by J. P. Sloan
Brown stood with a pistol in his hand, lifting it as I made my appearance.
His face was cold, emotionless.
“Oh, there you are,” he said. “I was wondering if you’d lost your nerve.”
I looked past Brown to find Adrastos leaning in the corner, rubbing his ear.
“Clarence,” I growled. “A gun? Really?”
He waved his weapon at the door. “Your companions have this one opportunity to save his life. They may withdraw uninjured and make it to the emergency room up the highway. If there isn’t too much of a gridlock of panicked idiots congesting the elevator, that is.”
“Jean? Edgar? Get Reed topside.”
Brown squinted. “The witch, too.”
I swiveled the needle balls in my hands.
“You too, Annarose.”
I kept my eyes on Brown and his weapon as a series of grunts and scuffling filled the hallway behind me.
“Dorian?” Edgar muttered.
“Get home to your kids, Edgar.”
Brown nodded. “You do that, Swain.”
I clenched my jaw, but held my tongue.
“Come,” Clement ordered.
Malosi sucked in breaths, and the panting and shuffling in the hallway quickly faded into the distance.
Brown lowered his gun. “There. Was that so difficult?”
“You can’t win, Clarence,” I stated. “You failed to destroy the Marshall node. You failed to dismantle the Sedem circle. Even if you kill Adrastos, the entire Presidium knows about the L’Enfantines now.”
Brown turned to Adrastos with a snicker. “Yes, thanks to Joe’s convincingly melodramatic performance.”
I gave Adrastos a careful glance.
He lingered just behind Brown, removing his glasses to wipe them with a handkerchief.
Adrastos said, “It was a bit of sensationalist theater, I’m afraid. But it served its purpose.”
“What purpose?” I hissed.
“Why,” Adrastos replied, “outing the L’Enfantines, of course. Turning popular opinion against them, exposing the conspiracy that ran so deep the Presidium could never trust its own members again.”
I nodded. “Seems the conspiracy ran all the way to the top.”
Adrastos shrugged. “If the seat of power conspires against the destructive elements against its own organization, can it be called a conspiracy at all? Or a ruse to root out the weakness?”
I looked to Brown. “The two of you just hamstrung the Presidium. You must realize that?”
Brown crossed his arms at his waist, gun still in hand. “What we’ve done is to bury a weak and festering corpse. The Presidium had grown fatuous and self-indulgent, content with its personal fantasies of power and political puppeteering. Meanwhile, the rest of the world laughs at us. Even the cabals on the West Coast openly defy us. It was time for change.”
I asked, “Are you two even L’Enfantines?”
Adrastos scowled. “Oh, Good Lord no. They do exist, mind you. But they were never more than a ridiculous seed of loyalists, easily swayed, easily provoked. A necessary scapegoat.” Adrastos replaced his glasses. “I’ll be happy to continue discussing our vision for the future, if you’ll drop that curse you have clutched behind your back?”
I took in a long breath, then pulled my hands to my sides, cupping the sphere in my left hand while tossing the one in my right onto the ground.
“I thank you,” Adrastos cooed. “Polite discourse is so difficult with a proverbial gun held at one’s face.”
I nodded to Brown. “I know the feeling.”
“You’ll note Mister de Haviland is not aiming his weapon at you. You may also note your continued survival, despite being thoroughly outmaneuvered and strategized. And that fact is owing to our observation of your character, Mister Lake.”
“That so? Then, please…” I waved with my right hand. “Enlighten me.”
Brown chuckled. “I told you he’d be resistant.”
Adrastos lifted a hand to Brown. “Steady on, Clarence. His sarcastic bluster is a veneer he’s constructed to avoid betraying his own doubt. And you do doubt, don’t you? You’re ready to execute me, on behalf of the Stregha. But only after I’ve saved your student’s family. And therein lies my evaluation of your character, Mister Lake. You aren’t swayed by tradition. Certainly not by reason. You are slow to grant loyalty, but require it of those with whom you surround yourself. Do you know what that makes you, Mister Lake?”
