Under Cover of Darkness

by Julie E. Czerneda

  U, V, W. He was nearing the back of the box. X, Y, Z.

  King sat back, disappointed. It wasn’t there.

  Yet he remembered holding the card in his hand. In that memory, torchlight reflected off black walls, black ceiling, black floor.

  Black.

  His eyes returned to the box. At the very back, a small black triangle peeked above the divider behind the ‘Z’s. With shaking hands, King grasped the corner of the hidden card and removed it.

  The card was expensive stock, completely black in a matte finish that gave back no reflection at any angle. He turned it over.

  On the same black background, a blood-red rectangle stared at him. No lettering. No name or address. No phone or e-mail. Just the same red symbol that the old man and Dancer bore on the back of their hands. But unlike the black, the red was shiny, so shiny it looked wet, so shiny that if he . . .

  He touched it. Gasping, he dropped the card on the desk.

  The red had felt . . . sticky.

  He looked at his finger. Nothing. King swallowed. Angry with himself, he picked up the card and ran his finger over the red.

  And remembered.

  Fragments from an evening, not so long ago. King’s table at his private club. Dinner with a woman lawyer representing a company King wished to acquire. Negotiations. Success. Sipping a sweet dessert wine. Pleased at closing the deal. And so quickly, so easily.

  The lawyer mentioning that her client belonged to an even more exclusive dinner club. King, stung by the discovery of a club he’d never been invited to join, pressing her for details. The lawyer finally offering to take King there.

  Then his memories of that evening got . . . fuzzy . . .

  A cavernous room . . . torch light . . . black shiny surfaces everywhere . . . incense mixing with smells of roasting meat. A man talking to him . . . a powerful man . . . speaking of mysteries . . . of things King had never imagined existed in this city . . . a strange society . . . a world of power hiding beneath the mundane, alongside the everyday, behind . . .

  Behind the Red Door.

  His hand shaking, King dropped the card on his desk. He swallowed.

  The Red Door was a private club. Very private. And he’d been there.

  Why couldn’t he remember more of that evening? And why were the fragments he could recall tinged with the same fear he’d felt in the subway?

  Of course. He nodded to himself.

  Power. There was power here. King understood power. He moved with the powerful. He was one of them. He could sense power and knew to fear it, especially one hidden, one he didn’t hold.

  Well, one he didn’t hold yet. He slipped the card into a pocket. He would find the Red Door. He would be admitted to this club.

  But how?

  The Dancer. She was his key. What had she said, just before she’d left the train?

  Follow the song. At the end of day.

  The song.

  It was then that King realized that he couldn’t recall a single note from the strange song that had accompanied the Dancer’s appearance. He summoned his memories of her, hoping they would recall the song to him. Her face, her mouth, her smell, the curve of her breasts and hips.

  As those pieces came together, the first hint of the song returned—the beat he had felt rising up from the sidewalk. He remembered her body swaying to that rhythm. As he did, a few notes returned to him, then more, until finally the entire song pounded in his skull with all its original clarity and force.

  Afraid to lose the song again, King played it in his head the rest of the day, even tapping its rhythm during meetings he led with detached interest. Late that evening, he rode the elevator to street level, still humming the song.

  Follow the song, at the end of day, she had said.

  Standing on the sidewalk and following a hunch, he faced north up University. His eyes settled on the subway entrance. The music flared louder in his head.

  Smiling, he headed for the station and boarded a northbound train. At St. Patrick, he stood. The next station would be the phantom stop where the Dancer had left. Confident that the song was leading him to a secret path, he moved toward the doors.

  Then he felt it—the fear that had seized him just before the Dancer had disappeared.

  Shaking and weak, King grabbed at a pole. He sank into a seat, unable to move.

  The train emerged from the tunnel into a dimly lit cavern. As his fear grew in his gut, the song began to fade. The cavern flickered in and out of existence, replaced intermittently by gray tunnel walls.

