The beams and walls of the burning room moaned and creaked. It would not be long before the ceiling caved in, the upper floors of the brownstone coming down as the entire building was consumed by the supernatural conflagration. Beneath his breath, Doyle uttered an incantation of retrieval, letting the ancient magick travel through his body, coursing down the length of his arm, through his fingers and into what remained of the dead psychic's brain. Images of Yvette's past — of heartbreak and ecstasy and quiet contentment — flooded his mind, making themselves at home, as if eager not to be forgotten with the passing of their host. The deluge of memories was overwhelming, and he nearly stumbled into the fire as he magickally ransacked the recollections of a lifetime.
Behind the remembrance of a torrid lesbian affair with a beautiful dark-haired girl nearly half her age, and beyond an exceptionally awful production of La Boheme, Doyle found the elusive bit of information that he had been searching for, and claimed it as his own.
He plucked his fingers from the skull, tossed the now-empty shell back into the flames, and wiped the viscous, hideously warm gray matter from his fingers upon his scorched handkerchief. The fire raged all around him, attempting to block his path and consume him, but the mage knew the language of fire, speaking to the conflagration politely and with respect, and it allowed him to pass unharmed through the doorway and into the smoke-filled hall.
In the corridor, where smoke billowed and flames had already begun to lick across the ceiling and ripple up the walls, Eve waited. Her face was covered in dark patches of soot that resembled war paint. Her eyes darted about like those of a desperate animal. Her kind did not do well with fire.
"I can't believe you're not burned to a crisp."
Doyle moved past her silently on his way toward the exit.
"At least tell me that you got whatever it was you risked being burned alive for," she said, following close on his heels.
"I did indeed," he said as they hurried across the entryway and out into the damp night air. "Time is short, now. We must act swiftly. He's far closer than I would have guessed."
Squire awaited them on the sidewalk in front of the burning brownstone. The goblin held an open umbrella, rain sluicing over the edges, and he wore a nervous expression upon his grotesque features.
"A real gentleman's gentleman," Eve muttered as she reached him.
Sirens wailed in the distance, but they would be far too late to save this building. As they moved toward the car, Eve cursed loudly. Doyle turned to face her, only to flinch as something wet and heavy struck his shoulder, slippery on his neck. Suddenly the pre-dawn was alive with the staccato thunder of one damp impact after another. In the midst of the rain, something else was falling from the sky.
"What the Hell?" Eve snapped, shielding her head as the toads continued to fall, bouncing off the brick steps, the streets, and the cars below them. Multiple car alarms wailed, partially drowning the rather offensive sound of soft flesh striking hard pavement.
Doyle stared about in alarm. Things are far worse than I thought. Squire scrambled up the steps to shield them both from the pummeling rain with the large, black umbrella.
"This can't be good," Eve snarled, pushing bloody, ruptured amphibian corpses out of her way with the tip of her designer boot.
"Be thankful it ain't cats and dogs," Squire said, as the rain of toads continued to fall all around them.
Far worse.
Julia Ferrick turned off the engine of her Volvo wagon in the underground parking garage on Boston's Boylston Street and wondered, as she so often did, what had happened to her real son.
"I was listening to that," the imposter growled from the passenger seat. He had insisted on listening to one of his homemade music mixes on the drive to their family appointment, and when she had turned off the engine, it cut off a headache-inducing grind in mid-verse.
"And you'll hear the rest of it on the way home," she said with exasperation, placing her keys and the parking garage receipt into her handbag. His name went unsaid. More and more, of late, she had trouble calling him Daniel, or even Dan. She didn't know him anymore. Jesus, she craved a cigarette.
"I wanted to hear it now," he said curtly, refusing to make eye contact with her.
Julia looked at him, avoiding her gaze as if he would turn to stone if their eyes met, and wondered when exactly the aliens or the goblins or maybe even the Gypsies had come and taken away her real son and replaced him with this grim doppelganger. She ran her thumb over the tips of her fingers, where the nails were short and ragged. It was a nervous habit born out of quitting smoking. Any time she looked at her nails, she thought maybe lung cancer was preferable to the complaints she got when she tried to get her manicurist to fix them.
"C'mon," she told him, opening her door. "We're going to be late."
She slammed the driver side door closed but the sixteen- year old did not move. Dan just sat there, sweatshirt hood pulled up over his head, arms folded across his chest. His skateboard was on the floor in the back and her eyes flickered to it. The skate punk thing was just the latest identity he'd tried on, and she wondered how long it would be before he shed this one. Every time she saw him in those baggy pants she shivered. To her eyes, he looked like a criminal. That was a terrible thought, but there was no escaping it. It was difficult for her to conceive that these kids looked at one another — or at each other — and thought that they looked good.
The one thing that never changed was the music. Whether it was Taking Back Sunday or Rancid — and wasn't that band name apropos? — it was much the same as the clothes he wore. Julia simply could not understand the attraction. She wasn't a fool. She didn't expect him to listen to things she liked, old Peter Gabriel and David Bowie, or Genesis. Music was a personal thing. It spoke to your heart, or it didn't. But with a couple of exceptions, the sort of thing Danny listened to was just… it was awful. Ugly. How could he not see that?
