This Eternity of Masks and Shadows

by Karsten Knight

  Cairn laughed uncontrollably as the wind raced through her hair and the sea spray coated her face. She was cold, but she was happier than she ever imagined.

  They crested a particularly big wave, and when the boat slapped against the water, an item from beneath the backseat popped free onto the cabin floor. Cairn caught it as it rolled.

  It was a metal thermos—it must have been lodged beneath the seat all this time, until the hard hit had bucked it loose.

  And then Cairn recognized it for what it was: the thermos her mother had been drinking from the day she died.

  Ahna always brought something for their weekly ocean rides, sometimes iced tea, sometimes cheap chardonnay or a premixed cocktail. When her toxicology report came back negative for any alcohol or drugs after she died, the police had little reason to search the boat. Like everyone else, they assumed their victim was just another unhappy woman who had lost her will to live.

  But now Cairn knew something she didn’t at the time. Two more people had died under mysterious, inexplicable circumstances, modeled after myths of revenge.

  And right before she stepped off the back of the boat, her mother’s eyes had glazed over with the same dreamy film that Dr. Sibelius’s had as he burned off his own face.

  So as not to alarm Delphine and ruin the beautiful night they’d shared, Cairn forced a smile and handed the thermos to Vulcan. “Think you can work your magic and analyze what my mother was drinking before she died?”

  Vulcan’s thick eyebrows knit together. “What exactly am I looking for?” He took the thermos as if it were radioactive.

  Cairn looked over the gunwales, peering down into the dark water. “A smoking gun.”

  A Serpent in the Path

  Nook was having a bad day.

  He’d started off the morning responding to a stalking case—an obsessed fan who had broken into the house of the famous swimsuit model Voluptas. In the dead of night, the Roman goddess of sensual pleasure had woken in her bed to find a masked intruder sheering off a lock of her signature golden hair. Just as startled as she was, the man had chosen that moment to profess his love for Voluptas, while assuring her that the hair would be an important addition to the shrine he was building for her. Fortunately, her wild shrieks had sent her two pet Dobermans scampering into the room, at which point the man had jumped from her second-floor balcony and fled into the woods.

  The suspect had also left a severed goat’s head in the goddess’s bathroom as an “offering.” Upon finding the bloody head, Nook had said to his partner, “Mating rituals have really changed since I was younger.”

  Now Nook would have to scour all the lewd Instagram messages and unsolicited photos in Venus’s inbox to identify suspects, a cumbersome task given that she received hundreds a day.

  To make matters worse, that pesky journalist Quinn Cypress was haunting his precinct, trying to sniff out dirt about Raijin, the debacle at the Museum of Fine Arts, and how the police had let one of their criminal informants take hostages. He was getting enough grief from his captain already, and Nook knew he was one strike—or one scathing exposé—away from surrendering his badge.

  To top it all off, he was recovering from a raging hangover.

  His head still felt like an ice pick had been driven through it when he arrived at Senator Ra’s estate. Ra, an American history buff, had purchased a Colonial mansion in Concord, just downriver from where the first shots of the Revolutionary War had been fired two and a half centuries earlier.

  Security guards with assault rifles stopped him at the front gates. One of them scrutinized his badge, then had a muffled conversation into the radio clipped to his shoulder, before finally waving Nook through.

  As Nook stepped out of the Challenger, Ra emerged from the front door, arms spread and the usual smile plastered across his face. “Somebody call animal control—there’s a bear loose in my yard.”

  Nook forced a smile in return. The two had attended university together, but Nook had been a few years the senator’s junior, and they’d never been particularly close. Still, ever since graduation, Ra had acted like they were old chums whenever their paths crossed.

  Nook nodded back toward the guards at the front gates. “Blame your welcoming committee. They’re sure packing a lot of firepower to protect a god with literal firepower.”

  “Oh, they’re mostly for show, so Madison and Dima feel safe whenever I’m away in Washington.” Ra clapped Nook on the back and led him toward the house. “Can I get you a drink? I just opened a bottle of small-batch bourbon.”