I pursed my lips.
Brown answered, “A leader.”
“Correct. You have the capacity for greatness, Mister Lake. I’ve tried again and again to tempt you into the fold, but you’ve resisted. Because deep in your brain you believe that you are a more capable leader than I am. And I respect that. I’ve counted on that. And I intend to rely on this quality, such as it is, in the coming years as we rebuild the Presidium into something the Founders would have admired.”
“A junta?” I spat.
Brown shook his head. “The last hope we have against… oh, what the hell do you call them? The Dark Choir?”
“How messianic of you,” I snarled.
“Oh, don’t rant,” Brown chided. “You know there are portentous wheels in motion.”
Adrastos continued Brown’s line of thinking, “Ever since 9/11, a growing strength has emerged in the Middle East. Ancient Persia and Babylon. The old systems of Central Asian mysticism have grown turbulent, and potent. Those that dwelled before time are preparing a shift in the human race, Mister Lake. A shift that may lead to our erasure.”
“Extinction,” Brown added.
Adrastos prodded as he took a halting step forward. “You can decide to indulge in your wounded pride. Your anger. Or, you can live up to your potential, harness these capable practitioners who appear to pledge themselves to your service, and allow reason to govern your next few words. Because I’m going to ask you to choose these words carefully. What say you? Would you join us?”
I glared at the two of them.
“Well, gentlemen,” I stated, straightening my posture. “This was one doozy of a presentation. And you know what? I would have been way more receptive to this pitch three weeks ago. You know, before someone had a Congressman unzip his fly in front of my tavern. Before my student was made into a pawn to manipulate me. Before one of my best friends had his heart squeezed to death by a demon. So, yeah. I would have loved to help you in this quest to save the human race, but right now… I have to choose my words carefully. Hmm. Okay. I think I’m ready. Only need two words, too.”
Brown sighed. “Don’t do this, Lake.”
“Fuck. You.”
I flipped my left hand up to my chest and hurled my second curse ball at Brown’s torso.
He lifted his right arm, and the ball connected. Its needles slipped effortlessly through the folds of his sleeve.
Brown lowered his arm slowly, eyes twisted in confusion.
He sucked in a breath, then released it.
The dark energy slid up and down my arms, and just as it snapped into visions of death and hatred across my eyes, Brown shook his sleeve and allowed the ball to drop onto the floor.
The energy dissipated.
Brown gave me a cold look.
“What was that?” he grumbled.
I looked down onto the floor. Both of the curse balls sat side-by-side. With one more look, I poised to reach down and grab one again.
The sound of Brown’s gun cocking held my action.
Brown crouched down, gun aimed at my chest, and snatched one of the balls.
“Take him,” he called out.
The walls surrounding me slid back, forming pockets of darkness. Men in suits rushed into the room from the hidden doorways. Seemed I was correct in the assumption that this entire complex was littered with those damned things.
Two goons slammed into my sides, pushing air from my chest as they gripped my arms.
Brown spun the leather ball in his hand, squinting at the script.<
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“Leviaton? In Persian? Interesting choice.”
Adrastos hopped up next to Brown, and rested one of his braces on his right hand as he took the sphere in his left. “Naturally. Immediate effect. Made it a suitable weapon in a brush fight such as this.”
Brown shrugged. “A bit clumsy, invoking Leviaton for a faction skirmish, don’t you think?”
“Well, he was concerned for the well-being of his friends.”
“Hmm, yes.”
I caught my breath and looked up at the two of them. “You’re a pair of bastards!”
They ignored me entirely. Brown tossed the ball back onto the ground and shook the remaining curse energy off his hands.
“Take him to the back entrance after you shoot him,” Brown ordered. “Have the cleaners dump him in the Bay. I’m sure he’d find that poetic, somehow.”
The goons lifted me off the ground and spun me around.
Then they dropped me. Wholly dropped me. My body hit the floor, followed quickly by theirs.
