Stained Glass: An Alexi Sokolsky Supernatural Thriller (Alexi Sokolsky: Hound of Eden Book 2)

by James Osiris Baldwin

  There was a gun safe near the prayer circle – I assumed that was what the furniture arrangement was – but it had a two-ring combination lock and there just wasn’t time to puzzle it out. The first door I opened was a bathroom. The second was a bedroom lined with bunks. Six bunk beds, enough to sleep twelve people. It was set up like a military dorm, with trunks at the end of each bunk. I looked inside: they were full of children’s clothing, most of it soiled. I rifled through it, but there was nothing of interest.

  After half an hour of fruitless searching in the dank underground, I took a single Bible from the table while we gathered outside. Zane separated from us to stare out into the forest, lost in his own thoughts. Duke had finished puking and was chain-smoking mixed tobacco and marijuana joints to settle his nerves and stomach, Binah on his lap. The regular scent of tobacco was very green to me; these cigarettes smelled dark green and bright blue, a weird combination of abrasive and sweet-sharp color-tastes.

  “You know, I always had my doubts about the Four Fires.” Standing off to the side, Jenner held none of her usual energy. Her shoulders were hunched, her voice quiet and firm with the kind of steadiness that only someone who had faced atrocity could muster. “They were always so up themselves, you know? They’d go on about a ‘shapeshifting community’. John came up with all this inclusive language bullshit. Sat on the panels and lobbied for inclusion in the Vigiles and everything. Now he’s fucking dead, and I don’t know what to think about him, about the Pathfinders… I don’t where anyone’s gone.”

  “Guess we know what his Ka is, anyway.” Duke said.

  “He didn’t even have time to shift,” Zane said. “I can’t even… I can’t believe it. Maybe that Spook is still around here. I mean, what kind of power does it take to catch someone in the middle of the change? And where the hell is Michael?”

  Duke’s dark eyes slid to the side, glancing at Jenner. “Sorry to say it, boss, but… I dunno. Maybe Mason took him somewhere. Maybe Michael took Mason somewhere. There’s no way to know.”

  I sighed, and moved to keep myself upwind from the pot smoke. “I know the symbol that was left in the bedroom. Maybe it’s older than Mason’s being here, maybe it’s not. In either case, the symbol belongs to a cult or underground dark magic fraternity. They have the capacity to summon and deploy primordial, deeply evil entities. I only know them by acronym: the TVS.”

  “Tsch. Call them DOGs, already. We know what Morphorde is.” Jenner reached out for the joint. “What does TVS stand for?”

  “I have no idea,” I said. “Before I left the Organizatsiya, I dealt with one of their members: A female serial killer working on behalf of someone she only signed with ‘L’. She had that eye-and-cross symbol over her altar. Jana was a mage, like me. When her soul awakened, she went mad. There was something wrong with it at the metaphysical level. Contact with her soul changed her, and she went insane. Could something like this happen to Weeders?”

  “If it can, I’ve never heard of it. I’ve been incarnating, round and round, for close to five hundred years that I can remember.” Jenner took a deep drag on the joint. It had gone out. “Fought in France, fought in Russia – got killed there, that was nasty. Now Vietnam, on both sides. I knew some Weeders who got really sick or died when they were fighting the Deep Black, DOGs and shit. Most of them were the smaller guys… the rodent shifters, rabbits, weasels and possums.”

  I frowned. “Isn’t that the general group of people that the Pathrunners recruit from?”

  “Little critters awaken faster,” Duke grunted. “They get killed more often, so they live more lives than us. They’re super-social, you know… So they became lawkeepers.”

  Lily and Dru. Moris Falkovich. Ivanko, and Vanya, by extension. Now, Michael and Mason? John’s murder hadn’t been signed by ‘Soldier 557’, like the others had. They were connected, somehow. I crouched down and stroked Binah while I thought, trying to fit the pieces together.

  “Was Michael a member of any organizations beyond the Pathrunners? The senior pastor at the Church of the Voice mentioned that he was working with the church for the childrens’ program.”

