Stormfront

by Skye Knizley

  “Yes’ ma’am, Solly says you gots questions? Ma’am, I didn’t do nuffin, it was Carmine’s boys−”

  Raven waved a hand. “I’m not interested in that. Do you remember a woman in a red dress? You dropped her at Nightingale’s two nights ago.”

  Eddie brightened. “Oh, yes ma’am. A real looker, that one. Not like you, of course, but real pretty. Good tipper, two, I made five bucks on that fare.”

  “Do you remember where you picked her up?” Storm asked.

  Eddie warmed to his topic by picking up a worn map and spreading it on the table. “Yes sir, she was on the corner, waiting near a phone booth.”

  He smoothed the map and tapped an intersection on the south side of the city. “She was here.”

  “Was anyone with her?” Raven asked.

  Eddie nodded. “Yes’m, she was with two big men in black coats, but they didn’t take a ride, just her.”

  Raven made a note of the intersection. She knew it, though in modern times it wasn’t the kind of neighborhood the wealthy would set foot in without a tragic GPS error. “Tell me about her.”

  “Like I said, ma’am, she was real pretty. Her dress was red and shiny, like a movie star, and she was wearing stockings. She had a black coat and her hair was long and shiny black, like silk,” Eddie said.

  “Can you remember anything else? What about her face?” Storm asked.

  Eddie’s face looked a little glazed. “Oh, she was real pretty.”

  Raven looked at Storm, who arched an eyebrow, then back at Eddie. “Anything else? That’s a little vague, Eddie.”

  Eddie wrung his hands. “No, ma’am, she…she was real pretty.”

  “It’s okay, Eddie, thank you,” Raven said, patting his arm.

  Eddie calmed and his smile brightened again. “No problem, ma’am. Anything else I can help you with?”

  Storm handed him a dollar coin. “No, thank you Eddie, you did good. You take care now.”

  Eddie smiled and bobbed his head then vanished into the garage. When he was gone, Raven looked at Storm. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “Only if you’re thinking our mysterious woman was wearing a glamour,” Storm replied.

  “That’s serious mojo,” Raven said.

  “And against the rules of magik. I think you’re right, kid, this is more than a murder investigation. What’s the next step?”

  Raven walked to the window and took another long swig of coffee. The corner where Eddie had picked up the mysterious woman wasn’t near anything, at least not in present day, just an empty lot she’d seen a million times. It was possible she was holed up nearby, but finding a mage using a glamour was a lot like finding a needle in a haystack. She could be anyone.

  “What’s near that intersection?” Raven asked.

  Storm shrugged. “It’s a few blocks from civilization, to the best of my knowledge it’s an empty lot. Some contractor bought it before the war and never finished his project. A hotel or something, I think.”

  “Why would she be at an empty lot? It makes no sense!”

  “Kid, this case hasn’t made sense since day one,” Storm said. “What’s next?”

  Raven chewed her thumbnail. She wanted to check the empty lot, her gut told her there was something more going on, that nobody would just appear on a street corner waiting for a cab. On the other hand, she was certain the real reason Astrid had been killed was whatever she saw on her boat tour. If you followed the falling dominos, Lash was killed for the same reason, whatever that was.

  “Want to go for a boat ride?” she asked.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Lockport Charters, Chicago, IL 1943

  Lockport Charters, home of Wytchcraft, sat twenty miles north of Chicago city proper. It wasn’t huge, as marinas went, but large enough for the schooner and a dozen smaller vessels. Raven shook her head when she spotted Wytchcraft floating at anchor not far from shore. She knew it was older than it looked, but she had no idea it was new during the war.

  Storm pointed to a low-slung speedboat covered by a tarpaulin on the nearest dock. “That one is mine, she’s a fast little Italian I won in a poker game.”

  Raven pulled the door open to the office. “You play poker? Since when do you gamble?”

  “Since about nine hundred. I think that’s when I first encountered dominoes. Those little tiles are addictive,” Storm replied.

