Hound of Eden Omnibus

by James Osiris Baldwin

  “Alright. I’ll take it on board.”

  “I think this is a message from someone who knew and maybe even shared their faith. Beelzebub’s number is one-hundred and nineteen. He is Lord of the Flies, Prince of Flesh, Satan’s most loyal lieutenant. One hundred and fifty-eight… one-nineteen, one-fifty-eight… what’s Psalm 119:158?”

  Ayashe turned on me, eyes wide. “Uhh…”

  “Wait.” I closed my eyes and turned away from her, sifting through some fifteen years of memories. When I was concentrating, the sight of other humans made me nauseous. I turned the coffee cup around in my hands, focusing on each precise twist. “‘Psalm 119:158: I behold the treacherous and loathe them, because they do not keep their word.’”

  Ayashe’s narrow features drew in. She chewed her lip for a moment. “Not persecution. Retribution, revenge.”

  “I believe your murderer was aiming for irony,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Well, count me impressed. And a little creeped out. What about ‘Soldier 557’?”

  “Nothing immediately comes to mind,” I replied. “I suspect it has to do with gematria or numerology, but I need the books from my apartment to figure it out.”

  She scowled at mention of the apartment, but nodded curtly and crossed to the window. I watched her out of the corner of my eye: she waved to someone outside, and then briefly smiled. Her kids were still in the car? Must be.

  “Five-five seven.” I ran my tongue over my teeth. “Hmm. Did they ever work out what the murder weapon was? The report says it was still being assessed.”

  “Yeah.” Ayashe looked back to me. She seemed a little more relaxed while camped out by the window. “Shards of broken glass. All the cuts and everything were done with glass. They found it everywhere. The bodies were full of it. Carpet was full of it. Walking around the crime scene was a damn nightmare.”

  “What about the children? The report doesn’t cover them.”

  She sighed, reaching up to adjust her collar. Ayashe wore a fine silver chain that disappeared under her clothes: a crucifix, I could guess. “The bedrooms were trashed. No one took anything.”

  “No older kids?”

  She shook her head. “Lily and Dru homeschooled them with other Elders until they were twelve, and then they get sent to this boarding school place in Texas. The center was sponsored by this big old church.”

  “What denomination were they?”

  “Pentecostal-Charismatic.” She jerked her shoulders. “The Church of the Voice of the Lord. They’re-”

  “A big deal in Chicago and the north Mid-West, I hear.” I set the photos down, and absently skimmed the first page of the report again. “And wealthy, if they can afford to host their congregation in a theater downtown, run a group home in a mansion, and a school. One of a few, I imagine.”

  “Yeah. It’s a big money church. They’re into that whole ‘prosperity gospel’ thing, but I mean, there ain’t nothing wrong with believing what you want.” Ayashe didn’t sound like she bought it.

  “Have the Vigiles looked into the Church?”

  “You bet.” She nodded. “Interviews with their pastor, friends of theirs – norms, not other shifters. The Church is well established in every major city and it checks out. If you want my opinion, that kind of Christianity is kooky, but Lily and Dru were very good people. They never did wrong by anyone that didn’t believe what they believed.”

  I studied the names of the agents in charge of the case. Adept Lance McClaine, Agent Diana Moss. The Vigiles partnered their mages with a Blank agent? I hadn’t known that. “What’s McClaine like?”

  “Solid guy. Pretty good Wiz. He mostly works with wards and seals and shit, the standard stuff.”

  Same as me. While I digested that, I unsealed the second pack of photographs. They were portraits of the missing children. Each one was named and numbered. They looked semi-formal, like yearbook photos.

  Before now, the notion of missing children had been an intellectual thing. A puzzle. A mystery, something to toy with in the mind. Now, they had names. They had hair, which was all different, and easier to look at than their faces.

  One of the boys in the stack of pictures was a small, tired wisp of a child in an overlarge blue sweater and jeans. He was staring just below the camera lens and fixated on something out of sight, his mouth a perfectly formed, sullen cupid’s bow. This kid had a face that was otherwise horsey and awkwardly proportioned, his cheekbones too big for his slender neck. Even at this age, his anger was evident. Terrible anger, bottled deep under the opaque absence of his stare. This was a life characterized by the need for control in the face of chaos.