  Nook winced at the thought of it, as the dull ache behind his temples continued to throb. “Better make it an iced tea.”

  Five minutes later, they were sitting out on the back porch that overlooked the wetlands behind the senator’s house. A cold November breeze coursed through the yard, ruffling the grass, but the sun god emitted a subtle warmth to keep the porch closer to room temperature. He was like his own personal space heater.

  At the edge of the property, Nook spotted a girl mounting the back of a horse—Dima, Ra’s teenage daughter.

  Ra cupped his hands around his mouth and called after her, “Be careful darling!”

  Nook gave an exaggerated wave, but the girl didn’t respond. She just stared in their direction as she tightened the straps of her helmet, then galloped off down the riding trail.

  “How’s she doing?” Nook asked. It had been only a few months since her kidnapping, and he knew what kind of damage that must do to a young psyche.

  Ra shrugged and tapped a cigar out of its case. “About as well as one could hope for a girl who was nearly sold into slavery, I guess. We have a therapist stop by twice a week now.” With a snap of his fingers, a flame appeared above his thumb, and he lit the cigar. “Pity the bastard didn’t live long enough to stand trial.”

  His third day in solitary confinement, Mercury had been found lying in a pool of blood on his cell floor. “They never did figure out where he obtained that razor blade,” Nook said, studying Ra.

  The senator held his gaze. “I guess even those fleet feet of his couldn’t outrun justice.”

  The screen door popped open and Madison Ra stepped out, dressed in a full equestrian ensemble straight out of a catalog. In her dark show coat and white breeches, she looked ready for a professional polo match rather than a leisurely afternoon ride around their property.

  Madison tugged on her dressage gloves. “You boys want to hit the trails with us?” She raised her eyebrows at Nook. “There are plenty of horses in the stables—Ramsay insisted on acquiring four so he could name them after the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”

  Of course he did. Nook smiled. “Thanks, ma’am, but I’m not cruel enough to do that to a horse. You’d have to get him a chiropractor, and probably a shrink, too, for that matter.”

  “Suit yourself.” Madison pointed her riding crop at Ra’s cigar. “You know how I feel about that nasty habit. The girls from book club are coming over at four, so it better not reek like an ashtray out here.”

  “Yes, dear.” He exhaled a puff of smoke and drew a heart in it.

  Ra watched Madison stride off toward the stables in her tall dark boots. Once she was out of earshot, he asked, “Why are you here, Nook? I know this isn’t a social call.”

  Nook reached into the breast pocket of his coat and pulled out three photographs. One by one, he dropped them onto the table between them like playing cards.

  Dr. Sibelius.

  Tane.

  Sedna.

  “Twenty years ago, six of you sailed to an island,” Nook said. “Three of you have died since Labor Day—two in the last week alone.”

  “And you think I know why?”

  “Yes,” Nook replied flatly. “As far as I’m concerned, the three of you who remain are suspects and potential victims.”

  Ra leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on the ottoman. “Let me get this straight. One of your suspects is a nightclub owner with some questionable side
enterprises, another is a misanthropic dream goddess who skipped off into the woods to be a recluse … yet you’re here interrogating the well-respected public official?”

  Nook gestured around the expansive property. “I like to start with the ones who have the farthest to fall. And I find it curious that you don’t seem particularly worried for a man in imminent danger.” He flipped open his notebook. “Fortunately for you, I’m a good listener and open to information that leads me … elsewhere. So tell me in your own words what happened on Sable Noir.”

  Ra didn’t answer. He tapped the ashes of his cigar off the edge of the porch. “You know, I was never all that interested in mythology,” he said, finally. “I majored in history—give me facts over fiction any day. However, there’s one myth about myself that always fascinated me. See, Ra was the most powerful deity in all of ancient Egypt. Every day, he’d sail across the heavens, from east to west, bringing daylight to the world. He drew his incredible power from a secret name that only he knew. Fueled by that energy, his rays would light up the Sahara until the Nile glowed like a sapphire. The people of Egypt basked in his warmth and worshiped him.”