  The office was spacious and airy, with windows all around that looked out on the lake and not too distant city. Raven knew it wouldn’t be long before this marina was in the thick of the wealthiest part of Chicago.

  There were several orange-printed chairs, a water cooler and a map of Lake Michigan arranged around a wide oval table that was covered with neatly stacked newspapers and magazines. It seemed like everyone in the city was saving issues of Time Magazine and stacks of the Tribune.

  A man dressed in an outfit reminiscent of the Navy, with a blue shirt and denim dungarees, appeared behind the counter. He smiled and set the book he’d been reading aside.

  “Good afternoon, folks, there’s a storm coming and it’s the off season, we aren’t doing much right now. I have a couple of launches available for later in the week, if you’re interested,” he said.

  Storm flashed his badge. “No thank you. We’re here about the murder of Astrid−”

  “Peters,” Raven finished. “She took a tour yesterday?”

  The clerk smiled. “Yes ma’am, she hired a launch out to Outcast Island. Hell of a view yesterday with the thundersnow coming in.”

  Outcast Island, in present day it was off limits, surrounded by a sheer wall and patrolled by both Canadian and US border security. Raven had seen it in passing, the House owned several boats and Fourth of July cruises had been a thing until her eighteenth birthday. The island was always lit up with fireworks for the holiday, so bright you could see the old asylum and ruins that dotted the atoll.

  “You drove the boat?” Storm asked.

  “Yes sir, the name is Captain Herbert Morris, retired o’course. What’s this about?” Morris asked.

  Raven leaned on the counter. “Ms. Peters was found dead early this morning. Was anyone with her when she went to the island?”

  Morris’ face fell. He’d probably hoped for repeat business, Astrid had been quite attractive and not many attractive dames were going on cruises by themselves.

  “Oh, what a shame. No, no one was with her, she said she was looking for a spot to have a wedding. I made several suggestions, Outcast isn’t the most attractive place on the lake, but she insisted she see the island and go ashore,” Morris said.

  Morris had been unwilling to drive a boat to the island himself, not with the storm coming in, but he’d agreed to clear Storm’s boat and get it ready for the cruise. Raven spent the intervening time looking through the stack of newspapers on the table. There was a lot of news about the war, about this area being taken, that one being bombed and the allies either pushing forward or falling back, day after day after day. Raven knew all of this, of course, she’d studied American history in high school. It was the secondary articles she was interested in. Most of the additional stories were what reporters called “fluff”, but she also found a series of articles about people going missing around the city. Most were what the locals called, “street people,” vagrants, the poor and of course the mentally ill, which meant the police took no real notice.

  Raven felt the inkling of a connection there. It was unusual for people to just vanish, even during wartime. Her gut told her there was a pattern she just wasn’t seeing and again she wished that Levac was there to help her put the pieces together.

  The sound of an engine attracted her attention and she stepped outside to see Storm standing in the cockpit of a speedboat. It was smaller and more elegant than modern speedboats, consisting of a polished, lightly stained wooden hull,
white leather interior and what sounded to Raven’s trained ear as a tuned inboard V8 engine beneath the bonnet.

  On the horizon, the storm still raged. Black clouds shot with lightning towered in the distance, blotting out everything beyond Chicago. It was going to be a race to get to the island before the storm arrived and visibility plummeted along with the barometer.

  Storm waved to her and Raven hurried to join him at the end of the dock. Two Jerry cans rested on the back seat along with the MP38 Raven had collected from one of the Nazis and a grey cloth bag full of ammunition.

  “Are we going to war?” she asked, slipping into the boat.

  “I like to come prepared, who knows what we’re going to find out there,” Storm said.

  He pushed the boat’s throttles forward and guided the little craft out onto the lake. Raven looked at the growing swells and the not too distant blizzard and then back at Storm.

  “Is this a good idea?”

  Storm accelerated further. “Probably not, but we are running out of time, options and clues. We both suppose that Astrid was killed for whatever is on the island, now is our chance to find out why.”

