Demon Lord 4: White Jade Reaper (29 page)

TWENTY-NINE

“It is arrogant to assume all ghosts are human.

All living things have a right to killed by me.”

                                   —Caine Deathwalker

I warmed my
Demon Wings
tattoo with raw magic, activating the
You-Don’t-See-Me
spell.  The price for the magic was pain.  Intense, soul curdling pain.  It felt like I’d swallowed garden shears that had come to life, trying to slit my throat from the inside.  There was a choking-on-blood sensation, followed by the shears turning to molten metal, draining into my stomach. 

I shook off the sensations and I draped my arms over her shoulders so she was included in my spell and could hear me.  “Stay here a few minutes, then come in, purposely tripping the alarm.”

She said, “You sure?”

I smiled.  “You can trust me; I’m not a vampire.”

“I trust you as far as I can throw you, which is pretty far actually.  Grace says there are traces of decency in you that struggle to live, so,” pointedly, she looked at her digital watch, “two minutes heard, and counting.” 

I let her go and hopped forward, clearing the danger zone she’d indicated.  I half expected the light-beams to be a trick, but the floor where I landed didn’t open up and drop me into a tiger pit with crap-smeared punji sticks to poison me.  I stared down a passage defined by cell bars left and right.  Halfway down that passage, space belled out.  I saw an autopsy table with a water jet for easy clean up.  The table was steel.  Beside it were stands with trays.  On the trays were various surgical instruments.  I saw a heat gun, pliers, assorted saws, clamps, and a hammer.

Everything but anesthesia; hell’s operating theater.

Obamacare in action.

I went down the passage, checking the cells along the way.  They not only seemed empty, but appeared to have been out of use for years. 
But the sounds we heard…?  I went on and found a back wall of cages. 
The middle one had a prisoner, one of the teachers from the look of him.  I think I remembered seeing him before.  From the weak smell of his person, and the lack of dung and piss in the corner pail, he hadn’t been here long.  Just long enough to be scared out of his wits.  He huddled against the back brick wall of his cell.  His hands covered his head.  His fingers were bloody, the nails cracked.  He’d been trying to dig his way out, but had given up. 

You master pain, or it masters you.

He went rigidly still as I stepped up to his cell door.  That surprised me.  He wasn’t supposed to be able to sense me in this state.  Speaking of seeing; I hadn’t seen any sign of a control center with monitors, or an alarm waiting to sound-off should intruders come. 

The prisoner’s here.  Where’s the warden?

The guy in the cell whispered with a broken voice.  “Is … is someone there?”

So he couldn’t see me.  He just suspected something. 
Maybe he’s a latent psychic, his potential stirred up by survival instincts.  Hey, I’ve met this guy.  Yeah, put him in a suit, give him a superior, snotty attitude, and you have Paul Hastings, flute teacher.  He must have stumbled onto something and been captured.  Well, he’ll keep.  I need to find the bad guy.  He has to have some kind of a nerve center around here, someplace to kick back between bouts of torture.  I must have missed something.

I retraced my path, returning to the autopsy table.  There was a board for controlling various aspects of it.  I looked more carefully. 
Ah, a light’s flickering.  A silent alert; Madison’s coming. 

I looked around to see if her entrance had alerted anyone else.  The shadows didn’t seem to hold any surprises.  I heard a metallic grating noise, like some rusty hidden door moving with protest.  And there he was, coming from the back of the space where I’d just been—the grim reaper himself, a figure cloaked in tattered black cloth, a hood over his head.  His face was a skull.  His hands were bones, grasping a hand scythe.   The sickle was black steel with a handle.  The curved blade could have lain flush against half a basketball, before slicing it through.  The figure came to a stop, staring through me.  I turned to confirm what had caught his eye.  Madison was running in, a stake in one hand, and a bowie knife in the other. 
My kinda woman
.

I turned back in time to see the reaper use an overhand throw to launch the hand scythe.  It whirled straight for my head since—magically invisible—I was in the path of the throw.  Bending backward, I went limp which quickly dropped me under the attack.  The scythe whizzed on over me.  I scrambled around to watch Madison catch the crescent blade with her bowie knife, deflecting it.

Cool move
.

