1.
Astarte glanced around the lab, then down at the supine body that Maxwell had deposited there not an hour ago, next to the lying form of the window. She ran a hand along the man's calf, and up toward his thigh.
She touched her tongue to her right canine and pursed her lips, the man didn't move.
“Nice and lean,” she noted.
Leaning over him, she brought her knee up onto the mattress, and made a sound in the back of her throat.
Grinning, her lips peeled back, and her teeth began to change. With her right hand, she pulled the sheet back from the anonymous man's form, and reached down.
There was a burst of intense heat against her back, and fell across the man's lap. Through the stars that ringed her vision, she saw Maxwell standing in the door, pulling the white glove back onto his right hand, a thin haze of deep red light fading from the air between them.
His face was stony, lips pressed together into a thin line.
She scrambled to a crouch, and her grin turned to a grimace, baring a mouth full of interlocking teeth.
“You little...” she growled in a pair of voices: that of a sultry woman, and that of a grizzled old man. The whites of her eyes reddened.
“That was a warning,” Maxwell said in a level voice, “I could burn you until there's nothing but charcoal left. Stay away from him.”
Her fingers got longer, her nails narrowing into vicious claws.
“Oh? Decided you aren't so sexless, you little whelp?”
Maxwell stood with his hands clasped in front of him, head bowed and brow drawn down.
She rose from her crouch, her teeth and fingers reverting back to what they had once been. Straightening, she swayed towards Maxwell, looking him up and down. She reached toward him, palm upraised.
His reaction was instant. He put his left foot back, grabbed the middle finger of his right hand, and pulled the glove off.
There was a flash of brighter red, and Astarte felt a flash of heat across her face. Her skin charred, and she was thrown to the ground.
For a moment, she was blind, her eyes running down her cheeks in white rivulets. Reaching up, she peeled the burnt skin, and scratched through the caul forming on her face, blinking her new eyes to clear them.
The room felt cold. She looked up, and saw motes of light pulling towards Maxwell's hand, saw it turn from red to orange to yellow.
Rolling over, she pushed up, and ran for the exit, into the entrance of the Twelve Hours of Night. She looked back, and saw frost forming along the ground and the medical equipment.
A bolt of deep red lanced after her, and she ran.
2.
Butcher the evil millionaire, peasant,
And leave him stinking in the square.
Torture
the chancellor. Leave the ambassador
Strung by his thumbs from the
pleasant
Embassy
wall, where the vines were.
Then drill your hogs and sons for
another war.
Fire on the screaming crowd, ambassador,
Sick chancellor, brave millionaire,
And
name them by the name that is your name.
Give privilege to the
wound, and maim
The last resister. Poison the air
And mew for
peace, for order, and for war.
View with alarm, participant,
observer,
Buried in medals from the time before.
Whisper, then
believe and serve and die
And drape fresh bunting on the
hemisphere
From here to India. This is the world you buy
When
the wind blows fresh for war.
Hide in the dark alone,
objector;
Ask a grenade what you are living for,
Or drink this
knowledge from the mud.
To an abyss more terrible than war
Descend
and tunnel toward a barrier
Away from anything that moves with
blood.
“Christ, this is a goddamn mess,” Algernon noted to Wade and the half-empty bottle of bourbon that sat on his desk.
He looked down at the file, containing the information that the police had gathered, as well as their own limited notes. At the top, the woman's name: Cohen, Angelica.
Algernon leaned over it, and looked through their chicken-scratched information. He poured himself a slug of whiskey, and put a cigarette to his lips. Lighting it, he furrowed his brow, and handed the bottle to Wade.
Wade looked at the dirty glass that Algernon had left untouched, and took his slug directly from the bottle, before reaching over and turning the file ninety degrees and looking into it.
“So...we know where and roughly when she disappeared,” Wade began, “but we can't go into Carver's place to look into it—”
“Not legally,” Algernon reminded him.
“—right, not legally. What did you find out from her family and coworkers?”
“Well, she was an only child of parents that split up. Probably part of why she was targeted. Hadn't spoken to the father in eight years. Spoke to the mother last Easter, but stormed out after dinner.”
“So, family's a bust,” Wade noted.
“Yeah.”
Algernon took a draw off his cigarette, ashed it in the tray, and deposited it in the corner of his mouth.
“And coworkers?”
“Saw a man in a suit buying her drinks on a Friday three weeks ago. No distinguishing features other than the fact that he was tall...oh, and he wore gloves.”
“Is that anything to go off of, really?”
“Not normally, but it sounds an awful lot like Carver's assistant. Did you ever meet him?”
“No.”
“Named Maxwell, or something. You ever meet someone where you just plain couldn't notice much about him?”