  Duke was watching us with an expression of puzzled ignorance. When Jenner looked to him, he shrugged. “Fucked if I know, boss.”

  “Same here.” Jenner nodded. “What? You think they’re hiding something?”

  “I know that Lily and Dru have to have been hiding a lot of things,” I said. “But I remember you saying that Pathrunner Elders have to go through a lot of tests and trials to attain their status. Is it the same as the initiation ritual John told me about?”

  As one, all three Tigers looked towards the bunker.

  “No,” Jenner replied. “It’s different for every gang. I don’t know what their rites are, but I know the Pathrunners have some hardcore vetting.”

  I sighed. “Then something must have happened to change them between the time they were vetted, and the time they were murdered. Otherwise, I’m honestly at a loss.”

  “Fuck this. I sent Mason out here with these idiots.” The woman growled, and began to angrily strip her leathers. She threw them to the soft forest floor, and before I could so much as avert my eyes, she pulled her t-shirt off as well. She was so small-breasted that she didn’t need a bra. “We’re going to look for him. Zane! Get your kit off. It’s a full moon, and I need your eyes.”

  Zane’s shoulders tensed, and his hands fisted. “Prez, I still don’t-”

  “Stop being such a fucking prude and get your fucking clothes off.” She pulled her belt out. Duke was also beginning to undress. I began to feel more than slightly awkward.

  “I assume that one of you will be taking Mason’s motorcycle back to the city,” I said, glancing at Zane, who was still noticeably reluctant as he began to shuck his leather to the ground. “I’ll drive the car and meet you there.”

  “You should do your mojo here while you’re gone,” Jenner said. She dropped her jeans, and I turned reflexively, clearing my throat. “Scan the place, or whatever it is you do.”

  “It would be better for me to return,” I said. Quite suddenly, I felt the way that Zane had looked. “I need to finish decoding some gematria for Ayashe. That might give us some leads into who is responsible… we won’t find answers without a culprit, or culprits. If this TVS organization is involved-”

  “Okay, whatever.” Jenner spoke from behind me. “I don’t need details, Rex. Just results. Ready, guys?”

  “I was born ready,” Duke said. “And furry.”

  Zane did not reply, except to throw me the keys. Summarily dismissed, I collected my familiar and began to mount the hill back up to the parking lot as wet tearing sounds ricocheted from below. I turned at the crest and looked back, hoping to see them, but only saw piles of discarded clothes and the flick of a huge shadow disappearing from the pool of moonlight in the clearing.

  Secrets on secrets. I had effectively lied to them, again, but I was so good at it and becoming so accustomed to it that the sting of indignation barely registered. Part of that was because lying – or hiding the truth, at least – was becoming habitual. Part of it was because I knew, without a doubt, that someone had to be lying to me, too.

  When I reached the Buick, I turned on the cabin light and looked through the Bible I’d taken. Revelations was heavily marked. Individual numbers and letters were circled with pencil throughout the text – Bible code notations. Grimacing, I started with the first New Testament ‘M’ chapter, Matthew. In the second chapter, I found a heading: ‘The Slaughter of the Infants.”

  “Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi.” I recited the words gutturally. My voice was a deep whiskey-hoarse croak. “Matthew 2:16.”

  The Bible verse made me think of Christopher and the Church, but I hadn’t intended to visit Falkovich be
fore this afternoon. Even if Christopher was some kind of telepathic adept, he couldn’t have known where I was intending to go, because I hadn’t known about him before or during out meeting. In fact… I hadn’t told anyone about Moris Falkovich, or the rumors I’d gotten from my doctor. I’d gone off by myself like a fool, thinking I’d break a couple of fingers and get him talking, and walked straight into a trap.

  A trap just like this forest bunker. I exhaled thinly, and sat back. Just like Falkovich’s house, it had been set up before we arrived… but who had set it up, and what were they trying to catch?

  Chapter 27

  I arrived back just after dawn, breath sour with hunger and head hurting for want of caffeine. The clubhouse was empty save for Talya: She was still at the bar, her head resting on her folded arms. When the door closed, she startled up and squinted. “Rex? Where’s everyone else?”

