The Seventh Age: Dawn

by Rick Heinz

  PRAISE FOR THE SEVENTH AGE: DAwN

  “Visceral, funny, relentless, and clever, The Seventh Age: Dawn is the rollicking tour of supernatural Chicago you never knew you needed. A mix of Jim Butcher and Terry Pratchett—with just a little Mike Royko thrown in for good measure—an urban fantasy tale with real bite.”

  —Scott Kenemore, national bestselling author

  of Zombie, Ohio and The Grand Hotel

  “Unrelenting, unfiltered urban fantasy with a two-pack-a-day habit. Heinz has crammed more supernatural spectacle per square inch than is probably legal.”

  —G. Derek Adams, author of Asteroid Made of Dragons

  “A riveting read that showcases a supernatural side of Chicago that even Jim Butcher hasn’t seen. Dawn is a suspenseful, page-turning urban fantasy that leaves you waiting for more.”

  —April Carvelli, PopCultHQ.com

  “A delightfully macabre roller coaster right from the first page. The more you learn about Mike and the world he inhabits, the more you’ll want to know—this book will grab you by the throat until the very end.”

  —Dailen Ogden, author and illustrator of The Liminal

  “Heinz crafts a dark conspiracy of secret organizations so unique and believable that you’’ll want your own bottle of demon’s blood before looking into the shadows again.”

  —Zachary Tyler Linville, author of Welcome to Deadland

  “The Seventh Age: Dawn is chock-full of mysticism, demonology, and high-stakes action. It’s a fast-paced blast! Do some stretches before you read it, or you’ll throw out your arm fist-pumping.”

  —Elan Samuel, The Warbler

  “Every turn of the page offers realistic magic, dark humor, and nonstop entertainment. This is how a writer makes his debut. What a promising start to a new dark fantasy series by author Rick Heinz.”

  —Alicia Smock, Chicago Books Examiner

  “If you’re anything like me and love urban fantasy, then go buy The Seventh Age: Dawn and rush to your local cemetery to read it. But be warned! Unless there’s a full moon, you should bring a flashlight—because you won’t want to leave once you’ve started reading this epic adventure! Heinz’s storytelling will transport you to a Chicago that is both beautiful and terrifying, and, like me, you will love Heinz for taking you there.”

  —Jamison Stone, author of Rune of the Apprentice

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2017 Richard Heinz

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Inkshares, Inc., San Francisco, California

  www.inkshares.com

  Edited and designed by Girl Friday Productions

  www.girlfridayproductions.com

  Cover design by Scott Barrie

  Cover illustration by Ashley Witter

  Cover images © Katja Gerasimova/Shutterstock; © Roberto Castillo/Shutterstock

  ISBN: 9781941758892

  e-ISBN: 9781941758908

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015959898

  First edition

  Printed in the United States of America

  To Michelle Heinz, for inspiring me to actually do it; Cheryl Nabors for working with me till the end; and all the friends I’ve made over the years while building The Seventh Age. A story woven together orally is now tangible.

  CHAPTER 1

  The adrenaline caused his heart to race faster as sweat formed on his face, only to be whisked away by the cold winds of the creeping winter in Chicago. Twenty-one floors up, Mike Auburn stood on a six-inch I beam, looking at the city below him. The blood-red sun on the horizon added a grim look to the city when shining on the swaths of people leaving their daily jobs. Go back home to your reality TV and frozen pizza, Mike thought. I’m out here for a reason. I can’t turn back now.

  He reached down and decoupled his safety harness, inching farther on the beam. His worn, duct-taped boots gripped the cold steel as he leaned over to look down before performing a slow balancing act, moving out a bit more. His arms were stretched to each side, and his fingerless gloves offered little protection against the biting wind. With each gust, Mike’s heart jumped as he adjusted his balance. He dared himself to not look down and to keep pushing farther out than he had the last time. One step. And then another. And another . . . Ah, fuck it. Just get out there, man. Quit screwing around. What’s the worst that can happen, fourteen seconds of free fall? He broke into a sprint. One boot after another, pushing him forward, closer to the concrete void below.