  “Sounds like another politician with a savior complex to me,” Nook said.

  “Well, I suppose there’s truth in every myth,” Ra replied. “There was one dissenter who didn’t adore Ra like all the rest. Isis, the goddess of healing, resented his incredible power. She wanted her son, Horus, to be the almighty bringer of life. So Isis concocted a plan: one day, she placed a serpent in Ra’s path, and as he transited the sky, the snake bit him. Its fangs penetrated his skin and injected him with a deadly venom. As Ra slowly succumbed to the poison, Isis promised him the antidote—but only if he shared with her his secret name. Faced with death, he ultimately caved to her demand and relinquished the one treasure he’d spent his existence protecting. From that day forward, with Isis in possession of his true name, Ra was only the second-most powerful being in Egypt, a puppet to the conniving woman who bested him.”

  “Are you telling me this because someone’s pulling your strings, Ramsay? Did one of the others offer you an antidote?”

  Ra shook his head. “The moral of the story is that there is only one true god: information. Lighting fires, transforming into bears—it’s all child’s play compared to the raw power of knowing someone else’s truth. The Ra in that story should have realized that sometimes it’s better to take your secrets to the grave than live with them dangled over you.”

  Nook felt his anger boil over. “Sedna was our friend.” He jabbed a finger toward the trees. “She saved your daughter as one of her final acts. If you’re not behind this, then give me something I can use to bring down the bastard who is.”

  “Believe me, I wish I could help.” Ra spread his hands. “You’ll be the first person I call if I think of anything.” He flicked his cigar off the porch and stood up, signaling that the discussion was over. “Sorry to cut this short, but as Madison mentioned, we have company coming over for a riveting discussion of The Great Gatsby.”

  As Nook went to show himself out, Ra cleared his throat and said, “By the way, you’re not the only one asking questions—Sedna’s daughter recently came to see me.”

  Nook stiffened. He felt a weird mix of paternal pride, disapproval, and fear. The girl would make a great detective someday—if she lived to see nineteen.

  “Perhaps I should offer her an internship in my office?” Ra continued. “You know, something to take her mind off things. It’s the least I could do.”

  You stay the hell away from her, Nook wanted to growl. But Ra had been right about one thing—information was power. To show Ra that the girl meant something to him could put her in greater danger.

  Nook spotted a dogeared copy of The Great Gatsby lying on the windowsill. He fanned through the pages and held it up. “You know how this ends, right?” he asked.

  This time, Ra’s vulpine smile was laced with venom. “It’s a tragedy.”

  Nook tossed the book to Ra. “That depends on your point of view.” As he walked away, he felt the sun god’s eyes burning into the back of his neck.

  Dreamwalkers

  Cairn ducked under a right hook from Themis. She experienced a fleeting moment of triumph, since the doctor’s last nineteen punches had connected with Cairn’s jaw—but her celebration ended prematurely as Themis caught her with a spinning back-fist to the temple. She staggered back, stunned, as the blow resounded through her skull.

  Today, they had moved their sparring session out to the dock behind Themis’s mansion. The windmill blades spun endlessly above them. It was an unseasonably warm day for November, but still chilly enough that every hit to the flesh stung like a bitch.

  Themis smirked. “Don’t you ever get sick of not landing a single—”

  Cairn delivered a hard left-right combination to the doctor’s torso. In an attempt to capitalize on her momentary advantage, Cairn followed up with a roundhouse kick, hoping to knock Themis off the dock and into the ocean.

  Themis caught her foot, and with an upward thrust, she dropped Cairn flat to the wooden boards, knocking the wind out of her. Cairn had lost count the number of times she’d ended up on her back since she started training with the doctor for hours a day.

  “If you keep kickboxing with your emotions instead of your brain, you’ll lose every time.” Themis circled her prostrate opponent. “And out there, they won’t give you the chance to stand up between rounds.”

  Cairn didn’t immediately rise to her feet. She stared at the clouds overhead, her brain hazy with so many questions.