  Anger saved him. He was losing his chance to enter a secret circle of power. Perhaps his only chance. What if he could never recall the song again? All because of some foolish fear.

  King focused on the song, pulling it back into his head. As its music grew louder, his fear faded, and the cavern outside the train returned.

  The train stopped. King gripped the pole beside his seat and pulled himself up on still trembling legs. The doors slid open with a venomous hiss.

  No other passenger made any move to leave. King seemed to be the only person aware that the train had stopped at a station that wasn’t supposed to exist.

  The alarm signaling that the doors were about to close sounded, not the normal ding-dong chiming, but rather a deep ominous gong. As the doors began to slide together, King took a deep breath and stepped onto the platform. The doors closed behind him, and before he had time to regret his decision, the train was gone.

  He looked around.

  This “station” was a huge domed cavern, carved from a stone as black and shiny as obsidian, flickering redly under sputtering torches set in high sconces. It smelled of dampness and smoke. The platform was now a pier of blackened timbers that creaked under his feet. A gurgling sound made him turn.

  Where the subway tracks should have lain, a dark river now flowed, thick and murky. Something large passed by just under its surface. King jumped back from the edge.

  Seeing no other path, he set out along the pier. Still inside the huge cavern, the pier followed the river for what seemed miles. As he walked, King felt as if downtown Toronto was falling behind him by more than just the length of his strides. Finally, the dank smells of the cavern gave way to fresh sea air, and King stepped out onto a mist-shrouded beach of blue sand bordering an inky lake.

  Beneath a full moon glaring crimson in a strange starless sky, a huge pyramid of rough-hewn black stone loomed over the entire scene. It looked to be a mix of Mayan and Incan, and something King couldn’t place. Beyond the pyramid lay a dark jungle, lush with huge exotic plants shining black in the moonlight and rustling in a wind unfelt by King.

  As King’s eyes fell on the pyramid, the song flared louder in his head. Somewhat reassured, he set out for the structure, weaving his way between large blue crystal spheres that lay scattered on the sand, something black and spiny throbbing inside of each.

  Broad steps led up to the pyramid’s summit. King began to climb. Three hundred steps later, he stood at the top, sweat-soaked. Before him squatted a boxlike building, barren of any markings save a single door, set in the center of the wall facing King.

  The Red Door.

  Trembling from the climb and expectation, King approached it. The Door shone ruddy and glistening in the moonlight. King hesitated, then raised his hand and knocked.

  The sound boomed back at him, startling him with its volume. The echoes continued for several breaths, reverberating from the dark pyramid, until finally fading like the last heartbeats of some great dying beast.

  A peephole opened in the Door. Eyes peered out at King, midnight black floating in bloodshot whites.

  His hand shaking, King reached into his pocket and held up the black-and-red card.

  The eyes narrowed. The peephole closed.

  Then . . . nothing happened.

  King stood there, near to panic. Should he run? Should he knock again?

  As he was about to flee down the steps, metal screamed against metal and a hea
vy bolt slid back.

  The Red Door opened slowly inward, revealing only darkness.

  King stepped forward into a low-ceilinged corridor slanting downwards and lit by torches. He was alone, yet he saw no place where the doorman could have gone. He set out down the passageway.

  A strange script covered the walls. Whenever his gaze fell on it, the song in his head suddenly incorporated tortured cries within its music. After that, he kept his eyes ahead, away from the walls. As he descended deeper into the pyramid, the dripping of water added a dismal back beat to his echoing footsteps.

  Finally, he heard voices and laughter ahead of him. And music, not the song that still played in his head, but a strange discordant melody. The corridor ended, and he stepped out.

  He gasped, remembering. He’d been here before.

  The city has a song.

  Its melody—no. There is no melody.

  And in a minor key. Definitely, a minor key.