  Frowning, I turned the picture over. His name was Peter Kaminski. He was one of the mage children, and he was only eight years old.

  Ayashe was saying something, her voice full of flashing red and white spines, aggressive candy stripes of color that shot through my mouth and up behind my eyes as I studied Peter’s last portrait. He did not look like me, but I recognized my reflection in the boy’s thousand-yard stare, in the way he protectively wrapped his hands in the floppy cuffs of his sweater.

  “Was his family alcoholic?” I asked.

  “What? Who in the what now?” Cut short, Ayashe leaned over to look at the Polaroid.

  “This one. Peter Kaminski.”

  “Aaron’s the one who’d know best, but I think so. I know he was one of the ones that Lily worked one-on-one with a lot. High-risk kid, lot of physical abuse in his history. I can’t remember if it was his mom or his dad who was on the sauce.”

  “Both,” I replied. My face was numb, nose and fingertips tingling. “He was probably the only sober one in the house.”

  Ayashe hovered near me a moment, her breath souring the air. Maybe she sensed my sudden, irrationally strong desire to punch her and drive her from the room, because she moved back of her own volition. “You okay, Rex?”

  I glanced up at her. “Me? I’m fine.”

  Her full mouth pulled across to one side. “Juvenile cases are hard. They aren’t for everyone.”

  “I said I’m fine.” Annoyed, I resumed looking through the stack of pictures. “Did your mage ever mention anything he called ‘Shevirah’? Phitometry, ‘awakening’… anything like that?”

  “Not that I’ve heard,” she replied. “I first heard about ‘Phitometry’ was from Michael. He says that it’s something that’s been part of the mythic stories in the Ib-Int since Babylon was still a big deal. He told us that we needed a Phitometrist for this job, not just any old spook, and that’s why we got Angkor on board.”

  “Angkor.” She pronounced the name like ‘Aun-guar’. “That was the other Phitometrist who tried to help you?”

  “Yeah. Weird name for a Korean guy. He was a bolt from the blue, but he was sure he could dig something up for us. Then he vanished. I tried to find him on immigration and border entry records, but no luck.”

  I sat back, frowning. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “We brought him on because he was able to give us an early lead on the way the couple were killed.” Ayashe rubbed her jaw, grimacing as it popped. “John screened him without putting it to vote. They had a private meeting and we all got told he was on the case. That’s not how the Fires are supposed to work. We’re supposed to vote… but John and Michael just keep on making all these big-shot decisions since Lily and Dru died.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. Getting her back on topic was enough. “What did Angkor do before he vanished?”

  “First thing he did was visit the house soon after the murders, and I remember him saying something about running tests on some of the blood. He said he’d explain after he got the results. Those just came in yesterday, but pathology hasn’t written up the report yet. Other than that… he said he was from South Korea. He wore a lot of leather, and his English was really good. Had a kind of weird manner about him.” Ayashe shrugged. “He said he was going to go visit this cabin and come back, but he never did. Told us
to give it five days before we gave up on him, and it’s been seven. I was arguing we go look for him since Wednesday, but John vetoed. Says it’s probably too dangerous.”

  “You think something happened to him?” I arched an eyebrow.

  “I think he had something to do with the murders,” she said. “He was flaky as shit. For all we know, he was a Triad or Yakuza spook who took John for a ride. They use all kinds of weird body parts for medicine over there.”

  “Right.” I closed the case file and the photo file, and held it out to her. “Can you get me copies of those symbols?”

  “I can get you copies of the photos.” She took the bulging file, her eyes hard and wary. “So. You don’t think you can figure anything else out until Jenner and you go and do what you’re planning to do?”

  She might not have been charming, but I couldn’t fault Ayashe for her persistence. “I just know that there has to be more to this than meets the eye. There are a few cults in the area. One of them was involved in another similarly gruesome murder a couple of months ago… I know them only by their initials. ‘TVS’.”

