The Messenger: A Novel

by Burke, Jan

  “I ask you who is here!”

  “Afraid, Adrian? You should be.”

  “Really? I might say the same of you. I don’t suppose that—given your limited view of the room—you can see the bag of quick-setting cement next to this table. I had Daniel fetch it for me from the garage during one of your unfortunate periods of unconsciousness. Isn’t this a wondrous age? Quick-setting cement.” He smiled. “I’m sure you don’t need to see it to imagine what it will be like to be encased in concrete for a time. I promise to leave breathing tubes to ensure that you have plenty of time to enjoy the experience.”

  For a moment the image Adrian presented had its intended effect, and he felt fear, cold and unrelenting. It was all too easy to imagine endless decades entombed alive in silence and darkness, unable to move—and unable to die.

  Then a hand took his own, and he looked up to see Thelia, smiling and shaking her head, as if to tell him that he should not let Adrian frighten him. Gradually her presence calmed him, and he began to consider the implications of being able to see her, when Adrian could not. He returned her smile and saw Adrian’s displeasure at his smile.

  “Did it never occur to you, Adrian, that the rules of the game might not be the same for the two of us? That the way you choose to live affects all else? You’ve always been your own poisoner, Adrian.”

  “Cut his throat!” Adrian ordered Daniel.

  Daniel approached the table, but he was shaking and seemed unable to bring himself to obey Adrian’s command.

  As if forgetting that he did not have hands, Adrian reached out with a claw to grab the knife, but only managed to knock the blade from Daniel’s hand. It skittered across the floor and came to rest beneath a desk.

  Adrian turned in fury and grabbed Tyler’s throat with his sharp claw.

  Tyler felt the claw pierce his artery, saw the warm blood spray from his own neck, and lost consciousness.

  He awoke to hear Daniel screaming pitifully, although Adrian did not appear to be touching him. The sound was horrible, and Tyler began to pray for some way to relieve the man’s agony.

  Thelia was still at his side. He saw her cock her head to one side and look up, as if she heard something outside.

  In the space it took Daniel to draw a breath, Tyler heard it, too, and eventually, so did Adrian.

  “Shut up!” Adrian snapped at Daniel. “Listen!”

  The sound was unmistakable, one Tyler would have known anywhere.

  The howling of a cemetery dog.

  51

  Here we are,” Colby said.

  “There isn’t anything here,” Amanda said, suddenly fearing that she had been dealing with a creature who was in league with Adrian, who had guided her through the winding curves of a neighboring canyon and was now leaving her in the middle of nowhere.

  Colby smiled. “I haven’t led you astray. Adrian’s up to some old tricks and has shielded this place from prying eyes and ears. Now, I really do wish I could be of more assistance, but you’ve got the ring and the dogs, after all. This is where I must take my leave of you.”

  “You’re going?”

  This time, when he smiled at her, it seemed to be with genuine tenderness. Before she knew what he was doing, he took her hand and kissed it in a courtly manner. “I hope we meet again, Amanda Clarke. I do mean that.” He let go of her hand and laughed. “And won’t that irritate the hell out of Tyler!”

  He vanished.

  Even though Tyler had warned her that this was among Colby’s powers, she gasped in surprise. And felt a little bereft.

  They had stopped at what appeared to be a rough asphalt driveway leading to a lot that had nothing more than shrubbery and a few trees on it. There was no other turn to make, but they also hadn’t reached any real destination.

  She took a deep breath and turned into the driveway.

  An instant later, she saw her father’s ghost. Her hopes soared, and she swore that if she and Tyler escaped with their lives, she’d beg Tyler to help Colby in return for his kindness.

  Her father was beckoning her to get out of the van. She did, bringing the dogs and her flashlight with her. The dogs watched him but did not seem to be as hostile toward him as usual.

  The moment she stepped onto the driveway, she saw the house behind the trees and shrubs. She was startled and wondered how she could have missed seeing it from the road.

  The two-story house was old for this part of Los Angeles, probably built in the 1920s, judging by its style. The windows were darkened by heavy curtains, but she saw no sign that anyone was at home.