  Fear of the fall, that tumbling sensation when you’re turned upside down with no sense of control, spiked instantly in him as he came to the end of the beam. His red dragon bandanna, already soaked with sweat, flew off in a gust of frozen wind. Instinctively, Mike shot his arm out like a cannon and grabbed it.

  For a single beat of his heart, his destination of oblivion forgotten, claws of gravity latched onto him as the city below attempted to claim one more soul for her bloody belly. The world turned gray as Mike began his descent. Chicago was ready to embrace her soon-to-be-shattered lover’s body when his training as an ironworker kicked in. He hooked his knee around the beam at the last second. Gasping for breath, he grabbed for safety with every bone, muscle, and, he was pretty sure, organ. Mike steeled himself to embrace the feeling rushing through him and kept his eyes wide open. There! Right there at the edge of death, Mike saw it, the decayed city of Chicago, covered in ash from a fire that raged nearly a century ago. The buildings around him exposed their flaws in construction, their secrets laid bare like an old whore.

  He took them in, along with the ghosts of the past, his son down below standing in the middle of the street with a look of surprise on his face before the yellow cab would speed through the red light. Looking into the office building across the street, he saw his first girlfriend being strangled with a necktie by an executive she was cheating with. His wife in a cherry-print dress, paralyzed with terror before the crane would fall. Everywhere he looked in that fleeting instant showed the dead in his life, frozen in their moments of time. Countless lives lost over his twenty-eight years. Here, on the precipice of death, Mike could see them. If only for an instant.

  The sharp pain in his knee jerked him back to the situation at hand. He was dangling twenty-one floors up in a new skyscraper being built for some obscenely rich bank. People the size of his thumb walked below him, too interested in their cell phones to look around at the wonder of this city. Mike pulled his other leg around the I beam and dangled there, taking in the sights of the city and his past. The wind whisked away a few tears. He used his bandanna to clean his face. I had it for a second. I can feel it. I can see the afterlife. Death can’t be the end. Why not just let go?

  It was the sight of a cigar being lit in the building across the street that paused the thought. The warm orange glow didn’t provide enough light for him to make out the figure, as the red hue of the setting sun obscured the view inside. By squinting, he could see the silhouette, someone in a long coat with a cabby hat, the cherry of the cigar playing a trick with the light, casting a shadow on his face. No phone in hand, no rushing to call emergency services, he was just standing there . . . watching him.

  An upside-down Mike chuckled for a second and flipped his strange death admirer the bird. With the same hand, he grabbed the beam and let his legs go, showing off a bit. Mike’s hands had a grip like a vice. He’d never lost a thumb war in
his life. Meh, got a doctor’s appointment anyway. Daneka will just show up at the Billy Goat if I miss the appointment, and the last thing I need is my doc showing up around my crew. Better get going.

  Mike pulled himself up and took one last look at the sun’s vanishing rays, the soft glow glinting off Chicago’s skin of brick and steel. The cold no longer bothered him, his adrenaline already subsiding. He glanced across the street toward his voyeur but only saw an empty room. Shrugging, he trotted back across the beam to the construction site. He would slide down like a spider monkey before he would reach the freight elevator, a nightly ritual that stayed the same regardless of what building was under construction.

  Stepping out onto the street, Mike lit a cigarette and began bumping shoulders with people during the pedestrian rush hour. One of the best things about Chicago was that any guy in dirty construction clothes was completely invisible to everyone else. Only women and power suits got attention from the masses. The homeless were a different story. They always saw everyone. Mike flipped a bill and a spare lighter into the case of someone setting up his homemade string instrument. He reached out to shake the musician’s gnarled hand and paused when he saw his face, leaving his hand awkwardly hanging in midair. The guy had one shoe, camouflage pants, and a brown coat, but no eyes. Blood still ran down his cheeks like tears as the empty sockets looked back at him.