Malosi’s medallion hummed and burned against my skin once again, and that familiar sickness twisted into my guts. The room filled with moaning, and one of the suited thugs began to retch.
And I smiled. I knew this curse.
Annarose stepped into the room, hands held out at her sides, lips pulled back into a feral snarl.
She didn’t leave me, after all.
I clawed my way along the floor until I had escaped the cone of her will. I caught my breath, and rolled onto my feet.
Brown and Adrastos stood stiff, eyes hard, jaws set.
Annarose growled, “You men shall die for this!”
Brown lifted his gun at Annarose.
The moments when time seemed to stand still were, in my understanding, simply artifacts of the illusion of consciousness. Many have argued that Time itself was only a biochemical means for our organic brains to interpret a greater reality than our gray matter can fully comprehend. And in such times, when our bodies and minds meld with the speed of thought, and we take action that proves, ultimately, to be a deciding factor in our own mortality, we humans experience the phenomenon of our lives “flashing before our eyes.” Well, such is the cliché, at any rate.
I didn’t experience this as I jumped into the space between Brown and Annarose. Even as his gun roared, the barrel flashed, and a bullet chirped into my flesh, I didn’t see so much as a single slide from my childhood. Not one birthday party. Not one late night cram session on Aramaic with Emil in our flat in London.
No, all I felt was pain.
And anger.
Happily, these moments allow us a brief flash of clarity. And as what felt like the weight of an NFL linebacker slammed into my shoulder, spinning me in the air, I managed to trigger the Cesare ring on my finger and slap it against Brown’s gun hand. It was, as it turned out, a decent slap, as the gun shot down onto the floor.
I landed against the near wall, electric pain slashing through my arm and shoulder.
And the moment ended. I drew in breath, hissing against the pain.
Annarose shrieked, a banshee call that made my guts quiver.
She rushed Brown, claws outstretched. She managed to dig a nail or two into his neck before he hammered her arms with his, dropping her to her knees before him.
She began to chant, and the energy in the room took an apocalyptic caste… but Brown halted her working by reaching down and gripping a handful of her coal-black ringlets and jerking her head up.
Annarose gagged and coughed, then snarled. She lost all sense of humanity, writhing like an animal taken in a bloodlust.
Adrastos shouted, “Enough!”
He shoved Brown with his left arm as he steadied himself with his right arm brace.
“I tire of this drama. The two of them. Now.”
Brown reached for the ground and retrieved his gun.
When he stood up and cocked his gun, he aimed it first at me.
And that was his mistake.
In those three seconds it took for him to fetch his gun from the floor, I produced something else from my backpack. Something I had prepared the night before in my workspace, with the macabre materials Edgar had secured for me. It was a familiar object to me… human skin folded around a shot glass, scribed in Linear B for the uneven calling of accounts for my victim.
I held the Cesare ring to the curse doll, the same kind of doll I used to end Osterhaus, and plunged the needle into the skin carapace.
Brown held a breath.
“Know what this is?” I rasped. “It’s karma, asshole!”
I slammed the doll down onto the ground.
And for a second…
…nothing happened.
I blinked.
Then I looked up at Brown.
He smiled at me.
“Well,” he chuckled, “seems karma is overrated.”
I took several breaths, wondering if I had finally lost the fight.
Adrastos gestured behind Brown.
The hidden door behind Adrastos was filled with a figure in a black robe, with silver hair cut to her shoulders.
Her hair matched the darquelle which she held to Adrastos’s throat.
“Put the gun down, Clarence,” Wexler ordered.
He released Annarose’s hair. She lurched forward, catching herself on the floor.
Brown swiveled at his waist, swinging his gun toward Wexler and Adrastos.
And he fired.
The loud thunderclap rang in my ears as I flinched.
When my eyes opened, I found two images of blood.
Brown stumbled backward, his neck painting the near wall with crimson arterial spray. He spun around, dropping his gun, and fell to his knees. The skin of his face blanched as he bled out, his carotid artery perforated from a remarkably unfortunate ricochet of his bullet against the one column of gilded brick in the room.
