The Ballad Nocturne (The Midnight Defenders Book 3)

by Joey Ruff

  “Because Nadia’s fucking missing,” I said. “There’s a thing called prioritizing. There’s a fucking pecking order for shit what needs to be done. You learn to do it pretty fucking quick in the middle of a war.”

  “Is that what this is now? War?”

  The doll turned its head toward DeNobb. “The Hand will accept any whiny bitch these days, eh?”

  “Not with the Hand anymore, Hux,” I said. “You’ve been gone a long time.” Then I turned to DeNobb. “If it helps you focus, mate, it’s rather obvious. All you have to do is fucking pay attention. Remember when I told you to apply the knowledge you have before opening your bloody mouth?”

  He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “Humans are body, soul and spirit, right. The amulet was bound to Huxley’s soul. The doll was bound to his body. Combine the two, and you get a mini version of the original.”

  “But the soul is…what? The personality? The memories? What part does the spirit play?”

  “Who fucking cares?!”

  “I do. Man, if I’m supposed to concentrate on other stuff, it would be nice to get rid of the fucking elephant in the room. Ya know?”

  “It’s not a bloody elephant.” I took a deep breath and thought back to Samedi’s words. “The spirit is the life-force. It binds the soul to the body and provides the spark of life. It’s also used to communicate with other spirits. Can we move past this now?”

  DeNobb didn’t say anything.

  I turned to Huxley. “What do you know about the skunk apes? You lived here for a spell, right? Any clue where the wankers might take her?”

  “There are plenty of places,” the doll said. “The bayou is very large.”

  “You’re not giving me any bloody hope, here, Hux. If knowledge is a weapon, we have no bloody ammunition!” I took a deep breath and rubbed my temples. I felt like I was going to explode.

  “You are missing the point entirely, Swyftt.”

  “Which is, what?”

  He was quiet for a moment before saying, “The apes, the Saksanai, they aren’t enemies of humans. Quite the opposite. They’re defenders. One of the Earth’s natural defenses against the Midnight. I do not understand why they should want anything to do with Nadia.”

  “Well, they’re being controlled, aren’t they. That fucking mark. Maybe it’s like a target? Tells them where to go? Maybe it makes them do shite they don’t want to do?”

  “Which mark?”

  “The…bloody Ballad,” I stammered. “You would fucking know, wouldn’t you. Tell me. What is the Ballad Nocturne?”

  “Where did you hear that term?”

  “Ezra, mate. Your sodding wife. I showed her the symbol.”

  “Which symbol? Show it to me. It’s important to know exactly what it looks like.”

  “Just take him…it…outside,” DeNobb said. “It’s all over the damn house.”

  I ignored him and pulled out my phone, bringing up the picture and setting it on the counter beside the doll. Huxley wobbled clumsily over to the phone and stared down at the screen. “What is this device?” he asked.

  “It’s a phone, Hux, concentrate.”

  “This is no phone. Where are the buttons?”

  “Would you concentrate, mate?” I was beyond annoyed at this point.

  “I apologize, Swyftt, but I’ve apparently been dead for ten years. Allow me to marvel for a moment.”

  “Later. I’ll show you the bloody game with the birds and pigs. You’ll fucking love it.” I pointed to the image on the screen and said, “What is the symbol?”

  I don’t know if he gasped, but it sure sounded like it. Then he took a step back and looked up at me, shaking his head. “Yes,” he said. “That is the Ballad Nocturne.”

  I pocketed the phone so he could concentrate and said, “Great. Now that we’ve further established that point….”

  “The catalogue of ancient sigils is vast. I had to be sure she hadn’t read it wrong.”

  “So, wait,” DeNobb said. “One more question. If the human spirit gives life-force to the body, how is the doll animated? Ya know, if it doesn’t have a spirit…”

  I turned to DeNobb, ready to throw something at him. “Are you fucking kidding me right now?!”