  “He sees you,” No Eyes said in a raspy voice. “Watches you every day. We watch you . . . always.”

  Mike shut his eyes and backed up quickly, bumping into the train of people. “Fuck. Longer visions this time.”

  Opening his eyes, Mike realized his foray had pissed off a suit who was clearly on important business. A completely mundane street musician setting up his gear looked at Mike like he was out of his mind. Doc is going to put me on so many meds, I’m going to start calling myself the second Son of Sam. Adjusting his Carhartt coat, he went back to shouldering people out of his way with more haste than before. He had an unfair advantage walking in crowded streets, as he was a hand taller than most, with a scrappy frame forged in mosh pits and by hanging off buildings. Pushing his way through, he made it to the street corner, where he could hail a cab.

  In any major city, hailing a cab was always fun for Mike Auburn. Today it was a bidding war versus three other hands waving in the air. A grin crept across his face as he eyed this evening’s competition. In one corner was a lady in those furry ski boots and a hat fashioned from a dead animal. In the other, a set of Japanese businessmen carrying poster boards of some pitch. Almost unfair today. The yellow cabs waiting at the red light saw their marks and inched closer, waiting for the second they could hit the gas. Putting his fingers to his mouth, he let out an ear-piercing whistle, summoning a chariot to his side. He hopped in. With the door almost closed, he saw the other cabs speed by, ignoring his challengers.

  “One sec,” he told the driver. Then, leaning out, he said, “Hey, you three want in?”

  They exchanged apprehensive looks before shaking their heads and going back to gazing down the street for the next set of cabs.

  “Fullerton and State, please,” Mike said.

  As the cab pulled away, Mike looked out the window at the people before turning to the driver to start chatting him up. The cabbie’s skinless hands gripped the wheel. Bones, tendons, and muscles left a trail of fluid on the wheel as it spun under his palms. The driver looked backward casually.

  “Rough day at work?” he asked.

  “Meh, you know how it is,” Mike said. “Don’t even know why we do the grind. Build stuff, get paid, drink, smoke, watch a movie”—he took a drag—“and hang upside down from a beam trying to prove to yourself there’s an afterlife. ’Nough about me. How’s yours, Frank?”

  “Awww, ya know. Bearshh lost again. Got some cash riding on the next game, though. You know, he wants to seehh you, right, Mikey?” Frank said, his skinless face and torn lips slurring his speech.

  “Yeah, you’ve said that every day for the past . . . hundred and forty-seven days now, is it? So who the hell is he anyway? I keep asking, and you keep beating around the bush. You suck at the pitch line.” Mike laid his head on the cold window and looked out at the pedestrians, unsurprised he had ended up in this particular cab again. Good for them. They get to live normal lives. He couldn’t help the feeling of longing clenching his chest and did his best to push the feeling away. “Ha! He’s probably some very dead guy like you,” Mike said.

  “No more dead than you’ll be if you keep about the way ya are, Mikey. Ya know who, boy. O’Neil, the guy who runs this town. He’s a patient man, but nice invitations do wear out.”

  Mike ran his finger along the picture on the cab info card that showed Frank as a larger man of Indian descent with a warm smile. “Frank . . . you are O’Neil. Frank O’Neil, it says so on your card back here, annnnd you’ve been dead since the sixties. So, how could I meet you? Besides, you’re all imaginary anyway.” Mike changed his voice to a higher pitch like his doctor’s. “Just my messed-up projections of guilt made manifest.” He chuckled. Smoke started to fill up the cab, so he cracked a window. “Whatever. Hey, drop me off here. Tell your boss if he sees”—he counted on his hands quickly—“my three girlfriends, kid, mom, dad, aunts, uncles, my barista, and my last few crews, and my 7-Eleven porn dealer in hell with the rest of you, tell them I said they all still owe me money.” Mike made eye contact with the skinless driver in the mirror. “Except Gabe. I still have his stuffed turtle.” Tapping the glass with his knuckles, he signaled it was time to pull over.