Julia knew that he'd had a rough year — his father walking out on them, the condition that gave his skin a weathered, leathery texture — and she wished she could make it all go away, give him the perfect life she'd hoped for since he was a baby. But life threw you curves. No way could she have predicted his medical problem. Trying to balance her sympathy for him with her frustration at his behavior was enough to drive her to drink… or at least to run back to her cigarette habit and beg a pack of Winston Lights to forgive her.
Things were bound to get better. That's what she told herself while she was biting her nails. Things had to get better. She was determined to help Dan in any way she could and had begun home schooling him with the finest tutors and making appointments with the best dermatologists and psychologists. Julia still remembered the loving little boy he had been. He had filled her with so much happiness. She wanted that boy back.
No matter what it cost.
"Daniel Ferrick, get out of that car right now," she yelled, her voice reverberating against the low concrete ceiling of the garage. There was a quaver in it, but she promised herself she would not break down.
Slowly, he turned to look at her through the glass and scowled. His skin was getting worse right along with his attitude. They had first diagnosed it as a unique form of eczema, but she soon came to realize that none of them really had the first clue what it was. They kept going for tests and various special medications, and pills were prescribed, but nothing seemed to help. When the two pronounced bumps appeared just above his temples last week, he had nearly had a breakdown. And in private, in her bathroom with the shower running, Julia had wept for him. She'd snuck a cigarette and blown the smoke out her bedroom window, hoping he wouldn't smell it. Whatever else might be done for him, Julia knew they both needed to see the family psychologist.
"Doctor Sundin is going to be really ticked if we're late again," she said, tapping the glass with the knuckle of her hand. "Let's go."
She couldn't even remember the last time she'd heard him laugh or seen him smile. It tore her up inside, but at the same
time, it was becoming increasingly difficult to live with.
The passenger door popped open and Dan slunk from the vehicle. The hood of his sweatshirt was pulled so far down over his head that it completely hid his face in shadows. Over the last week or so he had begun wearing gloves in public to conceal his skin condition, and the way his fingernails had started to grow tough and jagged. The way other kids dressed these days, nobody had seemed to notice.
Julia reached out to her son and rubbed his head through the heavy cotton hood. She remembered her teenage bout with acne but could not even begin to imagine what it must be like for the boy. He roughly jerked away from her affections.
"Don't do that," he spat at her. "It hurts me."
The boy's mother bit her tongue and walked toward the garage's Boylston Street exit. She glanced at her watch. If they hurried they would only be a few minutes late. Julia hoped Daniel would speak to Doctor Sundin about his self-image problems, and how they affected his relationship with her and his father. She planned to avoid any mention of his clothes or his music. Those things got under her skin, but they were superficial. The real problems were so much deeper.
As she glanced back to confirm that Daniel was indeed following, she wondered how much of his personality change could be attributed to Roger walking out on them. Irreconcilable differences, he'd told his lawyer. The son of a bitch took the coward's exit, she thought, remembering all the sleepless nights as her son yowled in his bed, the skin condition so irritating that he scratched himself bloody trying to stop the itch. Then there were the violent mood swings, and the complete change in the boy's personality. Yeah, she thought. Roger got off easy. There was a small part of her that envied him. The bastard.
Julia Ferrick pushed the disturbing thoughts from her mind and turned to wait for her son to catch up. She was standing in front of a high, wrought iron fence and beyond it she could see children at play in the yard of the daycare facility headquartered there. The kids squealed and laughed as they ran about under the supervision of their minders. It was a nice sound, one that she hadn't heard in a very long time.
"I'm coming," Dan mumbled, head down, gloved hands shoved deep into his sweatshirt pockets.
"I know," she told him, trying her best to keep her temper in check. "I just thought I'd wait for you."
Dan kicked at a piece of gum, crushed flat upon the sidewalk. "Don't do me any favors," he mumbled as he scuffed at the pink refuse with the toe of his sneaker.
Julia Ferrick was about to say something she was sure to regret when she noticed that a little girl, no older than five, now stood on the other side of the metal gate watching them. The child sniffled, her hand slowly rising to her face to rub at her eyes. The little girl began to cry.
"What's the matter, sweetie?" Julia asked.
"Don't feel good," the small child whined, beginning to cry all the harder. Julia moved closer to the gate, wanting to get the attention of one of the daycare workers, when the child in front of her began to retch. Thick streams of milky white vomit poured from her mouth to splash upon the sidewalk, spattering her shiny, black patent leather shoes.
Julia was about to comfort the little girl through the thick bars of the metal gate when motion at the periphery of her vision caught her attention. She glanced down upon the puddle of vomit at the child's feet.
It was moving.
Now matter how badly she wanted to, Julia Ferrick could not pull her eyes away from the horrific sight. The child had regurgitated maggots; not just one or five or even twenty, but hundreds of them.