  “Is this where Tyler is?” she whispered to her father.

  He nodded and pointed toward a narrow garage, one with hinged double doors. She crept toward it. The doors were not latched, and when she swung one open, she saw the truck in which Tyler had been taken. She glanced toward the house, then dared to turn on the flashlight. She aimed its light into the back of the truck, already sensing he would not be there, and cringed at the sight of the darkened bloodstains on the truck bed.

  She saw a tool bench and looked it over. It didn’t have much to offer—mostly odds and ends of small hardware, greasy nuts and bolts that appeared to be left over from a previous tenant. “No ax, not even a crowbar,” she said wistfully. “I wish I had thought to bring one.”

  She crept back toward the house and looked for a house number. There was none to be seen. She took out Tyler’s cell phone, thought of calling Alex, and changed her mind. Better to keep the others safe. She had a plan, one she was sure would not meet with their approval, but which was the only way out of this she could think of. A possible fault in her strategy occurred to her, though.

  She knelt beside Shade and Wraith and said, “Tyler needs the ring, right?”

  The dogs wagged their tails.

  “I’ve been thinking about what happened when Tyler became…as he is. You chose him, didn’t you, Shade?”

  The dog looked toward Amanda’s father, who nodded his head. The answer was yes.

  To be certain, she said, “If he doesn’t have the ring, can Adrian force Shade or Wraith to serve him?”

  Some communication seemed to take place again, and her father shook his head.

  The last question was the hardest. “Wraith seems to like me, so, since I have the ring right now, should I—well, if it looks as if Adrian is going to take her or the ring before I can give the ring to Tyler, should I—should I try to kill myself so that Wraith becomes my dog instead of Adrian’s?”

  Her father shook his head vehemently. He came closer to her, placing his hands on either side of her face, though all she felt was a slight chill. She could read the message in his eyes.

  “No, it seemed wrong to me, too. But I had to ask, given what’s at stake here.” She sighed. “Thanks for helping me out, Dad. I just wish there was an army of you at my back.”

  He smiled and gave her a cold kiss on the forehead before releasing her and stepping back.

  “Where’s Mom?”

  He pointed to the house, then hesitated, then touched the ring on her finger.

  “In there with Tyler?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, I’m glad of that. At least he’s not alone.” She made sure the necklace of rings was hidden beneath her clothes, and found herself calming as she touched them. She took a deep breath. “Let’s get on with it, then.”

  The dogs seemed to take this for a command and herded her toward a back door.

  She reached a shaking hand to the doorknob and tried turning it. The door was locked. She was considering breaking the window in the door when the dogs threw back their heads and began to howl.

  The moment they did so, she also heard screaming—horrific, painfilled screams that at first frightened her, then quickly made her fear turn to anger.

  52

  Get my cloak!” Adrian snapped. “Hurry! She’ll find a way in any moment now!”

  Amanda was here. Tyler knew it as surely as he knew that Shade and Wraith
were with her. He ignored the sounds of Daniel scrambling to obey Adrian, ignored Adrian’s furious criticisms of his servant, and strained against the manacles. The intense pain in his wrists and hands told him to stop, but he pulled harder, until the skin near the manacles was torn away and the cuffs were slick with blood.

  His shoulders and elbows were on fire, but he forced himself to keep pulling, hoping to break his own bones if that was what it would take to free his hands. His earlier injuries had weakened him, and with growing frustration he realized that until his strength was fully recovered, he was unlikely to succeed. Still, he tried, wanting desperately to be free to protect Amanda from Adrian.

  “Stop him from doing that!” Adrian shouted.

  Daniel moved over to Tyler, looked frantically about him, and grabbed a rag that he tore into strips. With these, he began to wrap Tyler’s left hand and wrist. “No,” Tyler protested. “Please…”

  Daniel met his eyes, looking scared, but continued working. Both hands were throbbing with pain, but Tyler sensed that the big man was trying to be gentle. He finished tying up the ends of the makeshift bandage and moved to Tyler’s right hand. The left was now so thickly covered there was no question of pulling it free.