  “Ya don’t have much time left. Sheven daysh left. Twenty-one daysh aftah dat.” Frank looked back again. Mike could never tell if he was smiling or just staring at him. So Mike threw some cash into the front seat, flicked his cigarette out the window, and stepped into the bitter November night. He watched as he imagined a very confused, mundane cab driver pulling away. Well, what did you expect, buddy? You are dropping me off near my shrink’s office.

  CHAPTER 2

  Doctor Joseph Daneka had a small office above a Chinese noodle joint on the north side of the city. Mike walked up the narrow staircase, reminding himself to never eat at that place again. The restaurant’s owners left their food in large plastic bins to marinate and used them to prop open the door to the hallway, saturating the entire stairwell with the sickening smell of meat mixed with sweet-and-sour sauce. Every time Doc brings it, I end up eating it. Not this time, Doc. Not this time.

  Walking into the vacant reception area of the eccentric doctor’s office, Mike inhaled the welcome smell of polished leather and old books. For a self-proclaimed minimalist, Joseph Daneka fails spectacularly at it. Mike looked around the room as he sank deep into a cool leather chair. A prized swordfish took up most of the space on the wall across from the door. Doc recounted the story of it every time he had a new patient. He had battled the scaly beast in the seas off the coast of Brazil for six hours on a rickety fishing boat. But Mike knew the truth: he bought it from a disgruntled taxidermist in a back alleyway, like a junkie buying drugs with a briefcase full of cash.

  Books piled up on every table in the room ensured people like Mike wouldn’t put their feet on them. Most of the books related in some fashion to Senator McCarthy and famous media figures of the 1950s. Still, if he peered carefully, Mike could find some obscure 1970s science fiction and the obligatory copy of Highlights over five years old. He had never seen a medical office without one. Lastly, about fourteen chess and go sets stolen from coffee shops in the area were stacked in the corner. He had known Doc for years. They were roommates once in another lifetime. While Mike joined the Ironworkers Union, Doc spent the next decade racking up enough student-loan debt to buy a small third-world country. Considering that he was the doc’s only repeat client, Mike was not exactly sure how he remained in business.

  He laid his head back and began to finally relax when the door flung open, ushering in the awful odor from the stairwell. A malnourished, balding man with a twee
d coat came stumbling in, carrying bags of Chinese food and another stolen chess set. Despite his relatively young age, Doc could have easily passed for a forty-nine-year-old. He looked at Mike, gave a curt nod, and dropped the takeout bags on top of a stack of books.

  “Food,” he said. Then, stepping over the table with his lanky legs, he slid into the therapy room with haste, closing the side-office door behind him.

  “Great session, Doc. Real insightful. I think I’m cured now. You’ve done it by destroying what is left of my intestines,” Mike said. A growl in his stomach forced him to instinctively grab the bag. Realizing he still had his fingerless gloves on and his fingers were still blackened from work, he paused for a second before shrugging and tearing the bag open. Damn it, Mike, stop going on impulse. Ah, screw it. Rotten stairwell mystery meat hasn’t killed me yet. Doc’s closed door was an attempt to avoid hearing the sounds of slurping noodles, Mike’s preferred method of revenge for the most vile food on the planet. He smiled mischievously as he locked the doctor’s office and plopped himself down on the therapist couch while tossing Doc the beef fried rice container.

  “So, the visions are lasting longer. The walking, talking dead ones. I feel like I’m living in a horror movie. If it was real, it would be much cooler. I think zombies would make great cashiers and retail employees,” Mike said as he slurped his slimy noodles.

  “Well, Mike, you have survivor’s guilt. It’s natural you would start projecting this. Not many have had as many people around them die, like you. You’re a good person, Mike. There is no rhyme or reason to your destiny. No divine plan. It’s just a matter of life. People live, life happens, then they die. It’s what you do during that life that matters.” He paused to stare at Mike’s noodle-eating habits and began to eat his food with precise care. “Are you still trying to overdose on adrenaline?”