She came on with furious speed, causing me to lunge out of her way as she went after the reaper.  He turned ass and ran, probably heading for that secret door of his.  I dropped my magic spell and summoned my demon sword, while calling out.  “Onyx, c’mon, move!  The bastard’s getting away.”

There was a muffled boom, a small, shaped charge of C4 I guessed.  Not a deadfall after all.

Onyx moved like liquid darkness, catching up to me in a moment, racing ahead.  He stopped at the cage where the flute teacher huddled. 

“Get that guy out of there,” I ordered, “and bring him along.”

As Onyx messed with the cage door, I hurried to catch up to Madison.  I could smell her trail, and hear the sounds of close combat not too far off.  A side passageway lead me away from the wall lights, to a dead end, except it turned out to be canvas, a theater backdrop painted to look like a brick wall.  I swept the canvas aside and found an old, rusty door that swung forward into another passageway.  It, too, ended with a rusty door, one that had very little room to open.  I squeezed out and found myself on the backside of a boiler or something.  Squirming to the side, heading for white, artificial lighting, I didn’t have time for inspection. 

I emerged into the open, in a machine shop.  A box of old piping and wrenches lay scattered on the floor.  The light was from metal dishes hanging from the ceiling.  The dishes had wire underneath, caging glowing, dusty light bulbs.  I saw the sickle abandoned on the floor, but no sign of Madison or the reaper.  They were giving the term “running battle” all new meaning.  I could have continued going after them, but I saw something I thought more important at the moment. 

On a clear stretch of floor, the reaper had used red spray paint to create a summoning circle.  It was corrupted magic, pieced together, something someone had copied out of books of witchcraft.  Most of the lines and symbols were borderline Masonic mixed with Celtic runes.  There was a horned moon, and an invocation to the unnamed gods of Chaos.  It was mostly trash, but enough of it was right to trap an insubstantial spirit.

Ghost Girl was there.  I hadn’t recognized her at first.  Her form was shriveled, frail.  Her energy only a pale waning of lilac.  I could see through her, with the sick knowledge that she was dying for the second time.  In the circle—as a form of bait—was a violin made of rosewood.  It had proven irresistible.  Whatever protection the doll had given her had failed.

I walked to the circle and set down my sword, not knowing how the spell would react to the demon blade.  Unafraid of the crude rendering, I entered it and knelt by the ghost.  She looked off at a patch of darkness, calling to it.  I saw bestial eyes and thought it was Tukka at first, but the creature that came to the edge of the circle—and no closer—was a creature of shadow, a phantom hound.  It wined piteously at the girl.

“It’s ah‘right,” she said.  “You’ll get him for me, won’t you, boy?”

The dog—some kind of substitute for Tukka—whined some more.

I touched the girl, my hand sinking into her immaterial chest, to her heart.  “I will get him for you, I promise.”

A violet charge surged from her, hitting me.  My thoughts whited out.  The world receded.  It was like being swallowed by a dream, or maybe a memory she’d been saving just for me.   It roared through me, a series of flickering images that all bled together.  I couldn’t make sense of the information.  Maybe after my mind had a chance to process it more…

Ghost Girl looked at me then and a tremulous smile brightened her face.  “My doll.  She’ll show you the place of his power.  The place of the dead … where he keeps the children he gathered from all over the world.”

She closed her eyes and sank, a fog of light sucked up by the lines of the circle.  And then there was no nothing.  The hound threw its phantom head back and howled like a thrice-damned soul.  I wanted to howl myself.  The dragon in me wanted to rip and rend and drink hot blood.  It was strange.  I thought I was well past human empathy.  I’d known the girl for such a short time.  Why did I care that she’d been lost for so long, a vagrant in the world, wanting justice.  Her bright future wiped away by a mad killer who apparently was still around all these years later. 

Well, I did care, for whatever reason.  And someone was going to die for this, as slowly as I could arrange.  I straightened and left the summoning seal, taking up my sword.  It could have left, once released from my hand, but it hadn’t fed yet, and I sensed its deep approval of the killing mood inside me.

Onyx joined me, the flute teacher lagging behind.  “Where’s Madison?” the shadow man asked.

“I don’t know.  I lost her.  Got wrapped up in something else.”

