed his eyes, the round sucker wounds, cuts, and scratches on his neck and chest angry red in the fluorescent lighting.
Lauren watched his breathing slow as he fell asleep. Then she left the room and walked down the hall and around the corner to where Jenny sat leafing through a large book bound in worn burgundy leather.
“Did you know that there are fifteen different types of charms you can make from rose thorns?” She looked up at Lauren, then pointed to the book. “Magic for beginners, or whatever you call it.” She closed the cover. “I found it in the library. Thing’s so old, it doesn’t even have a title.”
“Academic interest, or are you planning on giving it a go?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t seem to have done any of you much good, has it?”
Lauren shrugged. Given the events of the last few days, it was a fair point. “It isn’t all horrible.”
“Not exactly a ringing endorsement.”
“Maybe ask the same question in a few days.” Assuming we’re all still alive.
“Those other books aren’t there anymore.” Jenny rubbed her eyes, then yawned. “The ones about the CIA and those other agencies. Somebody cleaned house.”
Lauren tried to stifle her own yawn, then gave in to it. “Did I ever mention those?” She wiped her eyes with her lab coat sleeve. “I don’t think I ever mentioned those.”
“I noticed them the other day. I see things, too, you know.”
“I never said you didn’t.” Lauren studied the woman, who looked as exhausted as she felt. “You don’t have to stay here, you realize that? You’re a civilian. This isn’t your fight.”
“Yes, it is.” Jenny set the grimoire on the floor. She had left her hair loose, a gold-tipped halo of brown curls, skin beneath her eyes purpled from lack of sleep. “I’m in this as much as you.” She paused. “Elliott Rickard was my grandfather.”
“I—okay. Wow.” Lauren lowered to the floor beside her. “But he vanished in 1978. You couldn’t have known him.”
Jenny inhaled a shaky breath. “Momma told me about him. She said he was intense. When a project caught fire, he wouldn’t come home for days at a time. My grandmother told her that the story of him going missing at the picnic never rang true, because he was neck-deep in a project. He would never have stepped away for even a moment to do some social thing.”
“Did your grandmother know what he was working on?”
“If she did, she never told my mother.” Jenny shook her head. “I didn’t believe Nyssa when she told us what had happened there, in that room underground. What you found. What you did. I thought she was just being a drama queen like always.” She finally looked at Lauren, and winced. “Then I walked into the treatment room and saw your face as they were working on it, and I almost lost it.” She stopped, swallowed hard. “How could he do that to people? How could he subject them to such awful things?”
“I’m guessing they were volunteers.” At least, that was what Lauren hoped. “Maybe he convinced himself that they knew what they were getting into. That whatever they went through was for the good of humanity, or their country.”
Jenny shook her head. “It wasn’t government backed. Anything after the early seventies was privately funded by Carmody. They were doing it for the money, for power, to discover things that they could sell to the highest bidder. There was nothing noble, or pure, or—” She pulled a tissue from her pocket, but it was too late. Her eyes filled, and she didn’t bother to catch the tears as they fell. After a time, she cleared her throat and wiped her eyes. “What are you going to do?”
“For now, I’m just going to walk around. Keeps the nerves at bay.” Lauren stood, stuffed her hands in her pockets, and wandered up and down halls until she came to the elevator. Rode to the first floor, and went to the bar. Found Gene Kaster sitting at the counter, a tumbler of whiskey in hand and the bottle at his elbow, lost in thought.
Lauren tiptoed behind him. “A retreat, you said. Relax with other witches, you said.”
Kaster jerked upright, then spun around on his stool. “I’m sorry.” He tried to smile, but it didn’t last. “I didn’t want this to happen.”
“Who would?” Lauren boosted onto the seat next to him. “That was some spell you pulled out of your back pocket. It didn’t just drive those creatures away, it killed a few.” She reached over the bar and grabbed a can of seltzer from a tray of mixers, then plucked a glass from the overhead rack. “Makes me wonder whether you couldn’t have done something earlier, before any of this happened.”
Kaster pushed a plastic cup filled with ice down the bar toward her. “I told you before. I am limited as to what I can do.”
“By whom?” Lauren poured, added ice, waved off Kaster’s offer of the scotch bottle. “Your boss? I don’t believe he would object to a little assistance at the moment.”
“Andrew knows what I can and can’t do.” Kaster set his elbows on the bar, fixed his eyes straight ahead. “He accepts the terms. He sticks by them. He’s a good man of business.”