  Raven agreed, but she couldn’t fight the sinking feeling in her stomach.

  The island lay ahead, a speck in the distance shrouded in fog that obscured most of the atoll at all times. In the 1800s Canada had tried to put a lighthouse on the island, and to this day the ruins still stood on the western side of the island, but the mist was so thick the light was barely visible. The light had been replaced with lighted clangor buoys that guided ships around the island and the surrounding rocks in the early 1900s.

  Snow started to fall along with the coming night. Raven huddled in a blanket from the little boat’s storage compartment and watched the distant island grow larger second by second. The storm had done what nothing else could, and for once the fog wasn’t present. She could see the ruined lighthouse and attached asylum where both America and Canada had sent unfortunates suffering with leprosy to die. Beyond that was forest that hadn’t been explored in decades.

  A single dock jutted from the southern face and Raven pointed at the black iron shape moored beside it. A black German Type XIV submarine serviced by half a dozen Uniformed German soldiers floated low in the water, a shadow amongst the gloom.

  “Impossible,” Storm muttered. “It is impossible for that submarine to be this far from the Atlantic.”

  Raven stood and raised a pair of binoculars she’d found under her seat. “It’s impossible that someone can fall through time, yet here I am. Impossible or not if you don’t cut the engines that thing is going to eat us for breakfast.”

  Through the binoculars she could see that the soldiers on the dock hadn’t heard the power boat’s engine, but two of them were scanning the water while a third was doing the same from the conning tower of the U-Boat.

  Storm turned the boat toward the more desolate eastern shore and cut the engines. With any luck, the island’s draw current would pull them in and they wouldn’t need the engines again.

  “How is that thing here?” Storm asked in a whisper.

  Raven kept watching the shore. “Why are you asking me? My history says there were no Nazi submarines in the Great Lakes, I have no idea how it got here. Could it get through the Seaway using a tanker as a hat or something?”

  “I didn’t think that was possible,” Storm said. “If it is, the captain of that boat is one ballsy son of a bitch.”

  On the dock, more people were descending from the submarine. Raven recognized Skorzeny, with his close-cropped pate and facial scar and wasn’t surprised. She’d assumed he was the one behind the attack at Poole’s and was likely a high-ranking member of the SS. It was the man following him that made her eyes widen and her teeth clench. He was wearing a lighter colored suit and a fedora, but there was no mistaking his swagger or spectacles that reflected light as he walked.

  “Archer,” she muttered.

  Storm sat up. “What?”

  Raven handed him the glasses. “Archer, he’s with the Nazis and he doesn’t look to be under duress.”

  “That bastard,” Storm said. “I will gut him like a fish and make garters!”

  Raven put her foot on the boat’s dashboard. “It makes sense, actually. If he was working with Skorzeny then it follows he would be upset if a third party showed up and started getting in the way.”

  “What do you mean?” Storm asked.

  “Whoever killed Lash was looking for the same thing they were,” Raven said.

  Storm lowered the glasses and set them aside. “Which means we have two adversaries.”

  Raven nodded. “It gets worse, though.”

  “Both sides are Nazis,” Storm said. His tone confirmed it wasn’t a question.

  “Yes. Two factions within the same organization, probably vying with each other to see who can bring the prize back for Der Fuhrer,” Raven said.

  She grit her teeth and watched Archer and Skorzeny ascend from the dock and vanish from sight into the asylum. Her monster was raging, she wanted to pull Archer’s head off and mount it on a pike, but racing in guns and engines blaring was a good way to get killed. While the sub in question was considered a “supply” vessel for combat submarines, it was fully equipped with torpedoes and a deck gun that could turn the little boat into shrapnel before they got close enough to fire a shot.

  The island loomed closer, as did the jagged rocks that threatened to tear the boat into tiny pieces. Raven and Storm used oars and their hands to push the rocks away and keep the boat moving forward. It was hard, sweaty work that left Raven breathing hard and bathed in sweat, not good in the frigid air. She was shivering by the time they reached the cliff that formed the shore on this side of the island.