Wade shook his head.
“Well, this guy's like that. I can't even remember his eye color. That's kind of weird, isn't it?” Algernon pulled the cigarette from his mouth and stubbed it out in the ash tray.
“Well, why don't you sketch what you can remember of him?” Wade suggested.
Algernon cast about his desk for a pencil, found a stub almost too small to use, and began to draw. Halfway through drawing the arc of the skull, the lead broke.
“Son of a...”
“I need to get some breakfast, anyway. I'll grab you one at the convenience store.”
3.
“Are you there?” the woman's voice asked.
“Yes,” Wade said hoarsely, slinging the plastic grocery bag over his left shoulder, “how are you doing this?”
“Does it matter?”
“I think it does.”
“That doesn't make it true, Wade.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I need you to come to me.”
“I don't know who you are or why you would want me to do that.”
“You know who I am, but you don't know that you're talking to me. Aren't you interested in where I am?”
“You're going to tell me anyway, I imagine.”
“You're right.”
“So tell me.”
“I'm in a room at the end of a passageway of twelve hours, asleep on a cot. The other end of the passage is inside a building you've seen twice and thought of many times, but never entered.”
“Twelve Hours?”
“Specifically, twelve hours of night. It's a harrowing place, but I doubt it will take twelve hours for you to walk. Your shadow—or are you the shadow?—can walk it in an hour.”
“I think I can guess what you mean.”
“So...you're coming?”
“I could. But still don't know why I would or should.”
“You'll learn something very important. Very important.”
“Why can't you just tell me over the phone if it's so damned important?”
“Because it would cause your handset to catch flame before you could hear it. You've got to come to me if you want to know it.”
Wade stared over the top of the pay phone, the details of the brick wall etching themselves into his retina, as he mulled over the voice's revelation.
“You obviously want to tell me this, though. Why?”
“Because. You're the same as I am.”
Click.
4.
Wade tossed Algernon a box of pencils and settled into the chair opposite of him, as the older man opened the pack of pencils and sharpened one. As Algernon continued his sketch, Wade opened the single-serving box of cereal he had bought and poured some out into his hand.
“Don't you have any actual food?” Algernon asked.
Wade crunched through his mouthful of dried nutrition:
“No. No fridge, and I haven't seen Mari a lot, lately.”
“What's that got to do with anything?” Algernon said, drawing a sketch of what he remembered Maxwell's glove to look like.
“Well, I don't suppose you'll give me a ride to the grocery store?”
“No.”
“Lend me your car?”
“Not a chance in hell.”
“So, I'm stuck without real food.”
“I see your point,” Algernon said, and handed the sheet over to Wade.
The younger man studied it for a moment, looking at the somewhat nondescript head-blob and the glove.
“I see. We're looking for a poorly drawn man in Mickey Mouse-gloves.”
Algernon took another slug of whiskey, but didn't say anything.
“Well. I thought it was funny.”
“Of course you did,” Algernon said, patronizingly.
“I'll break your leg again, old man,” Wade said, in the most serious voice he could muster.
Algernon coughed.
“Think I'm going to go use the bathroom,” he said.
5.
The coroner arrived in the alleyway thirty minutes after the call was placed. He was a short, old man in a faded blue suit, and carried a small black case with him.
The body had already been photographed and sent to him. A man in flagrante, with his stomach ripped open. It seemed fairly obvious how he'd died, but the nature of the wounds bothered him.
He ducked past the police tape, and turned the corner toward the corpse. Two beat cops stood there, talking to one another.
“This the stiff?”
“Nah, we want you to look at the other one,” the first officer said.
“What other one?” the Coroner asked.
“He's just being a jackass,” the other officer said, “that's the one.”
6.
The door to Algernon's office eased open, and a pair of brown eyes glanced in. The detective looked from his place in the doorway, and furrowed his eyes.
“Mr. Heller,” came Mo's voice.
Algernon moved the bottle of whiskey under his desk.
“Yes?”
“I thought you'd be interested to know that Ms. Harris didn't come into work last night, and she isn't in this morning.”
“Your point?” Algernon asked.
“She didn't call, and she didn't come in. This place is her life, Algernon. I'd think that you'd be interested in investigating her absence.”
Wade glanced back and forth between them, an eyebrow arched.
“I'm on it,” Algernon said, before looking down at the file, then up at Wade, “sorry to bail on you, kid. I don't suppose you mind...”
“She's probably alright, you know,” Wade pointed out, “and you're not getting paid to find her. She's been sick the past few days. Five bucks says she's just sleeping it off.”
Algernon shook his head.
“I know you're right. And if that's the case, then I'll join up with you in a couple hours. If not, then it's not like we can let her just disappear.”