  “Never heard of it,” Ayashe said. “But I’ll ask our consultants and McClaine if they know anything. I didn’t hear about any cult murder in June-July though.”

  “You wouldn’t have,” I replied. “The people involved had a vested interest keeping it out of the newspapers.”

  “Hunh.” She regarded me fixedly for a moment, sucking a tooth. “I guess you were involved?”

  “I was.”

  “You solve the murder? Find the perp?”

  I hesitated for a moment. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Ayashe nodded, one sharp jerk of her head. She made to leave, but paused at the door and turned back to face me. “What’ll you do if you find the guys that took the kids?”

  Sensing a trap, I held off for a moment. “That depends on what you and Spotted Elk hire me to do. Spooks wear a lot of different hats in this city.”

  “You’ll report any leads to me, not John, is what you do.” Ayashe’s rich voice turned cold and level. “The whole point of the Fires is to integrate our cause with the cause of humanity. I’m an Elder myself. Most of my lives have been in America, and I remember the way things were just two hundred years ago. I don’t care what Jenner and Michael think – things are better the way they are now. None of us should be above the law.”

  “Be that as it may, if I’m forced to defend myself during the investigation, I will.” I stared back with equal intensity. She wasn’t the only one who could pull a good shark impression.

  “And I might not even arrest you,” she replied. “Especially if getting defensive on someone’s ass means you find out where the kids are. But it isn’t up to me, so you be real careful, Rex. Silverbay is one hell of a place for someone like you to end up.”

  With that parting shot, Ayashe stalked out the door. I watched her leave, and drew a deep breath, ticking back over the memories of the symbols. There was no time to think on it, though. It was time to tap Zane, call Jenner, and ride out to go to rescue my familiar… or at least wreak vengeance on those who killed her.

  Chapter 12

  Gangsters are like bats: most active around sunset, hunting throughout the night, coming home to roost in the early hours of the morning. I knew that by around three a.m., the guys keeping an eye on my house were going to be drunk, out clubbing, or tucked up in bed with a hooker and a nice warm syringe of heroin. It was the time to strike.

  We didn’t take motorcycles to my place: the risk of getting shot off the back of them was too high. Instead, the four of us – me, Zane, Jenner and Duke – were kitted out in an enormous powder-blue Buick Electra that rumbled its way down the road like a Panzer tank.

  Jenner and Duke were both high. Despite this, I’d managed to convince the Tigers to leave the shotguns at home. Jenner and Zane had bought machetes and bats, and Duke had a real, honest-to-GOD samurai sword. He could apparently fight with it, though I was betting that his training consisted of taking a lot of amphetamines and mainlining American Ninja movies while he swung it around his living room.

  The closer we had gotten to the beach, the more my hand absently strayed to the hilt of my knife. Jenner had given me a bulletproof tac-vest which I wore under my sweater, a black Kevlar number with the government patches torn off. Strung taut, I scanned every car we passed on our way down Banner Avenue. One low-slung, cherry-red Mercedes Benz sports car parked outside my apartment stood out from amongst the rest. I knew that Benz.

  "That’s Ivanko’s car,” I whispered. “But that doesn’t make any sense."

  "Why not? Who's Ivanko?" Zane lounged in the back seat of the car alongside me, tapping the flat of his machete on his palm. He, Jenner and Duke hadn’t bothered with armor – and they had hardly bothered with clothes. They were dressed in undershirts and track pants and flip-flops, things they could get off in a hurry.

  "Ivanko is the senior boyevik, one of the... " I struggled for a word that wasn't in another language than English, and briefly failed. "The captains? He serves the Kommandant of our Red Hook operation, Vanya. But Vanya has no jurisdiction over this area… the Kommandant of Brighton Beach is Petro Kravets. Our Avtoritet would only station Ivanko here if Vanya asked to have my apartment for something.”

  “Does Ivanko have a face?” Jenner called back. “Because as long as he has a face, I can smash it in, okay?”