  “Jenner, Zane and Duke have stayed back to search for Michael and Mason,” I said. “Spotted Elk is dead.”

  The proclamation hung between us for some time. Talya rubbed her face, and looked down at the keyboard she’d been slaving over. Her eyes were reddened with fatigue, but she did not cry.

  “You warned us,” she said. “In the reading. You warned us this would happen. That people were going to die.”

  I looked down at her feet, unsure of how to react. “I suppose. Though Jenner has already made her opinion on tarot known to us all. I will continue to do my best, but we are running out of time.”

  “I know. I have an awful feeling that someone is trying to destroy us.” Talya pushed back and got to her feet. “That there’s some… master manipulator at work. You know for sure that John’s dead?”

  “We found his body.” It was hard to associate the mutated, agonized corpse we had found in the bunker with the dignified man I’d spoken to in the Museum only the day before. After he’d pitched in with his pet Agent, I hadn’t been his biggest fan… but I hadn’t wanted to kill him. “It was… difficult to recognize him, but there were cervine features that were unmistakable. Jenner was sure.”

  Talya closed her eyes for a moment, her brow furrowing. When she opened her eyes, they were dark and glistening. “He was a good man, Rex. I learned so much about history from him, not just Native history. He told me all about ancient Korea, he told me about all of these places he lived… but you know why I decided to join Jenner and Mason instead of the Fires?”

  I said nothing, and waited for her to continue.

  “It was the film,” she said. “The film that you and Zane found. After the argument at work, I realized that John and Michael were just talking about the law and themselves and our position within society that whole time. They weren’t talking about the fact that you and the Tigers had found a film of an adult man raping a child. And I know why they weren’t talking about it. Because it was Josie in the film.”

  “Josie? What do you mean?”

  Her cheeks flushed red with anger. “Because she’s not a Weeder. She’s just a normal human kid.”

  I recoiled inwardly. She was right. At the time, I hadn’t noticed, but now that she mentioned it…

  “That’s all they care about. Bringing new blood into their gangs, building their little army,” Talya continued. Her eyes were hot now, the intense gray and gold of uranium ore. “That’s why John was so nice to me all this time. He wanted me, because I’m a young Weeder. He wants the shifter kids. Ayashe cares about all of them, but she’s so tied up in her job that she ends up not doing anything for anyone. Jenner is the only one who doesn’t see Josie as being worth less than the others, and will do what’s right no matter what.”

  “You could be right,” I said, motioning her forward and starting to walk. “But for now, we should eat. And while we do that, you should tell me what you found on the computer.”

  “I haven’t gotten into the filelist yet. I was able to restore the deleted files, but everything on that computer is password locked. I’m going to go and get a password cracker from work today when I’m safe to drive.” Talya pushed her hair out of her face, and sat heavily on one of the kitchen chairs. “I’ll call in sick. This is more important.”

  “A cracker? What on earth is that?” I had vague images of her inserting Goldfish crackers into the computer as some sort of bribe.

  “It’s a software program you use to break passwords. It basically keeps trying combinations at high speed until one of them works,” she replied. “At the office, some people… well, they lock themselves out of their terminals, or they change the password on a group document and don’t know how to change it back. I got Crack so that I could just solve the problem on-site instead of bothering my manager.”

  “Oh. They have something like that for safes, too.” I poured us both coffee, and put together sandwiches. “An auto-dialer. You attach it to the door, and it turns the dial back and forth until the safe opens.”

  “That sounds kind of old-fashioned,” she said. She still looked wan, but some of the color had returned to her face. “Kind of KGB-ish.”

  We ate in companionable silence. It was relaxing to spend time with another Russian-speaking person, even though we were descended from opposite ends of Eastern Europe: me from Ukraine, her from the far Western hinterlands of the Aleutian Islands. Neither of us felt compelled to arbitrarily smile or do anything except share food, tea and coffee while we each ruminated on the events of the night, which suited me just fine.