  Tyler could have wept with frustration. He tried to calm himself, to keep his head clear. Amanda would need him to have his wits about him, however little use he might be in physically aiding her. He felt Daniel give his shoulder a quick, awkward pat.

  Daniel had already stepped away to obey Adrian’s next imperious summons when Tyler realized that something cold and hard had been bound into his right hand, almost completely covered by the bandages. He folded his fingers over the end of a small metal object.

  A key.

  53

  The screaming stopped.

  Amanda glanced around the back porch. She saw a clay flowerpot, filled with dirt, all plant life long gone. She grabbed it and ordered the dogs back, then launched it through the door’s glass pane.

  She hid to one side of the small porch, expecting that the noise of the glass breaking would bring someone up to investigate. She heard a voice, indistinct but with a strident quality, as if issuing commands. She strained to hear what was said but could not make out the words.

  She continued to wait and listen hard for long moments, but heard no sounds other than her own pounding heartbeat and the soft panting of the dogs, just behind her. She took a steadying breath and reached inside the door and unlatched it, then opened it cautiously.

  She stood aside, again uncertain. The dogs came up beside her and leaped over the broken glass and into the kitchen. They looked back at her, waiting. Once she entered, they quickly moved to a closed door and scratched at it. She opened it, and was immediately taken aback by a strong odor of mustard and an underlying scent of decay. The dogs seemed unaware of this—no sooner was the door open than they ran down the stairs.

  She heard Tyler’s voice shouting hoarsely, “No! Shade, Wraith, no!”

  This was followed by the sound of a blow and a groan.

  She hurried down the stairs after the dogs.

  First she saw the dogs growling at a man who cowered in a shadowed corner. Her mind went back to her own experience of being attacked, then to what she had witnessed not long ago on the staircase of her home. Although they bared their teeth at the man, she sensed that they hesitated to attack. “Come to me,” she said to the dogs, not quite steadily.

  They quickly retreated to her side, although almost immediately Shade began to whine, focused toward her right. She turned to see what held his interest and received a shock that made her sway on her feet.

  Tyler lay on a table, his face and body covered with blood, some of it drying. She could see a red slash on his throat. His hands were wrapped in rough bandages, his face etched with pain. She hurried to his side, the dogs with her. “Tyler—”

  “Amanda, I’m so very sorry,” he said, in little more than a whisper. He made a motion as if to reach across his body with his right hand, but the chains brought him up short. She gently took the hand in hers, flinching at the touch of cold iron. “Loosen that bandage a little, will you, love? I can hardly feel your touch.”

  She read the message in his eyes and carefully extracted the key. His hand felt warm—too warm—he was feverish. He pulled her closer to him.

  “Hears everything. It’s not safe…to talk now,” he said in a whisper, and she did not miss the slight pause. Not safe to use the key, then. She slipped it into her pocket, and she saw that he was pleased that she had understood him. He reached up again, and she bent nearer. He brushed the backs of his fingers against the thick sweater she wore, near her collarbone, moving exactly to the necklace of rings before he let his hand drop.

  “Shade should not have shown you…”

  “Where to find you?” a voice said from behind her. “You’re wrong about that. Delirious, no doubt.”

  She turned around. On the far side of the room, a hooded and cloaked figure, looking something like a black-robed monk—no, she thought, like Death—stood behind a large desk.

  “Please allow me to introduce myself,” the man said. “Adrian, Lord Varre. Daniel, come here. Give me your arm.”

  Daniel moved to his side and supported him as he walked toward the table. He had difficulty moving, and she heard him muttering as they crossed the room.

  Is Adrian injured? Amanda wondered.

  As they drew nearer the table, Shade jumped up on it, standing protectively over Tyler. Daniel came to a halt.

  “Forward, you fool. The dog has been told not to harm you or you’d be dead already.”

  Shade curled his lip but didn’t snap. He settled alongside Tyler, and for a moment she wondered if his weight would cause Tyler discomfort, but it seemed to Amanda that as soon as Shade was beside him, Tyler’s face grew less pale and drawn.