  “It’s not that easy,” I replied. “They might have a new spook.”

  “I ain’t scared of no wizards,” Duke said. “Magic ain’t shit against Weeders.”

  That was information to file away in the event I ever needed it. "So the superstitions surrounding shapeshifters are true. Resistance to magic, allergy to silver, and such-like?"

  Duke laughed, a high-pitched hyena bray. "Nah, man. The silver thing is all bullshit. It’s like vampires and crosses. Seriously like, the only thing I'm allergic to is the Bee Gees."

  The familiar smell of the Beach hit me when I got out, accompanied by a dull pain I hadn't expected. The wind was cold, and whipped along the damp pavement with the familiar smells of salt and metal and food and people. I’d lived here my entire life, and would never live here again. “Let’s go.”

  We had a plan: all three of the bikers were veteran soldiers who had seen combat before returning to the States. I’d drawn the apartment for them back at the clubhouse. We’d figured out the likely locations for the guard to come around. If I was lucky, Vanya’s men had thrown my suitcases into my wardrobe and left them packed. If I was luckier, my familiar was still alive and my first aid kit would still have clean surgical tools that I could use to operate on myself before anyone realized I had no magic to sling.

  The entry hall was dirtier than I remembered, as was the stairwell. The air was thick with the stench of urine. Behind me, I heard someone snort, and turned to briefly see Zane filtering the scent through nose and mouth, just like a cat would. He wasn’t even aware he was doing it: when his eyes focused on me, his jaw snapped shut and his face reddened beneath its coat of light stubble.

  My front door had been shot full of holes. Someone had used the Wardbreaker pistol to force their way into my house. The spook who’d helped capture me had probably done it, confirming they had magical skill that equaled or exceeded my own. I was counting on the latter, given how our first run-in had gone.

  Zane pulled around to the front while everyone else took position next to the door. He rolled his shoulders back, signed three, two, one… and then charged the door, planting a boot against it and snapping the weakened wood back into the interior of the house with a sharp bang that echoed through my skull.

  Jenner was in first, too small and too fast for human eyes to follow. “Here comes the battering ram!”

  A man’s shout of surprise rang out, then cut short with a gurgle and a clatter as the rest of us ran in behind her: Duke with his sword, Zane with his machete, me with the knife. Ivanko’s man was down in the hallway, liftchik ope
n, machine pistol on the ground. Jenner was perched on his chest like a pixie: she had struck him in the head enough for it to bleed, but not enough for him to be dead. As I drew up, I recognized his jowly face and spiny hair. It was Kir, one of Vanya’s favorite Union bruisers.

  A sense of creeping inertia swept up through my fingers, through to my shoulders, and tightened the muscles of my face until they began to ring. It was no longer my house. My shoes were in disarray, and some of them were missing. There were dirty coats on the wall hooks, and a bag of trash near the door. The air smelled like cigarettes, liquor, strange men, and vomit. The cool sandalwood and lemon smell which had been mine, MINE, was gone. A decade of settlement, erased. And worse, there was no caterwaul. No meowing. No Binah.

  I couldn’t call out for her until we’d cleared the house. Grim-jawed, knife held low, I turned into each room. My bedroom was disheveled, my things thrown everywhere and left to gather dust. The den was empty of people. Shelves of books were overturned. MY books. My radio was gone, and a TV had been set on the coffee table.

  The kitchen was cluttered with cheap plastic chairs that formed a circle around the small table. A Bunsen burner, still warm, sat beside a stack of charred glass saucers, blackened teaspoons, and abandoned syringes. Burned pages from books were scattered around it. My first-edition copy of The Hobbit had been pulled apart, set alight, and used to heat heroin.

  "Smells like someone was cooking junk in here." Duke came in behind, sniffing.

  “They used Tolkien.” My ears were ringing. Someone had broken the carafe of my coffee maker. The sink was full of dirty dishes, the counter cluttered with beer bottles and deli takeout containers. Ashtrays were everywhere, even in the laundry. “They've gone and turned my house into a goddamn crack den.”