“Was that a dog, howling in here?” Hastings asked.

“Some kind of phantom dog.”  I turned toward the circle.  The dog was gone.  I had the strongest feeling that the beast was out trying to catch the reaper.  The dog and I both had a pledge to carry out.  I turned back to Hastings.  “You know who the reaper is.  You’ve seen him without that costume on, right?  Dr. Shawcross’ office has the secret entrance that led us to you.”

“Y-Yes!”  Hastings grabbed my arm, anxious to spill what he knew.  “I found out about him, about some mystic relic he was experimenting with, about all those children he killed so long ago, almost murdering his own grandson in his madness.  He’s been preparing for something big, building some kind of powerful entity.  Hundreds are meant to die at tonight’s concert to perfect his weapon.  I know it’s insane.  I must sound crazy myself, but I swear it’s true.”

“I believe you,” I said.  “We already know about the weapon.  And I’m going to stop Shawcross, whatever it takes.”  I knew what it would take.  The deep suppression of everything human in me, the same way I’d lived my life.  “That and the doll,” I said.

Onyx looked at me, puzzled.  “Huh?”

“Give me the doll I stashed in you.”

“Oh, you need it?”  He reached into himself, a trick that had Hastings recoiling from us in fear.  Onyx pulled the doll out of his shadows and handed her to me.  “Here you go.”

I took the old, abused doll and looked her in the face.  “Okay, where to now?”

The doll’s one remaining eye burned with blue light.  I held her facing away from me, and slowly turned, letting the doll pan the room.   As she faced one wall, a ray of sapphire shot out from the eye, marking a course.  I lowered the doll to my side as I came back around to see Hastings.  I pointed the way the doll had indicated.  “What’s that direction?”

“Nothing!  I promise you.  That just the fountain behind the Victorian, and barren hills beyond.” 

“We’ll see.”  I turned to Onyx.  “Find Madison.  Make sure she’s okay, and call Grace.  Get her here as fast as you can.  You can take my Mustang.”

His eyes widened at that. “Really?”

I didn’t bother responding.  I’d given my orders.  Doll in hand, I ran for the closest door, and worked my way through the building, trying to stay in the general direction the doll wanted me to go.  I found a staircase that brought me back to the first floor.  I’d worked my way to a side door and was about to go out when a flashlight beam hit me.

A querulous voice shouted.  “Hold it right there.  Put your

hands up and don’t move a muscle.  I have a stun gun and I’m not afraid to use it!”

I turned slowly.  It was the security guard.  He’d apparently awakened from his usual nap—at exactly the wrong time. 
Too bad.  I’m not in a mood to play nice. 
I smiled disarmingly, held out the doll, and said, “Dolly needs to go to the bathroom.”  He blinked at me, probably doubting my sanity, and I used hat moment of confusion to strike with the demon sword.  I barely grazed his chest, but it was enough for the blade to slurp down his soul.  The man’s lifeforce was a haze of silvery blue that was sucked into the sword’s red glow.  In my mind, I heard the soul scream as it was consumed.  Satisfaction rolled off the blade.  Some of its bolstered, occult strength backwashed into me.

I turned back to the door and pushed out into the early morning.  The sky was a wheel of stars with dawn still hours away.  I faced the Victorian, holding up the doll.  Nothing.  I panned with the doll to the fountain and flowerbeds behind the old structure.  Blue light came, a fast flicker that strengthened as I moved the doll more to my right.  The beam returned, pointing past the garden and fountain, moving straight up the hillside and into the sky.

I had my new course; I just had to follow it.  I started off in an easy lope, not knowing how far I’d have to run.  The rough soil shifted with every step.  Puffs of dust kicked up that the night breeze stole away.  I was glad of my jacket.  The desert had turned cold.  The further I went, the rougher the terrain became.  If not for my excellent night-vision, I’d have had to slow down in fear of breaking an ankle in gopher hole, or in rolling gravel.  Scrub and thistle pulled at my pants legs as I went first over a big hill, then down into a draw that led me around to a dry river bed.  Piles of boulders and unfamiliar plants caught moonlight and wore shadows, creating fantastic shapes that would have fed a child’s fears.