  “It’s a valid question. I’m sorry.”

  “We’ll get to you. Go sit in a bloody corner and count your toes.” I turned back to Hux. “So what is it?”

  “While the story of the Ballad goes back farther,” he began, “the most notable occurrence took place during the Middle Ages, in a small German town called Hamelin.”

  “Rubbish! You’re talking about the Pied-fucking-Piper?”

  “You of all people should know that every story comes from somewhere, Swyftt. Children’s tales included. Fear holds power over mortals. Often, the most horrific stories are turned into fairy tales to take the fear and the power out of the events.”

  “Fine. The Pied Piper was a real guy then, was he? What did he do?”

  “He was a warlock. One who derived his great power from the god Pan. I don’t recall the exact details, but the villagers of Hamelin wronged him, and he sought revenge against them. Pan agreed to give him the power to make them suffer, but in exchange, he required a blood sacrifice.”

  “Was it a Teind thing?”

  “Perhaps. There’s another theory that the gods of old bathed in human blood.”

  “Gross,” DeNobb said.

  “Pan was famous for his flute. The flute was made of seven pipes, all varying lengths. Each pipe, if played in the right note, was said to make yield one of the forces of nature. Pan made the trees and rivers dance with his songs. Literally. One of these pipes, he lent to the warlock, and the song he taught him became known as the Ballad Nocturne.”

  “And the pipe he gave him controlled bloody rats?”

  “No. I’m quite sure the rats were added to the story to simplify it. Payment denied for services rendered was something people could understand with little other explanation. I think the original tale is much more involved. Something, as I recall, involving the warlock’s ancestry.”

  “I don’t really care about that,” I said. “He played the song and the children followed him out of town?”

  “No. The warlock played the tune and enraptured the adults in the village. He then forced the adults to sacrifice their own children.”

  “That’s horrible,” DeNobb said. “No wonder they changed the story.”

  “And the symbol? How does that play into it?” I asked.

  “It is a marker. It directs the effected to a target, just as you guessed. It is the symbol of the town of Hamelin, itself. To this day, the symbol is part of their coat of arms.”

  “Why?” DeNobb said.

  “To remind them of the tragedy,” I said. “Seems like the villagers did something pretty fucking rotten to the Piper to deserve that kind of revenge.”

  “Shit.”

  “And the moral of the story,” I said, “is that someone or something is controlling the skunk apes.”

  “Yes,” Huxley said. “But I don’t see how that’s possible. Shortly after the Piper’s story, the entirety of Pan’s flute was confiscated.”

  “Confiscated? By whom? The Hand?”

  “No. A group that predates the Hand of Shanai by several thousand years.”

  “And which group is that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. The flute was taken far outside the realm of men.”

  “’The Realm of Men…’ You’re sounding like fucking Tolkien again. Did they take it to Eldamar, Hux? Your mystery group?”

  “I thought you were focused on finding Nadia,” he said.

  “I am. But I’m getting really sick of my so-called mates keeping these fucking secret societies from me on a need-to-fucking-know basis.”

  “As if it matters, I’ll tell you. I don’t remember you being this high-strung. Back then, they were referred to simply as the Nine Unknown Men. They were priests, kings, men of renown. Their job was to
collect and store the artifacts that were too dangerous to exist freely in the world.”

  “Things like what?”

  “Like Pan’s flute.”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

  “And others. The staff of Moses, the Shroud of Turin, the Holy Grail. But none of that matters, Swyftt. You need to be focusing on who would be controlling the guardians. Not only that, how and why.”

  “We said the how, mate. The Ballad.”

  “The Ballad doesn’t work without an instrument.”

  “You can’t sing it?” DeNobb asked. “Are there words?”

  “Sure,” Huxley said. “There are words, but they’re written in ancient Saxon, a precursor language to German. Nobody speaks that anymore. But I do not think singing it would have the same effect.”