“Is that what this is? Business?” Lauren waited. “What are you?” She held out her left hand, the bruises already faded. “You healed this. I think you’ve been healing Nyssa’s self-inflicted injuries for years. Fernanda called you her husband’s protector. I�
��m surprised you haven’t healed him.”
Kaster swirled his glass. “Who said I didn’t?”
“Stef’s poultice—” Lauren replayed the scene in her head, the way Kaster held Carmody, brushed his hand over the man’s face. Then she reached out and placed her hand over his.
Kaster eyed her sidelong, then eased his hand away. “I could, you know. Let you get the full sense of me. But I’m afraid it would kill you, and I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
“So you have one. Coulda fooled me.”
“You have stumbled into something so much bigger than you can imagine.”
“I didn’t stumble anywhere. I was invited, by you.”
“By Andrew.” Kaster paused to drink. “I was merely the messenger.”
“I don’t think there’s anything mere about you.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I didn’t mean it as one.” Lauren dug an ice chip out of her glass and slipped it into her mouth and crunched it. The chill felt good against her sore cheek. “Are you human?”
“As human as you.” Kaster refilled. No ice, this time. “As human as I need to be.”
“Why can’t you stop this?”
“Because whatever the outcome, it is, essentially, a family matter.” For the first time, Kaster showed something like anger, his cheeks reddening, nostrils flaring. “People make decisions. Those decisions affect people they love, people they hate, people they don’t even know. They make their choices, and they pay, or others pay. They see the fallout. They live with the consequences. How else do they learn?”
Lauren checked the wall clock. “Isn’t it a little too late?”
“For what?”
“A ramble about the nature of good and evil. I think I know which is which now. Thanks for that.” She slid off her seat. “I need to go. Pete and Stef are calling other Council members. Looks like I’ll finally get to meet some of them.”
Kaster glanced at her, then quickly away. “How is Stef?”
“Wobbly. Worried. She wanted to leave, which surprised me.”
“She’s scared.”
“We all are.”
“You’re worried about what’s to come. She’s worried about what’s been done. Or not done.”
Lauren stilled. “She set wards.”
“Yes. She did. They aren’t working very well, are they?”
Lauren pondered. Then she closed her eyes. “Shit.”
Kaster raised his glass in a toast. “I’m surprised you didn’t figure it out sooner, given your personal experience.”
“I didn’t—you knew this, too?” Lauren thumped the side of her head with her fist. “Damn you. Does Peter know?”
“What do you think?” Kaster polished off his drink, then poured another. “It’s been a day of discovery, has it not?”
“Yes.” Lauren stared at the man—the whatever the hell he was—but he refused to meet her eye. “Yes, it has.” She swore under her breath and hurried out of the bar.
LAUREN RETURNED TO the clinic to find Stef seated in the hall outside the treatment room, dozing. The woman opened her eyes and straightened as soon as she saw her.
“Lauren.” Her appraisal held less antagonism than usual. “Gene had given us to believe you sustained some serious damage, but you look quite well. A bit battered, but that would be expected.”
Lauren lowered cross-legged to the floor in front of the woman’s chair. “How long?”
Stef managed a puzzled half smile. “I’m sorry?”
“How long do you have to live?” Lauren kept her voice low. “Forgive my directness, but we don’t have time. You’re dying. That’s why your wards are failing, even after you strengthen them.”
“We are fighting an enemy of incomparable strength.” Stef leaned forward until her face was only inches away. “How dare you suggest that I am not making every effort to contain it.”
“I didn’t say that.” Lauren studied the lines of Stef’s face, noted the yellowish tinge of her skin and the whites of her eyes. “My dad probably sacrificed at least twenty years of his life squelching my powers. He thought he was helping me, and that he could fight my battles for me. Except that he couldn’t because what he fought had time on its side. It could afford to wait.” Tears sprang, as they did every so often when she thought of her father, and she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Does Pete know?”
Stef made as if to argue. Then she slumped, as though someone had pricked her and let out a little bit of air, and shook her head.
“You have to tell him. Now.” Lauren started to reach out, hesitated, then placed her hand over Stef’s and felt the same papery brittleness that she had the first time she touched her. I should have known then. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry. But this isn’t about you anymore.”
Stef looked past Lauren into some middle distance. “As long as I cast the wards, Andrew would support the Council.”
“Did he know your condition?” Lauren gave Stef’s hand a slight shake. “Stef?” But the woman continued to stare at nothing, eyes dull with secrets kept for far too long.