"I trew up bugs," the child whined over and over again in a dazed chorus. "I trew up bugs. I trew up bugs. I trew up bugs."
Julia felt that she might be sick as well, and finally tore her gaze away to look upon the playground for help.
"Could somebody — anybody — help here please!" she cried out, on the verge of panic. Then she saw that the staff was in a panic of activity, the other children sick as well, all of them throwing up as the little girl at the fence had done.
One of the staff members fainted, hitting the ground dangerously close to an undulating pile of maggot infested sick.
"Got to call 911," she mumbled, reaching into her bag for her cell phone. "This isn't right. It isn't right at all."
Julia hit the emergency button that would immediately dial for help and brought the phone up to her ear, gazing into the playground at the children all in the grip of sickness. They were all crying, some curled into convulsing balls on the ground. Even the little girl at the fence now lay at the base of the gate, trembling as if freezing.
This was a nightmare, she thought as the voice on the other end of the phone asked her to state her emergency.
The worlds were about to leave her mouth when she noticed that her son now gripped the black iron bars of the gate in his gloved hands. His hood had fallen away to reveal his closely cropped hair and the condition that had changed his face and the skin of his entire body. The bumps upon his forehead seemed more pronounced, red and angry as though ready to burst.
As he stared intensely through the bars at the children overcome with illness, Daniel Ferrick made a sound the likes of which his mother had not heard for number of years. In any other circumstance, she would have paid a great deal of money for a chance to hear it again.
Her son was laughing.
Eve could smell the prominent stink of fear upon the commuters milling around the main terminal of New York's Grand Central Station. The city was freaked, but given the circumstances, could she blame them?
The toad rain ended around thirty minutes after it had begun, followed by random incidents of bizarreness that they had heard about on the radio in the limousine on their way to the station: spontaneous human combustion, stigmata, spectral rape, and myriad other claims that were coming in seemingly by the minute. And if what Doyle was hinting about was even remotely true, this was just the tip of a really nasty iceberg.
Now, perhaps ninety minutes after sunup, she followed the mage as they wound their way through the early morning commuters that seemed paralyzed by the turn of events. Eve was careful to avoid any patches of daylight coming in through Grand Central's high, ornate windows. Fortunately, though the rain of toads had stopped, the more conventional showers continued and the clouds outside meant she didn't have work on it that hard. She had slipped her suede jacket back on, but been careful not to let it get wet.
Announcements were made over the stations PA system, departures and arrivals, but nobody seemed to be going anywhere. The crowd teemed with people unsure of what they ought to be doing. Should they go on with their day-to-day lives? Go to work and ignore the fact that toads had rained down from the sky? Exposure to the preternatural had that effect on some people. When they had gone to bed the night before their perceptions of the world had been solid and clear, but now all that had changed. They had been shown just a hint of the truth that she, Doyle and certain other unsavory types in the paranormal circles had known for most of their lives.
The world was anything but "normal."
Some tried to laugh it off. She could hear them among the crowds that milled about. But beneath their levity she could sense the tension, smell the fear as it took root and prepared to blossom.
Eve sympathized. They were in Manhattan, and thanks to all the nasty shit going down she just knew she was not going to be able to stop at Barney's for a little shopping expedition. It pissed her off. A visit to New York always meant a Barney's trip for her. The last time she had picked up a spectacular silk top and Prada boots that were totally out of fashion now. Doyle dressed well, for a man, but this was because he was a product of his era and not because he had any real appreciation for clothes.
It was a weakness for Eve. She might even have gone so far as to call it an obsession. There was no sin in wanting to dress well, she always said. So few people caught the irony. After all, without her own sins, clothes might never have been invented.
Doyle stopped at the top of the ma
rble staircase that would take them underground, into the subway system.
"We're going down?" she asked, still fascinated by the weird vibe she was picking up from most people within the station.
"Yes," he said, taking hold of the brass railing and beginning to descend. She followed. "Despite Sweetblood's best intentions, a link had been established between the medium, her psychics, and the mage."
Doyle went around a random commuter who stood frozen on the stairs, clutching the handrail as if for dear life. He had been very brief in the car, giving to Squire only their destination, as if he had needed time to process the information that he had obtained at the brownstone. Eve found it particularly nasty that Doyle had to stick his fingers into somebody's brain to find what he was looking for. Better him then her.
Not that she hadn't rooted through her share of viscera in her time. It was only that brains were so grotesquely unpleasant to the touch.
"So you got Sweetblood's location out of the medium's brain?" Eve asked.
"With some minor difficulty, yes," Doyle confirmed.
"Don't you think that was kind of sloppy on your old pal Lorenzo's part?" she asked him curiously. "Leaving that kind of information lying around in somebody's head when he's supposedly all hot and bothered about not being found?"
They reached the bottom of the stairs and proceeded through a pair of double doors into the underground system.
"That is where Sanguedolce's arrogance worked against him," Doyle said.
Eve thought he sounded more than a little arrogant himself. She didn't know what it was with mages, all of them so full of themselves that she was surprised they could fit their swollen heads through their front doors.
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