  “We can risk the engine and go around,” Storm said.

  Raven looked up at the almost sheer rock and forced herself to stop shaking. She could see handholds as well as places where she was certain she could jump from level to level. The question was, could Storm?

  “I can climb it, Dad. What about you?”

  Storm looked up and Raven saw him chewing his lip. “I can make it if you can.”

  Raven tied the boat to a tree that grew out over the water and checked the MP38. The ammunition was silver laced with garlic and oak. Not as effective as Thad’s specials, but good enough in a pinch. She slung it over her shoulder and handed the ammunition back to Storm, who hefted it as if it was weightless.

  “I’ll go first. Stay behind me and watch our asses,” he said.

  “Who’s going to watch your face?” Raven asked.

  Storm kissed her forehead with a muttered, “For luck,” and started climbing. When he was ten feet above, Raven gripped the wall and followed. The rock was cold, wet and slick with ice, but her nails and boots found decent purchase and she was able to make steady, slow progress. Arm over arm, foot over foot she climbed until the little boat looked like a toy bobbing beneath them, a fragile wooden speck on the storm-tossed lake.

  Storm helped her over the lip at the top and she fell to the snow-covered ground, gasping and tired. Climbing sheer faces in a snowstorm wasn’t on the FBI training regimen.

  “You okay, kid?” Storm asked.

  He was breathing hard, but not nearly as winded as Raven, who glared at him in annoyance.

  “Why aren’t you tired?”

  “Tricks o’ the trade, my daughter,” Storm replied with a wink.

  Raven hauled herself to her feet. “I swear, when I get home we are getting into this.”

  “Into what?” Storm asked.

  “All of this. Why you never told me, what you can do, what I can do, all of it,” Raven replied.

  “Good luck with that, Ray,” Storm said.

  The snow wasn’t deep in this part of the island, the constant wind and exposure kept the rocks swept free. As they
descended, however, Raven found herself slipping on ice and plunging through deep drifts of snow that made her grateful for her modern boots and thick riding leathers. Storm, however, seemed oblivious to the cold, trekking through as if he felt nothing.

  They descended into the forest and found a clear path that wound down from the high side of the island toward the shore. The foliage around them was thick and heavy with snow, and the path was treacherous, but safer than leaving fresh tracks behind.

  The storm was in full force when they reached the bottom of the cliffs and Raven took shelter beneath a tree, again wishing she’d kept the awful gloves Storm had brought her. She blew on her hands and tried to warm up while Storm scouted ahead. He came back a few minutes later, sword drawn. When he saw Raven shivering, her sheathed his blade and hugged her close.

  “Jiminy, kid, why didn’t you tell me you were cold?” he asked.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a sliver of stone. He snapped an edge off and handed it to Raven, who looked at the sliver of gray rock curiously.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Part of a Viking hearthstone enchanted by your great aunt, Sif. It will help keep you warm,” Storm replied.

  Raven did feel warmer, she could feel it creeping up her arm and into her shoulder. She breathed with relief and smiled her thanks.

  “Who was Great Aunt Sif?”

  Storm drew his blade again. “A shieldmaiden who lived about a thousand years ago.”

  He stepped back onto the path and Raven followed. “What was she eaten by?”

  “Funny you should say that,” Storm said.

  “I was kidding!” Raven snapped. “Why are all of my relatives from your side dead?”

  Storm turned. “I already told you. Bad things follow my blood.”

  Raven poked him in the chest. “Don’t give me that destiny bullshit! We make our own path, whatever happened, it happened because of choices and mistakes, not because of some mystic deity.”

  Storm looked at her with a mix of wonder and amazement. “You truly believe that?”

  “Yes!” Raven said. “Hell yes! I’ve beaten the odds by being tough, smart and having people I can trust at my back. Rupert, Aspen, Marie, Thad. Even Mom, though she has issues choosing between me and duty−”