Demon Lord 4: White Jade Reaper (31 page)

“Mind if I join you?” Justin asked.

Grace returned his smile.  “Have a seat.”  Grace’s eyes went to the black case Justin carried.  “Been in the practice room again?”

He pulled out a chair and sat beside her.  “Yeah, we have a

concert coming up, a public relations and fundraising thing for the school.”

I wondered what the
haint
in the auditorium would say about that.  Or maybe, that was what it was waiting for—an audience.  And I still didn’t know how the presence connected to the serial killer I was hunting—if it did.  I, too, had noticed the flute case Justin carried.  It would be way too easy if he had a white jade flute in that thing.  Not likely though.  We’d already seen the instrument he played.  An ordinary metal flute, not jade, white or green.  Finding something like that would have been too good to be true.

I glared at him.  “Everybody play the same kind of flute around here as you do?”

He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, and patted his case.  “Uh, yeah, I guess. 

Sterling silver, C type.”

“Can I see it again?” Grace asked.

Shrugging, he opened the case and stared.  “I don’t understand.”

Inside the case was a flute much smaller than normal.  It wasn’t steel, but stone, a white variety of jade.  The mouth-part was Himalayan silver.  This was the same flute I’d seen in the hands of Skull-Boy.  From where I sat, I could feel a malevolent energy from it tainting the air, a feeling of dark hunger that called for the touch of my hands.  The instrument wanted to be played, needing it badly. 

A cursed relic
.

Justin stammered, “I-I don’t understand.  That’s
not
my flute.”  The frog on his shirt looked equally shocked.

“You must have accidentally switched it with someone,” Madison said.

The reaper.  Has to be
. 
But he’s dead.  Isn’t he?  Maybe Shawcross had a partner. 
I suddenly felt very happy. 
There’s still someone I get to kill.

Justin looked thoughtful, staring up into space.  “Well, I did just come from using a practice room.  I had the first hour booked, getting ready for the concert tonight.”

“Who came in for the second hour as you were leaving?” I asked.

“Tia Brooks.  She’s a first year.  And her instructor, Mr. Hastings.”

Hastings?  Awful fast recovery, going from traumatized victim to a music tutor like nothing happened. 

“They both had flutes?” I asked.

Justin looked at me.  “Flute cases, yeah.  We put them together on the piano while coats were coming on and off.”

“One last question,” I said.  “Was everything normal over at the school?” 

“Oh, no, police are there.  They were calling for a morgue pickup when I left.  Seems the security guard had a heart attack last night.  He was pretty old.”

Madison stood and looked at me.  “You want to walk over there, and check things out.”

I nodded briskly.  “But first, I think I’d better take custody of this.”  I held out my hand for the case.

Justin handed it over, the lid still open. 

The dragon in me stirred in the shadows of my mind, his attention focused on the jade and silver. 
Pretty.  Mine!  I want it. 
He moved my hand, and I was suddenly holding the cursed flute with bare, vulnerable flesh.  Having time for a single thought, I used it to stab my dragon self.

YOU colossal IDIOT
!

THIRTY-ONE

“The best dreams have nightmare bleeding in at the edges.”

                                        —Caine Deathwalker

Like a ghost with nothing better to do, I occupied the dusty darkness; at my feet, the loose sheets of an old newspaper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, March 20, 1996.  One story caught my eye, British alarmed at outbreak of mad cow disease.  
I’m back in the nineties?
 

The sound of creaking wood drew my attention.  I looked up at a nine-year-old girl framed by attic windows.  Everything near her lay muted in graytones, but not the girl herself.  Her colors seeped in like a stubborn stain.  She wore pink ribbons in golden curls and a frilly sundress.  Her eyes were a strong shade of blue that could not be tamed by the shadows:
cornflower blue. 
She’d been tied to a rocking horse, the source of the creaking I heard.  The wooden pony was an antique, painted white with a golden mane and tail. 
Obviously handcrafted.

The way things come clear in dreams, I knew the little girl had sat mounted for hours.  Her fidgety posture showed that her butt hurt.  Her puffy face showed she’d cried in the dark after the oil lamp burned its store of kerosene.  She’d waited in fear for the monster to come back.  I could taste the acrid tang in the air.  The girl was also hungry.  Tired.  Afraid.  And from the stillness, terribly alone in her trial. 

I saw doubt in her eyes:
Would anyone come looking?  Would anyone save her?  Could she save herself?

She returned to gnawing the ropes on her wrist with small, bright, white teeth.  I knew she’d not finish in time.  The monster would come back, and something terrible would happen. 

Nightmare was a breath away, waiting restlessly to sweep in.
 

There’s nothing here I can change.  This is a dream of the past.  A waste of my time, really.  Unless I’m finally shown something new.