  As if remembering a dream, which incidentally wasn’t far off, I said, “I heard the music. In the vision I had. Just before they took Nadia. I heard something. It could’ve been a flute.”

  “So someone has one of these Pan flutes then,” DeNobb said.

  “Highly unlikely,” Huxley said. “It would be too well guarded. Few beings in the universe have access to the vaults where it would be stored.”

  “Well, that’s not as important right now as the who. The who can tell us the how and why, and even more importantly, the where. As in, where they took Nadia.”

  “So where have you seen the symbol?”

  “So far? Just here and in town. Outside Ezra’s shop.”

  “Where that bigfoot attacked you,” DeNobb said. “What if it was Ezra that was controlling these things?”

  “Why would she want to destroy her own house?”

  “Maybe Nadia was getting too close to the truth?”

  “What truth?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re the first one to say she was hiding something. I’m just trying to think out loud here.”

  “Well, don’t. It’s not Ezra. Ezra’s gone, too.”

  “But was she taken?”

  “Not that I saw. Doesn’t mean much. I had a very limited view of things.”

  He thought for a second. “The preacher?”

  I stared at Huxley for a minute as I ran through my options. There weren’t many.

  “Let’s head back to the church,” I said, eventually.

  “So you do think he did it?”

  “I think the church was attacked, also, and we might get a better read on things there.”

  “Okay,” DeNobb said. “Is…is Nadia in trouble?”

  I thought back to the story of the Piper, about the adults murdering the children so some ancient god could bathe in their blood. I thought of St. Clair’s mention that Ezra was in league with a knight of Hell.

  “Probably,” I said. “And I have a feeling St. Clair knows more than he’s been saying.”

  20

  Ape

  We bound the intruder with duct tape and rope. London insisted on a hogtie, and given the strength he’d already shown, it seemed the best way to keep him immobile.

  His ankles and knees were taped heavily. Taping his wrists together behind his back, we wrapped both arms in their entirety like a cocoon with nylon climbing rope, which we also looped around the tape at his feet to keep him in a very uncomfortable position.

  Unless he suddenly learned to crawl on his belly like a worm, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  London carried him back to the study and dropped him into the corner. “What are we going to fucking do with him?”

  I stood there, looking at the intruder, wondering about the red hair, about his strength. Wondering who he was, not sure if I really wanted to know the answers. “There’s a bathroom down the hall,” I said. “Can you grab a few towels and the first aid kit under the cabinet?”

  “Sure. For what?”

  “He’s bleeding, London.”

  “Let him bleed. He’s a fucking POW.”

  “And if he dies, we’ll never learn who he is, what he wants, or if there’s more where he came from.”

  “Fuck, brother. You think there’s more of those motherfuckers? You need me to go scout shit out?”

  “I just need to get him cleaned up for now. We were all over the estate today. I didn’t notice anything. Did you?”

  “Fucking got me there, brother. Alright. I’ll go grab your stuff.”

  Once he left, I was alone with the intruder. I peeled the tape from his lips and said, “I don’t know who you are, but I’m not here to torture you. We can talk like civilized people.”

  The man didn’t even try to respond. He was lying on his stomach, glaring awkwardly up at me. He looked intent to kill.

  “I do not advise keeping him here, sir,” Chess said. He was sitting on the edge of my desk, not cleaning or anything for once, just watching.

  “I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do. Where would I take him?”

  “Taking him somewhere is not an option. I cannot permit you to leave the grounds at this time.”

  “That’s…great, I guess. What would you suggest I do with him, then? Chain him up in the dungeon like some animal?”

  “That is what the dungeon is there for. It would be best.”

  I didn’t say anything, just shook my head.

  “Then may I suggest ending his life?”

  I spun on Chess, throwing my hands up. “What!? No you may not!!! Why would you even say that?”

  “You do not realize the gravity of the situation we are in, sir. Nothing can be allowed to interfere.”

