24
When we got back to Butterfly Heights—the real Butterfly Heights— I took an old blanket from one of the storeroom shelves and covered Steve’s body with it. We were going to have to call the police later but right now, I needed to confront Dr. Campbell about Project Ligeia and find out if he was carrying on the work of the Midnight Cabal.
We got back to Steve’s office and gathered up our things, putting the Cabal books into the backpack. “I guess we need to visit the doctor at his home,” I told Felicity.
She nodded. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to find his address.”
But as we left the office and were walking toward the exit, Campbell entered the building, his face a mask of fury. “I should have known it was you,” he said when he saw me. “Where’s Steve? I need him to call the police. You’ve broken into my office and I’m going to press charges. You’re going to jail, Harbinger.”
“Really? You think if the police come here, it’s me they’ll be taking away in handcuffs?”
A confused look crossed his face. “Of course. For breaking and entering.” He held up his phone. “My alarm went off and I got here to find you and your partner leaving the scene of the crime.”
“I think they’ll be more interested in what’s been going on here. Your experiments. Project Ligeia. The siren in the basement.”
The blood drained from his face. “What have you done to her? What have you done to Ligeia?” He sprinted for the door to the inner building. “This is why I told Steve no P.I.s. You kill what you don’t understand.” He went to put his keycard into the lock but looked suddenly fearful. He turned to face me and I saw apprehension etched into every part of his face. “Please tell me you haven’t killed her.”
“What’s the deal, Campbell? What’s really going on in this hospital?”
“Tell me you haven’t killed Ligeia,” he pleaded. Tears were streaming down his face now.
“I haven’t killed her,” I told him to put him out of his misery. “Yet. I want some answers right now. Tell me about Geraldine Hunsaker, Ryan Martin, and the serum that was being made from the siren’s blood.”
He put his back to the wall and slid down it, either relieved that the siren was still alive or surrendering himself to the idea that his secret project wasn’t so secret anymore. “I’ll tell you everything,” he said, “but you have to promise me you won’t hurt Ligeia. None of this was her fault.”
“Talk,” I told him. “Let’s start with the Midnight Cabal. Are you a member?”
He looked genuinely confused. “You mean they still exist? I found their books in the basement but I thought they were disbanded after most of their staff were killed in 1942.”
“Okay, so tell me about the books. You read them and decided to continue Project Ligeia on your own?”
“Not at first,” he said. “I read about the serum that could transform humans into faerie creatures. I even kept the box of syringes containing the serum. But I wasn’t interested in attempting the metamorphosis until I found Ligeia locked up in her cell down there. She was beautiful. After seeing her, the serum suddenly became very important to me. If I could become like her, we could be together. She can’t accept me as I am. She’s been mistreated by humans for too long. I daren’t even go into her cell. But if I became a faerie creature, we could leave here and start a new life together. So I injected myself with the serum.”
I frowned at him, confused. “You look pretty human to me.”
“It didn’t work. I didn’t know how long the transformation would take so I waited days, then weeks. It soon became obvious I wasn’t going to transform. Then I read in the books that it only works on people who have some faerie blood in them already. The serum can amplify an already-existent faerie gene but it can’t create one out of nothing.” He sighed heavily. “I don’t carry the gene.”
“But Ryan Martin did,” I said. “And Geraldine Hunsaker.”
“I searched for people with the gene. It wasn’t too difficult to find them because the gene also makes those people susceptible to visions, which means they usually end up at institutions like this one at some time or other during their lives. Hunsaker was the first gene-carrier I found. She came here for a while and I realized through her therapy sessions that she had faerie blood. I had to know if the serum worked but I couldn’t risk injecting her at the hospital in case something went wrong. So I waited until she was discharged and traveled to her home. She was more than willing to let me inject her. As far as she was concerned, she was simply getting a house call from her doctor.”
“So you changed her into a creature just to satisfy your own curiosity.” I already disliked Campbell but this made me hate him. How could he toy with people’s lives like that?
“It was glorious,” he said, a smile flickering over his lips at the memory. “I don’t even know what it was that Geraldine became but she became half-snake, half-woman. She slithered away before I could stop her.” He looked suddenly disappointed. “I don’t know what happened to her.”
“And then you did the same thing to Ryan Martin?”
“Yes, but this time, I gave him the injection here, believing he wouldn’t be able to escape like Geraldine had. I was wrong about that. When the serum took effect, Ryan suddenly became paranoid and fled. You saw how he scaled the gate. I believe his transformation took place later, after he’d climbed into the storm drain.”
He looked at me with pleading eyes. “My work isn’t done. I know I can find a way to replicate the faerie gene and inject it into myself. Then I can use the serum to be with Ligeia. No one needs to know about this, Harbinger. You can let me go on with my work here. I’ll pay you handsomely, of course.”
“Not going to happen, Campbell. You’ve ruined lives, destroyed families, just so you can get your rocks off with a siren. It ends here.”
The fear returned to his face. “What are you going to do?”
“First, I’m going to deal with the siren. Then I’m—”
“No!” He got up and swiped his keycard through the lock. He ran through the door and pulled it closed behind him.