During the last few weeks, the dream had come over and over, always stopping just before the
monster’s
return.  This was one of the reasons I’d come to Santa Fe.  It had taken a while to realize I was being haunted by someone who wanted to be a client.  I had no idea how I was going to get paid for this gig.  Normally, I’d not take a pro bono job, but—once in a long while—I break this rule in order to balance out my karma.  Besides, total evil would be monotonous, and I’d been coming here on business anyway.

A door slammed.

That’s new.

I continued to wait.  That was my purpose here; to see, to understand.

There came a sound, a tuneless trilling, notes strung carelessly together with no regard for key.  Creating a sense of tempo, footsteps sounded on the lower steps.  Slow, plodding, laborious.  The sounds froze the girl on the horse.  Her eyes were wide, flashing blue desperation.  She tugged hard on the ropes on her wrist, tightening the knots she’d barely loosened.

The steps approached the attic door and stopped just outside.  The tuneless notes of the flute settled into clear melody that soared, leaping in brilliant cascades, and fell back in breathy riffs, dragging melancholy resonation from the depths of the soul. The monster played well, genius technique and unlimited scope.  Yet the beauty remained somehow sterile, antiseptic, refusing the flaws that add character and heart.  For all the mastery, there was a lack of true emotion—a psychopath’s serenade.

I laughed without sound. 
Takes one to know one
.

I was the audience, an observer.   If I had power to do anything, I’d draw one of my Berettas and empty a magazine into the door.  The flautist would wind up with as many holes as his instrument. 
That’s my idea of fun
.   Testing the dream, I reached into my coat and drew the weapon that ought to be there.   What

came out was a baked turkey leg smelling of sage. 

This is
s
afe,
I thought,
with all that mad cow out there. 
I took a bite, spit it out, and dropped the leg onto the newspaper. 
Tasteless
. 

The playing stopped.  There was a pause.  A key rattled in the lock.  The door swung open with exaggerated slowness.  A ten-year-old boy with dark brown hair stepped into the attic.   He had the kind of haircut you get when a parent puts a bowl on your head and takes the scissors to you.  His eyes were hidden by the window light reflected off his round glasses.  The loss of visible eyes added an inhuman quality to him.  He wore a dark suit with shirt and tie.  A school uniform.  No matter how hard I tried to focus on the jacket’s school crest emblem, I only got a vague impression of a blob.

The girl’s overly fond of Harry Potter books.  All the kid needs is a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead.

Holding his flute like a magic wand, the boy advanced on the rocking-horse girl.  His face never turned my direction.  He stopped near her, sitting on an old toy chest.  He set the flute beside him and reached down for something at his feet.  He lifted a violin case.  It hadn’t been here long enough to gather a coating of dust.

The girl’s eyes clung to the violin.  Her fear deepened, peeling off her like a dark acrid vapor.  I think the girl was more afraid for her violin than herself. 

A born musician.

The shadows drank her fear, gaining strength.  Several of them took on the shapes of little girls.  The eyes of the specters were red, hungry, reminding me of vampire eyes.  The fear gave them density, but neither the rocking-horse girl nor the boy paid them any mind. 

There was no tension in his posture as he spoke in slow, flat tones.  “They say you’re promising, gifted.  What was the word our teacher used last week?  Ah, yes, expressive.”

I took a few steps to get closer, but it was like walking up a down-moving escalator.  I stopped and waited, knowing I wasn’t going to like what the little sociopath had in mind.  Being one myself, I objected to the competition on general principle.  He’d doubtless worked his way up from stray pets to people.  Me, I’d never wimp out by picking on something helpless. 
Where’s the fun in that?

The girl’s voice trembled as did the friendly smile she tried to wear.  “You’re good, too.”

His fist balled up.  It bashed the top of the black, plastic violin case.  “Good!  Any moron can be good, any idiot that practices.  I don’t want to be good.  I want to be the best!”  The emotion drained from his voice, as he regained composure.  “You know what they say about me?”

She shook her head no, which meant she did, but wasn’t going to draw a lightning strike by admitting it.

“They say I’m esthetically pleasing,” he smiled a big, fake smile, “but a little robotic.”

“Esthetically?” she echoed.

He sneered at her.  “Pretty.”

She brightened.  “But that’s good.”

He looked at her from a deep silence, head cocked to the side.  “You are stupid.”

Her face reddened.  She pressed her lips into a thin, hard line, her fear slipping away for a moment.  “Yeah, but I’m
expressively
stupid, so there!”

His head fell forward.  His hunched shoulders shook.  He lifted his face, staring up at the rafters, laughter escaped a few moments until he choked it off, his shallow chest heaving.  He set the violin case aside and heaved to his feet, drawing a Swiss pocket knife from his coat pocket. 