  “What are you talking about!?”

  “The Ouroboros. This man and his associates cannot be allowed….”

  “Wait. Associates? So there are more?”

  “Of course. He would be foolish to come alone.”

  “Are you guessing or do you know for sure?”

  “I am certain.”

  “So where are they?”

  “Of that, I am unsure. I have only an accurate reading on what occurs inside the house. Their presence on the estate feels only like a disturbance.”

  “Like how I know when there’s no one in the house?”

  “Yes,” he said. “That comes from being the caretaker.”

  “What about those defenses you mentioned?”

  “Would you like me to deploy them?”

  “Not just yet. Do they…deploy themselves?”

  “When they sense hostility of a spiritual nature.”

  “So, wait,” I said. “You mean this guy doesn’t want to hurt us?”

  “His intentions are not made known. I mean only that he is not a spiritual threat.”

  “The blood all over the rug tells me he’s not a spirit.” My tone was a little more sarcastic then I meant, and I felt guilty, adding, “You’re just trying to say he isn’t one of the Sidhe.”

  Chess stared at me with those large, black eyes.

  I didn’t say anything for a minute. I stood and paced the carpet, then sat down in one of the armchairs. “So what do I do with him?” I asked. “If only I had some way to communicate with him. You don’t happen to speak Hebrew, do you Chess?”

  I looked back over at the desk, but he was gone again. A second later, London came back into the room with the towels and kit. The intruder was bleeding on his right side, so I had London roll him onto his left. I took the fabric scissors from the first aid kit and cut the shirt along the seam to the man’s armpit and peeled the fabric back from the wound.

  The man’s torso was just as hairy as his face, but the hair here was finer, not as long, like the coat on an animal. The hair that covered my body was longer, wilder, like the hair on my head. I kept it trimmed to be manageable, but I didn’t get the impression the stranger did any kind of grooming. Grooming body hair was typically an American custom. His was naturally this way.

  London handed me a towel, and I blotted the blood. The man didn’t make any sounds, but the clenched teeth suggested it didn’t feel very good. I kept an eye on him, taking notice that his ey
es darted all around the room, focusing on far away objects, books on the shelves or the paintings of my family members that hung on the walls. I didn’t know if he was trying to ignore me or concentrate on something other than the pain.

  Once I’d cleaned a lot of the blood, I saw the wound was not just one wound, but several smaller ones, thanks to London’s shotgun shell. It wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been, though. It was a glancing blow, but still messy. And no matter how much blood I wiped away, it just kept coming.

  “I’m not a doctor,” I said. “Do you know anything about medicine?”

  “I got to third base with a clinic nurse at a fucking drive-in movie theater in Detroit. Does that count?”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  London laughed. “I’m just fucking with ya, brother. I learned a little field dressing in the fucking military. I know enough to say you need to get the fucking pellets out.” He handed me a pair of steel forceps from the medical kit. “It won’t be fucking pretty.”

  There were three small holes in his side, each about the size of a pencil eraser, each bearing a small, metal sphere. I looked down at the wound that was already gushing with fresh blood and took a deep breath. “Hold him down.”

  “Fucking A.” He threw one leg over the man’s shoulders and sat atop him like a horse, putting his entire weight on the man.

  I took the bottle of alcohol from the kit and poured a generous amount directly onto the wound. It bubbled on impact and I could hear the sizzle. The intruder shook and writhed with the pain while London rode him like a mechanical bull.

  I dipped the end of the forceps into the alcohol, and then I went to work. It wasn’t easy. With the amount of blood the man was losing it made it very hard to see. I had to keep stopping to wipe the blood, and when I dug around in one of the entry wounds, the man would shake and writhe, just a little. He was tough, I’ll give him that, and he tried not to show pain, but he kept wincing, involuntarily if nothing else, and it made it very difficult to work. I felt like I was a kid again, playing some hybrid combination of the board games Operation and Perfection.