  King stood at the top of a broad carpeted staircase above a huge ballroom. The room was cavernous, fifty yards wide by a hundred long with a vaulted ceiling, carved from the shiny black rock. Torches set in high sconces washed the scene in a bloody glow. A large oval dance floor, capable of holding a hundred people at least, dominated the room.

  The dance floor was empty, but at scores of tables surrounding it, men in tuxedos or tails and women in formal evening gowns talked and laughed, ate and drank. All wore masks—some simple eye coverings, others ornate and grotesque. Smoke from the torches mixed with the fumes from incense burners lining the dance floor.

  Heavy red curtains covered the wall at the far end. Two attendants dressed as footmen stood at each end of the curtains beside draw ropes.

  Although many people glanced up at King, no one paid him any particular attention. Deciding it best to act as if he belonged, he straightened his tie, buttoned his jacket, and descended the steps.

  A man separated himself from the crowd and approached. He wore the formal attire of a Victorian gentleman and a boar’s head mask. He removed the mask. Long white hair. Black eyes, bright and sharp. A hooked nose under snowy eyebrows.

  The street person who had appeared to be on fire.

  King swallowed, again shaken by the strangeness of it all.

  But the man smiled and extended a hand. “Mr. King! Delighted that you have found us once again. Might I inquire how you managed it?” The man had a cultured English accent.

  “The Dancer,” King mumbled, looking around in near panic. “The song . . .”

  The man’s smile broadened. “Ah, yes,” he said, apparently pleased with this answer. “I recall your affinity with the Song from your first visit. Come. Join me.”

  Taking King’s arm, the man guided him the length of the room to where the tables and the polished hardwood of the dance floor ended twenty yards from the red curtains. The remaining space consisted of a raised dais of rough black stone. A pattern of concentric circles was carved into the dais, with spokes radiating outwards from the innermost circle. Below the dais where each spoke ended, a golden goblet stood.

  King’s host motioned him to a table in front of the dais. They sat. A woman dressed only in a loincloth and a leopard-head mask brought red wine and a steaming roast with a large carving knife. King’s host offered him a cigar, lit one himself, and leaned back.

  “My name is Beroald,” he said, with the same air that King used when giving his own name. This was a powerful man. But a street person?

  “You know me?” King asked.

  Beroald puffed on his cigar. “We met on your first visit.”

  King nodded. He had been here before. “What is this place? A private club?”

  Beroald laughed, a dry throaty sound. King tried to guess his age but failed. “We consider ourselves more of a society. The Society of the Red Door. But like a private club, a society with its privileges.”

  King’s fear of this strange place disappeared. This was what he had come for. He leaned forward. “Such as?”

  Beroald smiled. “Watch.” He clapped his hands.

  Four musicians dressed as medieval minstrels wound their way through the tables. With another jolt of surprise, King recognized them as squeegee kids who accosted him for money whenever he stopped at a light near his office. Two carried mandolins, one a saxophone, and the last a set of bongos. Taking chairs just below the dais, they set up to play.

  Beroald clapped again.

  The curtains drew back, revealing a dark opening in the black stone wall, like the mouth of a cave. In that mouth, King could feel, more than see, something moving, watching.

  “And finally . . .” Beroald said, nodding back toward the front of the room.

  King turned to look. At the top of the carpeted staircase stood a figure.

  The Dancer.

  She wore the ever-changing diaphanous gown from that morning, a morning from a lifetime ago. As the Dancer descended the stairs, the torches on the walls died, and the flames in the burners surrounding the dance floor leaped higher, casting the tables into shadow. The Dancer spun the length of the floor, past King and Beroald, to stand silently before the dark opening, eyes unfocused.

  She raised her hands above her head, and the squeegee band began to play the now familiar song. At the first note, the opening quivered like a black membrane, then vomited a thick fog. Inside the dark mist, a misshapen form skittered into the room.

  The Dancer began to dance. And glow. Her glow grew with each spin she made, each leap she took, until it lit the room and, finally, penetrated the dark mist.

  And King could see the thing that had emerged from the opening.