  Unnerved by Adrian’s approach, she released Tyler’s hand to move around the table, positioning herself so that the table stood between her and the cloaked figure. Wraith followed her.

  “It’s no use!” Adrian said testily to Daniel as they neared. “I can’t move or breathe.” He turned to Amanda. “I apologize, Miss Clarke. I had hoped to spare you my…temporary hideous appearance by wearing these robes. You will doubtless find the way I look now rather horrifying, but I am told you are one who can see beyond the mere physical.”

  “I’m here for one reason—to get you to release Tyler. Do that and I’ll look at anything.”

  “Oh, eventually, I’m sure he’ll find a way out of here.” He tore impatiently at the robe, which fell in a heap at his feet. When she saw the glistening, skinless face, the insectlike body and arms and legs, she could not suppress a small sound of revulsion, or prevent herself from leaning back.

  “I know. I know,” he said consolingly. “I’m sorry you did not have the opportunity to see me in my original state. I was quite handsome.” He gave a little creaking bow. “I am working my way back to a…more presentable form.”

  She couldn’t bear to keep looking at him. She turned her gaze back to Tyler.

  “Daniel,” Adrian said, “lower the lights. Yes, that’s it. Miss Clarke needs a bit of time to grow accustomed to me.”

  “Don’t be worried about that,” she said, not liking to think much about what might now be hidden in the shadows. “I won’t be here that long. Just release Tyler and I’ll go.” She saw Shade softly exhaling on Tyler’s wounds. Relieving pain, she hoped.

  “I know quite a bit about you, you know,” Adrian said. “Even rather intimate information, Miss Clarke. It is still Miss Clarke, isn’t it?”

  Amanda ignored him. She turned to the cowering man, who had retreated to a far corner. “Are you the one who shot Tyler?”

  “No,” he said, eyeing her fearfully, then confessed, “I brought him here.”

  “Brought him here! So he could be tortured!”

  “Amanda, it’s all right,” Tyler said. “Don’t blame Daniel for following Adrian�
�s orders. You heard his screams a moment ago.”

  “Oh…I thought that was you.”

  “I’ve had plenty of screams out of your lover,” Adrian said. “There’s no need for that to continue, though.”

  “I agree. Release him.”

  “Perhaps I will, but you really aren’t in control of what takes place here, you know. If you want Tyler to be freed—well, that depends on you, of course. I asked you if you were still Miss Clarke because it’s clear that even though Tyler has taken your virginity—”

  “You have no right—,” Tyler began angrily, but Adrian merely reached over and slit his throat with a claw.

  54

  Amanda screamed and tried to staunch the flow of blood with her hands. Within seconds, the wound had stopped bleeding, but Tyler lay unmoving, his skin cold and gray. Amanda’s mind was in a whirl, mostly from the shock of seeing Tyler attacked. Why hadn’t Shade or Wraith defended him?

  As if reading her mind, Adrian said, “Shade recognizes me as a former master, even if not a current one.” He sighed. “There’s so much Tyler is unaware of. He doesn’t realize how special you are. For example, you bear a scar on your face—an attack by a dog?”

  “So what?” She was relieved to see Tyler’s chest begin to rise and fall. He was breathing again.

  “There are stories,” Adrian said. “Stories of a rare set of women with such a scar, women who have the gift that Tyler has now. I searched all my long life for such a woman.” He paused. “Once, I thought I had found one, but I was wrong. I would wed such a woman. She would then live with me forever.”

  She looked back up at him at last. “Do you expect me to believe anything you say to me?” She moved so that Adrian couldn’t reach across the table with that claw of his. Wraith followed her. She noticed that Adrian took a moment to track her movements. Perhaps he was having trouble seeing in this low light.

  “You have been marked with a particular sign,” Adrian said. “Tyler cannot avoid a woman like you any more than he can avoid the dying and the undead. Shade recognized you, you see. He became quickly attached to you, didn’t he? And this other one—Wraith, you called her? Every sign shows she’s ready to become your own. The difficulty, alas, is that Tyler made you his.”