I got my own keycard out of my pocket and opened the door. Felicity and I ran along the corridor, trying to catch up with Campbell. His head start meant he reached the basement door long before we did and after he’d used his key to open it, he locked it behind him.
The Janus statue was in the backpack I was carrying but it was wrapped up and wouldn’t open the basement door until it was unwrapped. I threw the backpack off my shoulder and opened it, unwrapping the statue as quickly as I could.
“Do you think he’s going to open the siren’s cell?” Felicity asked.
“Yeah, I do. He said he hadn’t dared to go in there but now he has no choice. If he wants her to live, he’s going to have to release her.”
“And she’s been locked up for decades, possibly hundreds of years. This isn’t good, Alec.”
“I know, so let’s get down there as quick as we can.” I pulled the cloth from the statue and the basement door clicked open. We ran down the steps, swords in our hands. That siren was going to be really pissed off when she finally got out of her cell.
I heard Campbell scream and increased my pace as much as I dared on the steep steps. When I got to the bottom, I rushed into the room with the Midnight Cabal logo and over to the second door. “You ready?” I asked Felicity before I opened it.
“Ready,” she said, brandishing her sword.
I opened the door, expecting a flutter of wings and a mass of striking claws.
But the corridor was quiet.
The siren’s cell door was open and Campbell lay on the floor in a pool of blood. His body had been shredded by the same talons I’d been expecting to encounter. But the siren wasn’t in attack mode, she was standing over Campbell solemnly, looking down at his dead body.
When she saw us, a resigned look spread over her face. As Campbell had said, she was beautiful but she also looked broken from her years in
captivity. Her body was covered with scars. I wondered what tortures the Midnight Cabal had inflicted on her, what she had been forced to endure over hundreds of years.
Her dark eyes flickered to my sword and then she looked closely at me and nodded. She knelt down, folded her wings back, and stretched out her neck, inviting me to end her suffering.
I wasn’t so sure I could do it. Had she actually done any wrong? She’d affected people in the hospital with her song but she hadn’t actually killed anyone as far as I knew.
I lowered my sword. “I can’t,” I told her.
She sang a soft song and images filled my mind, images of what she had endured at the hands of the Midnight Cabal from when she was captured in the 1700s to her time as a medical experiment here in this basement. “You can,” she said.
I swung the sword and the enchanted blade cut cleanly through her neck, ending her suffering.
Felicity put her hand to her mouth and looked away but not before I’d seen the tears in her eyes.
25
We left the hospital and walked out into a night that was cold and wet. The rain was falling again, hissing down onto the lawn of Butterfly Heights.
When we were undercover of the trees, I fished my phone out of my pocket and called Bud Clarke, the head of the Salem branch of the Society of Shadows. I’d done Bud a favor a while back by dealing with a couple of demons that had killed a Massachusetts investigator. I was hoping he’d repay the favor tonight.
He sounded sleepy when he answered the phone. “Hey, Alec. What’s up?”
“I need a cleanup,” I told him. “Butterfly Heights Hospital, near Greenville, Maine. There’s a dead siren in the basement and a couple of human casualties. Also, there are patients here that are going to need their usual care when they wake up in the morning, so a member of the medical team needs to be contacted.”
“Consider it done. A siren, huh? I didn’t know there were any of them still left in the world.”
“Well, there’s one less now.”
“That’s probably a good thing.”
“Yeah, probably. Thanks, Bud.” I ended the call.
“We should go and get those syringes from Campbell’s house,” I told Felicity.
“Yes, we should.” She seemed distant.
“Everything okay?” I asked her when we reached the Land Rover.
“I’m just tired of seeing so much death,” she said, climbing into the passenger seat. “And did the siren really have to die? It says in the Society of Shadows Investigative Handbook that a preternatural investigator can allow a preternatural being to live if he or she has determined that the creature has never harmed a human being.”
“She killed Campbell.”
“But he deserved it.”
“Look,” I said, starting the engine. “I didn’t kill her because she killed Campbell. When she sang that song, she showed me the suffering she’d endured for hundreds of years. It was horrendous. She showed me those things so I’d understand why she wanted to be put out of her misery.”
“Oh, I see. Then you did the right thing, I suppose.”
“I did what she wanted. I don’t feel great about it.”
An hour later, we drove back to Pine Hideaway. A wooden box containing three filled syringes sat on the back seat of the Land Rover. Campbell’s house had been easy enough to break into and the box had been sitting on the desk in his home office. We’d driven from his house to Pine Hideaway in silence, the only sound the patter of rain on the Land Rover and the metronomic whir of the wipers.
When we got inside the cabin, I lit a fire while Felicity sat on the sofa, her eyes unfocused.
“You sure you’re okay?” I asked her as the fire began to crackle.
“Just exhausted,” she said.
“Yeah, me too. We should probably take a shower before we hit the sack. Mister Scary shredded us up some.”