  The creature moved on six multijointed legs set below a body resembling the carapace of a huge beetle, black and shiny. Dark scales protected a short neck and a bulbous head. Long pincers extended from each side of a slitlike mouth writhing in a horrible parody of a human face. The thing measured at least ten feet from its head to the end of a barbed tail.

  Red multifaceted eyes took in the diners. Suddenly, it scrambled forward.

  King jumped up, ready to flee, but Beroald put a hand on his arm. “Watch,” he said.

  The Dancer spun closer. The creature turned toward her. It stopped. The music played, and the Dancer danced. As she moved, the thing stood transfixed, swaying, red eyes locked on her, hypnotized by the spell she wove with her body.

  The two curtain attendants, each holding long knives, approached the beast. The nearest drew his arm back, poised to strike.

  The Dancer slipped.

  It was a small thing, a muscle twitch out of rhythm with the song, but King felt it, as if the dance were a living thing and had skipped a heartbeat.

  It was enough to free the creature from the Dancer’s spell. Wheeling on the nearest knife wielder, the thing severed the man’s head with a snap of its pincers, then turned toward the diners. People screamed and jumped up, King and Beroald included.

  The Dancer leaped between them, in control of her every movement again. The beast froze, captured by her dancing once more. The second attendant closed on the creature, and with a smooth precise motion, slipped his blade between the scales around the beast’s throat. The creature spasmed once, then slumped to the floor.

  Thick blood spewed from the wound, a red so dark it seemed black. It flowed along the channels carved in the stone into the goblets set around the dais. When it stopped, the table attendants collected the goblets and began circulating among the tables.

  As they did, the Dancer ran the length of the room, up the staircase and disappeared through a side archway. Beroald glared after her, then motioned for King to sit again.

  King sat, trembling, trying again to control an urge to flee. The leopard-headed woman poured some of the blood into Beroald’s and King’s glasses. Beroald raised his and took a deep drink.

  King stared at him in disgust. Beroald smiled, blood glistening on his lips. He leaned forward. “Do you recall anything of your first visit?”

  Ki
ng shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.

  “How you felt afterward? The state of your health?”

  The sweet smell of the blood reached King then. And he remembered. A host of minor ailments disappearing, a burst of energy for the next week. He looked at his glass, then at Beroald.

  Beroald smiled. “The secret of the Red Door, Mr. King. The privilege that I spoke of.”

  King swallowed. “Immortality?” he asked, not believing what he was asking.

  Beroald shrugged. “Who knows? A cure for all known ills and a very long life, to that I can attest.”

  “What I just saw . . .”

  “A ritual, but a practical one. The creatures beyond that black portal may be killed solely by a thrust through a solitary and minute gap in their armor, a strike so precise that it can be executed only if the creature is immobile. The Dancer performs that function for us.” Beroald paused. “Preferably more reliably than tonight.”

  A red-faced man with long white sideburns leaned over from an adjacent table. “Three times this month, Beroald. Three times!”

  “I’m dealing with it, Shelby,” Beroald replied, his voice icy. The other man paled and turned back to his own table.

  Smiling again, Beroald raised his glass in a toast. “To our health, Mr. King. Quite literally.”

  King looked at the glass of blood before him, struggling to assimilate all he’d just witnessed and learned.

  “The efficacy of the blood,” Beroald continued, “lasts but a short while.”

  Immortality, King thought. He raised his glass. He drank.

  Sweetness. Heat. Then . . .

  A dam bursting inside him . . . a hidden lake released . . . his being flooded with rivers of vitality . . . freed from every bodily pain.

  King gasped. He felt wonderful. He felt strong. He felt . . .

  Powerful.

  He laughed, and Beroald joined him. They roared with laughter, slapping each other on the back. At last, King sat back, wiping away tears of laughter, sipping the rest of the blood, reveling in his newfound vigor. Finally, he asked the question that he feared to raise, but for which he now had to have an answer.