He reached for me, fingers trembling, before karma zeroed its ledger on Clarence de Haviland.
I glanced up at Wexler, who loomed over Adrastos. He slunk against the wall, hand to his throat barely containing the rush of blood from the wound Wexler had opened. His mouth opened and closed, sucking in air, or trying to speak. After a second, he stopped trying, and just sat back to die.
Wexler clutched the bloody blade in her hand. Her eyes were wide as she panted in shuddering breaths.
“I… I didn’t…”
She swallowed hard, then took a moment to gather her composure. With a slow, deliberate swipe of her blade against Adrastos’s sleeve, she nodded and sheathed her blade inside her robe.
Annarose turned onto her knees, taking in the scene.
Brown was dead. Adrastos as well, lying in a heap at Wexler’s feet, throat slit.
Wexler looked over to me, her face hard, but not emotionless.
“Are you hurt?” she whispered.
I nodded, clamping my hand onto my shoulder.
Annarose pulled herself to her feet, with a little help from Wexler. The two women sized up one another.
“And you?” Wexler asked.
Annarose ran her hands along the sides of her head, gathering her hair, then abandoning it.
“I am well,” she whispered.
The goons not yet unconscious from Annarose’s curse writhed along the ground. Wexler stepped over them to guide me into the hallway.
“That’s an ugly wound, Lake.”
I sputtered, trying to find something clever to say.
But nothing came.
Annarose slipped under my wounded shoulder, helping to carry my weight as the two women aided me into the Ipsissimus Express Elevator.
“Wexler,” I gasped.
“Yes?” she replied.
“Ricky.”
She cast a quizzical glance at me, and asked, “What are you saying?”
“Ricky Baker.”
She looked up to the ceiling, then nodded. “You’ve fulfilled your duties to the Presidium, Lake. We will honor our word.”
; I nodded, then passed the hell out.
o, it’s over,” I muttered to Deirdre, who sat on her cot, staring into space.
I shifted in my folding chair, easing my right arm in its sling as my cracked rib complained. The green-gray paint in Deirdre’s room cast a dull, uninspiring pall from the rest of the psychiatric ward into her tiny space of refuge.
I continued, “The Presidium is still there, but only barely. It’s about to get crazy in this country. Every cabal and splitter sect is going to jockey for significance.”
Her eyes swiveled toward me, and her lips quivered.
“But I do have good news. What I thought was a jinx on you, was in fact only a demon. Well, a Goetic enslavement. The so-called jinx at Enoch Pratt has already begun to subside. I think the same will happen with you. Maybe another week, and you’ll be free of the effects.”
A smile crept onto her lips, but she still lacked the capacity for speech.
I looked across the room to Father Mark, who stood with hands folded over his belt.
“This is Father Mark, Deirdre. He’s been a great help to me these past few months. He’s a soul-finder, I guess you could say. He’s offered to come and walk you back to reality, now that we know this isn’t a permanent thing.”
Father Mark stepped forward and took a careful seat on the edge of her bed. He extended a hand, and held it out to Deirdre.
Her fingers twitched, then her arm, and then finally she managed to reach out and place a trembling hand onto Mark’s.
He nodded with a warm smile.
I excused myself and walked down the hallway to the bleary sunlight filtering through the low clouds overhead. My taxi was still waiting for me, counting down more minutes I’d owe the driver.
Deirdre was going to be okay. And when her wits had returned, I’d extend an invitation to relocate to Baltimore. There would have to be safety in numbers in these coming months. Anyone of worth whom I trusted would need to stay close.
The cab drove me from St. Agnes to the tavern. I paid my driver and stepped inside. The smell of warm food flooded my nostrils. An appreciable Monday business lunch crowd had gathered. Someone I didn’t recognize stood behind the bar. He gave me a nod as I approached.
“Get you a beer, sir?”
I shook my head. “What’s your name?”