“And what if she is missing? What, then, old man? Do you intend to come the entire city for one person?”
“I do.”
The two of them stared at each other for a long moment.
Wade shrugged, and shut the file.
“Go, then. I'm going to go handle our case. I think I've got everything figured out. I think its time to do some crimes.”
7.
Wade took the bus across town. He sat in the back, arms crossed and eyes closed.
At the last stop on the western leg, he got off and headed into Grimsby, walking down the middle of the street and heading up the mountain, headed towards the Carver House.
When he arrived, he rang the intercomm, and waited.
“What?”
It wasn't the same voice as previously. It was Victor.
“I need to speak to Carver. Face to face.”
“Hold on.”
After a moment, Victor emerged: A man in horn-rimmed glasses and a white coat. He stood directly across from Wade, behind the gate, but closer than most people would.
Wade's eyes narrowed.
Carver's shoulders tensed.
Wade's hand lanced out, grabbed the other man's wrist, and placed a foot on the gate. Wade jerked Carver toward the bars
Victor's forehead connected with the gate and rebounded. He went limp. Wade leaned back, holding the unconscious man against the gate. Reaching forward, he rifled through Carver's pockets.
Wade dropped a cellular phone, a wallet, a handful of pens, and a moleskine notebook at Victor's feet, and finally found the keys he'd been looking for.
Letting go of the dead weight, Wade unlocked the gate. Victor's limp form flopped to the ground.
Wade walked up the drive, and went in the front door.
8.
The third stop of the coroner's day saw him in Palladion, where three young men had their throats cut. Their clothes were in disarray, and he took photographs with the wireless camera in his black case.
“We have, perhaps, the most enterprising serial killer I've ever heard of,” he commented to the police detective at the scene. One of the beat cops offered the two of them paper cups of coffee.
“So it seems,” the detective agreed.
9.
Algernon put the tension wrench and snap gun back into his coat, and stepped into Mari's apartment.
Have to tell her she needs a better lock, he noted, that one sucks.
Her phone had been off, and no one had answered the door when he knocked.
The inside of her apartment had been ransacked. Her living room had been furnished with a small television, a coffee table, and a futon, as well as a handful of framed pictures of her family. Now the futon and coffee table were broken to splinters. It looked as if someone had put a foot through her television, and the pictures—which Algernon remembered as having been covered in dust—lay in a pile on the floor. Her stand-lamp had been knocked over and shattered.
Her kitchen was worse hit, though. The door of the refrigerator had been torn clean off its hinges, and all of its contents had been ripped out and scattered on the floor. The cabinets had been pulled open and emptied. Not one scrap of edible material remained in the kitchen.
Broken glass rested in the sink. A splatter of blood adorned the wall over the sink. Examining it closely, he saw that it was some sort of a sigil. A five-pointed star adorned with a baroque series of lines and circles.
Algernon produced his phone, and took pictures of the scene. He sent a picture of the symbol to Theia with a message:
“Mari's apartment ransacked Found this What is it?”
He began to comb the apartment for any other clue, before feeling his phone vibrate in his pocket.
“on my way.”
He waited in Mari's living room for Theia, who arrived some ten minutes later. She pushed the door open after finding it unlocked.
“Where did you find that? The symbol?” she asked, her eyes wide with some emotion—either excitement or fear.
10.
The elevator descended slowly.
Wade stood in the middle of it, his hands in his pockets, eyes slit.
The doors opened onto a concrete tunnel, with bright halogen lamps every twenty yards. The air was damp, and indistinct whispers could be heard further down the passage.
With only one way to go, Wade walked forward. As he moved further, he could hear the whispering voices:
“...Intruder...”
“...No...”
“...Defiler...”
“...Stop...”
“...Garbage...”
“...Don't...”
“...thing that dwells in the darkness, and is yet...”
“...No more...”
A third of the way down, he saw the sign of the hawk, twin silhouettes painted onto the wall by Jorge Carver, shortly after these caves had been drained and reshaped into a corridor.
Not long after, he came into a widening of the chamber, directly beneath the river. An iron door was set into the wall, with a heavy lock barring entry.
As he walked past the door, tendrils of greasy gray-black smoke emerged from his ears, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. The hallway here was riddled with holes, and the arafel reached out, reaching out into the holes, and touching on things inside.
As he passed through, great serpents emerged from the holes behind him, slithering along the ground behind him, lethargically resting upon the stone ground. A chorus of hissing came from behind him, drowning out the whispering voices.
A short distance past that, he came to a heavy door. Reaching into his pocket, he checked each in the door. Discarding the keys, he looked at the door.
What now?