  Talya left after the meal, and went to check on Josie before leaving the club. I did the same, looking in on the little girl as she slept on, semi-comatose. There were signs of her having been awake. She was clean, for one thing, and there was a makeshift bedpan by the bed. The drip was disconnected. There was a Band-Aid over the bruise in her elbow.

  I wanted to sleep, but pride and duty kept me from bed. Instead, me, my cat and my books and went to work out whatever it was that ‘Soldier 557’ was trying to say with their name.

  Translating a number into text was far more difficult than turning a word or phrase into a number. The difficulty came about from two things: firstly, an entire phrase could be condensed into a string like ‘557’. The coded numbers could be added together and the resulting numbers used instead of a whole string of numerals. In addition to that, a two or three-word phrase, like ‘Glory to Satan’ could be distilled to, say, the number 939, but 939 had multiple possible translations. You could use it to say ‘Glory to Satan’, but 939 was also the number which could be disassembled to read ‘The Holy Spirit’. The translation relied on context.

  After an hour or so of spirited decoding, I had a shortlist of words and phrases. The standout was a single word, which had prickled at my intuition from the moment I’d worked out and etched the letters into the page with a pencil. ‘Glory’. In a stroke of what seemed like some kind of intentional, precognitive cruel humor, the number also translated to ‘Russian mafia’. But ‘Soldier Glory’ didn’t make much sense.

  I exhaled thinly, tapping my pencil against my bottom lip as my chest twinged and cramped. Concentrating on magical matters was not helped by the presence of the parasite. In any case, I didn’t think it was going to be much help in finding our murderer… not unless the ‘Russian Mafia’ translation was more than a case of my own amused bias. For one thing, we didn’t call it that, not unless we were talking to someone outside of the Organizatsiya – and when did that ever happen?

  But as I packed up, the doubt lingered, as did the instinctive resonance of the name Glory. Not a word… a name. I had a hunch, and even with my magic cut off at the root, I trusted my intuition. Whoever was signing off, they were signing off as Glory. Unfortunately, that meant I was out of things to show Jenner when they returned. The name didn’t belong to anybody we knew.

  At a loss, I went to tend to more mundane things. Dressing my wounds, then treating Binah’s burns. She’d had a couple days of antibiotics to take down her infections, so I spent a fruitful hour lancing, flushing and balming my familiar’s abs
cesses. She shivered in my lap, but she didn’t fight me, or even squirm. As I worked carefully, precisely, the jumble of details, names, incidences, deaths and clues turned around and around until, quite unconsciously, my brain fit the pieces together so smoothly and so perfectly that I stood up in alarm and sent Binah and my tray of surgical equipment to the floor.

  Lev. Sergei. Jana. The TVS symbol… all of it came together in a flash. We didn’t call our Organization the Russian Mafia… but outsiders did.

  Was it a sly joke? Or did they know that someone from the Bratva with esoteric knowledge and skill would eventually figure it out? As I stalked back and forth in the bedroom, fitfully rubbing my mouth and hair and wrist, months of conversation and clues aligned like the faces of a Rubik’s Cube.

  The leaders of the Tigers returned in the evening, tired and disheveled. The pall over the three of them was obvious. They had only found traces of Mason’s passing as a tiger: scents and disturbed brush. There was precious little else. They went to bed with no time or energy to talk. Jenner was blaring punk music out of one of the smaller rooms, but when I passed close her door, I could hear the sound of her cursing and crying underneath the mask of sound. She wasn’t the sort of person to accept an offer of counseling, and I wasn’t the kind of person who could offer it. The only thing that would console her was the return of her old man.

  Talya was back in the common room when I came out: same spot, different clothing. She was reading a book, waiting while the computer ground and ticked. I drew up to look over her shoulder, and was confronted by a maintenance screen which was scrolling through what appeared to be hundreds of words and numbers at rapid speed. “Good grief. What is that thing doing?”

  “That’s the cracker.” She cleared her throat with a prim little ‘hem-hem’, and then jiggled the pointer around. “It’s been running for a couple of hours now, which means your doctor friend really knew how to make a secure password.”