She looked down at her torn sweater and the thin trail of dried blood that stretched across her abdomen. “I’d actually forgotten about that. Yes, I need to get cleaned up. And so do you.” She stood up and walked to the foot of the stairs before turning to face me. “You did do the right thing, Alec. With the siren, I mean.”
“Thanks.”
She went upstairs and I heard the shower turn on, the water spraying into the tub for a few seconds before Felicity stepped in.
I sat on the sofa and turned my attention to the events of the night, closing my eyes and replaying them in my head, wondering if I should have done anything differently. I definitely needed to be more prepared before facing Mister Scary again and I made a mental note to research the runes I’d seen on his body. They might hold the key to defeating him.
I heard the shower go off and Felicity stepping out of the tub. The thought of climbing the stairs and taking a shower myself seemed like too much effort. I was too comfortable on the sofa in front of the fire.
The next thing I knew it was morning and my phone was ringing. I opened my eyes, confused by the morning light beyond the windows.
I grabbed my phone and checked the number. It was Joanna Martin. I hit the answer button. “Hi, Mrs. Martin.”
There was a pause, during which I could hear her sobbing. Then, she said, “He’s gone. Sammy’s gone.”
“What do you mean? Was he taken again?”
“No, I don’t think so…I don’t know. His backpack is missing, and some food from the refrigerator. I didn’t even know he was gone until I woke up this morning. I don’t know what to do. What should I do?”
“Have you called the police?”
“Yes, they’re sending someone over here.”
“We’re on our way. Is there anywhere Sammy might have gone? A friend’s house maybe? Or somewhere he enjoys visiting, like a park?”
“He doesn’t have any friends. And he barely goes beyond the yard.”
“Okay, try to stay calm, we’ll be there soon.” I ended the call.
Felicity was halfway down the stairs, dressed in pink pajamas. “What’s wrong?”
“Sammy’s gone. It sounds like he ran away.”
“Oh no, why would he do that?”
“I don’t know but we need to get to Dearmont and help find him. The police may overlook certain aspects of his disappearance.”
She ran back upstairs and into her room to get dressed.
I went up to the bathroom and took the quick shower I should have taken last night before quickly dressing and heading back downstairs. Felicity was already waiting by the door, her laptop and jacket under her arm. “Do you think Sammy left of his own accord?”
“I don’t know,” I said, grabbing my own jacket and opening the cabin door. “It seems strange that he’d run away from home a couple of days after he was abducted.”
We went out to the Land Rover and got inside. The rain hammered on the roof and the dark clouds overhead meant it was dark enough to need the headlights. I turned them on, along with the heater.
Felicity shook rainwater from her hair. “This is terrible,” she said.
Backing out onto the road, I said, “You mean Sammy disappearing again?”
She nodded and removed her glasses to wipe the rain from the lenses. “I mean this weather. That poor boy is outside in this terrible weather somewhere.”
“He won’t be outside,” I said. “He has to take shelter or the daylight will hurt him.” I just hoped that wherever he was, the daylight was the only threat to his safety.
26
When we got to the Martin residence, the rain had finally stopped and the dark clouds had parted to show a splash of blue sky. I parked at the back of the house as usual, behind a police cruiser, and Felicity and I went to the back door and knocked.
Amy Cantrell opened it. She glared at me and stepped aside to let us into the dark house. “Mrs. Martin told me she called you,” she said. “I don’t agree with her decision but I can’t change her mind.”
“Look, Amy, Victoria told me your dad’s in some kind of enchan
ted sleep. I’m sorry. If I can do anything—”
“Save it. Unless you can help him, I’m not interested in anything you have to say. Can you help him? Because the witches sure can’t.”
I shook my head. “No, I don’t think I can.”
“Then let’s get to the business at hand. Since Mrs. Martin wants you to be involved in the search for her son, I’ll tell you what I know but it isn’t much. It looks like the kid ran away during the night. Mrs. Martin checked on him at eleven, when she went to bed, and he was definitely in his room at that time. She says he was sitting at his desk, drawing. There isn’t much else to tell. I have two teams of deputies and twenty volunteers searching Dearmont, the surrounding woods, and the lake. No one has found anything yet.”
“Do you know how he left the house? Through the back door? Front door? A window?”
“He went out through the front door. It was unlocked when Mrs. Martin got up this morning.”
That meant I couldn’t use the faerie stones to track his movements. If Sammy had traveled along the streets, there wouldn’t be enough trees around to show me the visions.
“Alec,” Mrs. Martin said, appearing from the hallway, “thank God you’re here. You found my boy before, you can do it again.” Her eyes were red and she was clutching a balled-up tissue in her hand.
“I’ll try,” I told her. “Is there any reason why Sammy might have run away?”
“No,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I don’t know why he’d do this. It isn’t like him at all.”
“Did you have an argument? Was he upset about anything?”
“No, he seemed just fine.”
“And he was drawing when you last saw him in his room?”
She nodded. “Yes, he was sitting at his desk.”
“Do you know what he was drawing?”
“No, I don’t know.”
“Is this really important, Harbinger?” Amy asked impatiently. “The kid is missing. Who cares what he was drawing?”
Shadow Land Page 16