CHAPTER 25
They set to work, eyes on the clock or on the view afforded by the clinic’s narrow window, the sun’s relentless journey west. Carmody called down plats of the mountain and aerial views of Jericho, so that they could map the location of the existing wards and plan the placement of the new ones. After a while, Kaster joined them. He nodded to Lauren, then focused on the old maps, marking the location of wards that Stef remembered.
The first helicopter arrived later in the morning, disgorging a half-dozen Council members weighed down by equipment bags. Despite Lauren’s fears that they would be unable to handle the seat-of-the-pants rigors of fieldwork, they quickly split off into pairs and set about preassigned tasks. Several of them approached her and introduced themselves. All were middle-aged, dressed in various stages of rumpled, the men balding, most all bespectacled. It struck her how she had yet to meet any Child of Endor who resembled the stereotypical witch, and she felt a surge of affection for the whole ragtag gaggle. I wish I could’ve known you better. She fought the urge to say that to every one of them. She didn’t want to scare them. Or herself.
“So while we’re constructing this ring of wards, what is Fernanda going to be doing?” Stef poured tea from her cup into her saucer, and blew across it. “As soon as she senses us, she will know what we plan, and she will attack us the same way she did Andrew and Lauren.” She raised the saucer in a toast to no one, and drank.
Peter had bucked the trend of the house and requested a beer, and now sipped it slowly, as though he feared it might be his last. Every so often, he would reach out to Stef and touch her hand, his expression the quiet daze of someone for whom the bad news had yet to sink in. “If Gene’s concoction can hold off the Beelzebabies”—he rolled his eyes at Lauren—“we should be able to set the wards in place and scram before she comes after us herself. It isn’t going to take that long.”
“What are you using?” Lauren forced a last mouthful of ham sandwich through a jaw still stiff from the previous day’s business.
“A concentrate of elder that we developed at the Council laboratories. Also, rosemary, myrrh, and attar of roses.” Stef tugged at her blouse, to which the scents of the warding materials still clung, and held back a sneeze. “It is quite the eye-watering combination.”
Lauren sniffed the air. Coughed. “So she’ll smell it before it’s completely in place.” She heard murmurs, and looked to find Jenny and Nyssa seated against the far wall, bent over Jenny’s magic book, pointing out the old pen-and-ink drawings of the plants that Stef had named.
“Could we spray it from the helicopter?” Nyssa lifted her head from the book long enough to mime holding up a spray can and spritzing the room.
“I wish we could. But it isn’t just the ward, it’s the witch who puts it in place. Otherwise, anyone could ward a location.” Peter avoided Stef’s stricken gaze as he drank the last of
the beer in a few gulps, then stared forlornly at the empty glass. “Unfortunately, ours is still a tactile practice.”
“If I might say something, just as a point of information.” Kaster walked to the clinic coffeemaker and filled a glass beaker with hours-old coffee, the biting smell of which fought the pungent aromas of the warding concoction to a draw. “Fernanda has the support of the children’s father, and he is stronger than all of us together. I believe she held back last night because Nyssa was present and she didn’t want to scare her. This time, she won’t be so kind.”
“You call what she did holding back?” Carmody looked down at his arms, which had improved in appearance but still looked as though golf balls had been implanted beneath the splotched skin.
“The research performed at Jericho opened a passage to the netherworld and access to the powers contained there. But passages work in both directions, and what has lived in the dark since the dawn of time now wants out.” Kaster glanced at Lauren, then away. “I kept trying to tell you, Andrew, but you never listened. You really have no idea what your father unleashed, do you?”
Carmody’s chin came up. “And you encouraged him.”
“I counseled Steven in the direction he would have gone anyway. I urged caution. Unfortunately, delving into the unknown didn’t scare him.”
“Neither did other people’s pain.” That from Jenny, who kept her eyes fixed on her book.
Lauren took the ibuprofen bottle that Carmody handed her and shook out a couple of tablets. Four hours of pain relief. She wondered where they would all be in four hours.
“We still need to decide who pronounces the ward.” Peter stared down at the piece of notebook paper on which he had written the spell. “It’s complicated and tricky, so we need someone who has the experience to administer magic of this magnitude.”
“I will.” Kaster shrugged off Peter’s look of surprise. “You said it yourself, Peter. It isn’t just the ward, it’s the witch who puts it in place. No one here is stronger than I am.”