  Earlier that day, Vulcan had reported that the iced tea in Sedna’s thermos had tested positive for Nocturne, a drug that was becoming increasingly popular among high school and college students. Nocturne instantly induced slow-wave sleep in those who ingested it and increased their susceptibility to parasomnia, abnormal movements that included sleepwalking. Cairn had seen online videos of teens who’d had taken the drug and had their friends record the ridiculous, often embarrassing things they did in their sleep—eating raw eggs from the fridge, dancing, stripping, fighting. Nocturne also had an anesthetic effect that kept its users immersed in sleep even if you tried to shake them awake.

  Cairn strongly suspected that if they tested Dr. Sibelius’s tea or the scotch glass Tane had been drinking from, they’d find remnants of Nocturne as well.

  But who had drugged the three of them, and why? And why had her mother’s toxicology report come out clean?

  Cairn sat up. “Tell me about dream gods.”

  Themis tilted her head to the side, intrigued. “What do you want to know?”

  “Who they are. What they’re capable of.”

  “Then let’s go to the Arboretum.”

  They climbed the stone steps carved into the cliffside until they arrived at the windmill at the top. The digital trees lit up as they entered the Arboretum. “Almost every pantheon has at least one deity of dreams or nightmares,” Themis explained. “And while their level of power varies, they all share a few common abilities—and limitations.”

  Cairn cleared her throat. “Venus, show me every god associated with dreams.” Instantly, 98% of the pictures evaporated, leaving a handful scattered across the room.

  “First, let’s start with what they can’t do,” Themis said. “No dream god or goddess has ever been documented as able to directly control someone in their sleep. They can’t possess you or hijack your free will. But they can invade your dreams, fully lucid, as if your dreamscape was their own.”

  This was in some ways disheartening to hear. Cairn had latched onto the idea that her mother hadn’t been herself when she’d taken the plunge off the back of the boat, that someone had manipulated her like a marionette. “So what, their power is to be a voyeur? A couple of Peeping Toms watching your dreams? That doesn’t sound particularly lethal.”

  “On the contrary,” Themis replied. “They are an incredibly dangerous class of gods. Your dreams are a verita
ble treasure trove of your most personal information. All your secrets, laid bare by your subconscious while you’re in your most vulnerable state? Imagine if a dreamwalker peered into the president’s mind at night and sold what he learned to foreign agents, or uncovered an affair that he could leverage as blackmail? He could start a nuclear war with that kind of intel.”

  Cairn discovered a troubling pattern as she studied each of the profiles in the room. An aberrantly high percentage of the dream gods from around the world were prematurely deceased. Many of them had died in their thirties, twenties, or even as children. “Venus,” Cairn said. “Filter out any subjects who are known to be deceased in their current incarnation.”

  The number of profiles diminished to only three.

  “One more thing,” Themis continued. “Some of the more powerful deities can reshape your dreamscape around you—building an entire world so you see what they want you to see, hear what they want you to hear, feel what they want you to feel. So while they can’t directly control you, they could theoretically influence your actions indirectly.”

  “Like getting you to sleepwalk off the back of a boat?”

  There was a long pause. Was the doctor skeptical? “The shock of entering the cold water would have woken her up,” Themis replied finally.

  “Not if she was drugged with a powerful sedative that immersed her in deep sleep and anesthetized her to reality.”

  Cairn stepped up to the goat willow that represented the Norse pantheon. One of the few remaining profiles belonged to Njörun, the dream goddess who’d been on that cursed island with the others.

  “So how do you keep a god like that out of your brain?” Cairn asked. “I don’t suppose you can just hang a dreamcatcher above your bed and call it a night.”

  “It’s difficult to keep them out, but they do have limitations. First of all, the closer they are physically to the sleeping subject, the more influence they have over the dream. Put distance between you, and their power wanes, but you’d practically have to flee the country to completely escape their reach. Secondly, when they alter your dreamscape, elements of their own subconscious inevitably bleed through.”