Fear was back in the girl’s face, her stricken gaze locked on the small blade.  He seized her bound hands. 

She shrieked. 

He cut.  The ropes fell away.  Her hands were free, but stiff and swollen, lacking circulation.  He leaned into her, his face inches away from hers.  “For an expressive idiot, you’re kinda cute, so I’m going to give you a chance to live.”  He jabbed the knife blade into the rump of the horse, and backed away, picking up her violin case.  He opened it and pulled out the violin and bow.  He shoved these into her fumbling hands.  “Here.  If you can still play better than me, I’ll let you go.”

She wiggled her fingers, flexing them, wincing at fresh pain.  “That’s not fair!”

He grinned at her.  “Yeah, I know.  Still, it’s the best offer you’re going to get.  One more thing, there’s a penalty if you lose; you get to pick what I break next—your fingers or your violin.”

“Not my violin!  My mommy gave me that for my birthday.”

“Then you’d better not lose.  Of course, if you don’t want to try and beat me, I can just tie you up and go away for good.  You’ll die alone.  Eventually.  Just one more ghost in this place for me to play with.”

The boy was really stacking the deck against her.  I was surprised he didn’t glue her fingers together while he was at it.  I did a quick calculation.  If the boy was ten years old in 1996, in my time, he’d be about twenty-eight or twenty-nine.  I hadn’t heard a name yet, but if I identified the girl—the murder victim—then I knew her killer would be a classmate, one who played the flute.  I hoped more of the pieces would fall into place.  Someone really needed to hunt this punk down and make him eat some ground glass.

“All right,” the girl said, “I’ll play, but you better keep your promise.”                                                       

I doubt it’s possible
.

He crossed his heart.  A look of extreme integrity fell over his features like a mask.  “I give you my word.”

Yeah, right.

She was still working her hands, her violin and bow pressed to her chest.  “So, how do we do this?”

He moved away from her, gathering up stuffed animals, action figures, and dolls—one of them with a bright yellow dress and blue eyes.  He lined them up in front of the rocking horse.  “This is the jury.  They’ll decide.”

She looked at him like he was crazy, as well she should.

He said, “I’ll ask them to pick.  Whoever gets more votes wins.”

She looked doubtfully at the toys.  “You’ll ask them, and they’ll tell you?”

He smiled.  “Sure.  Toys talk to me all the time.  Sometimes, the TV, too, even when it’s off.  And the shadows.  Things live in shadows, you know.”  He looked over at the red-eyed ghosts.  “But don’t tell anyone.  Our little secret, right?”

She followed his gaze but scanned the air without focus, seeing only nothingness.  “Riiight.”

He sat on the toy box once more, lifting his flute to his lips.  “I’ll start.  You follow, if you can.  He played something classical I couldn’t name.  The violin started slow, haltingly, like a voice in search of a song, but those fragments strengthened, coloring the flute’s melody the way a canvas defines the strokes of a painter’s brush.  What sounded at first like poor playing converted into sobbing, piercing slides, moving in counterpoint to the first melody.  The girl—suffering depravation, chilled with fear, a heart full of dread—hi-jacked the performance with a dancing spirit that brought light, hope, and laughter into the crushing void of darkness.  The flute notes were well-ordered death, but the violin brought a sweeping defiance of the grave.

The red-eyed ghost she couldn’t see, which I did, drew close to her.  Their eyes cooled to silvery blue.  They reached and touched her gently like a precious gift fallen into hell.  And their feeling filled her.  Just a child, she played better than many celebrated musicians.  If the monster had played with her, following where she led, he might have learned just what it was his music lacked, but he was determined to beat her, to show off, to fight against the passion he did not have. 

The last notes fading into the dusty corners of the attic.  Neither of the two performers moved except to lower their instruments.  Beats of silence hung between them.  The monster’s hands white-knuckled on his flute.  Rage knotted his jaw muscles.  Tension made him stiff and mechanical as he finally set his flute down and stood.

The girl used this time to palm the knife.  On the side of the rocking horse away from the bow, she desperately sawed at a rope tying her to the saddle.  The motion made the horse rock just a little.  The monster didn’t notice, moving past her to where the toy judges waited to deliver their verdict. 

Sadly, I knew the girl had too much talent to live, no matter what the monster had promised her.  He glared down at the toys.  “Well?”  He listened to voices no one else could hear.  An evil grin stretched his face.  “Hah!  I knew it.  I win.”

Letting the bow slide to the ground, she’d been sawing on the ropes of her feet.  She straightening just in time as the monster turned to face her, the toys at his back.  He marched to the head of the rocking horse, and reached over to snatch away the violin. 

With one hand, she grabbed after it.  “Give that back, you liar.  You know I won.”

He bared his teeth like an agonized beast, and swung the violin against the horse’ head.  The violin shattered into pieces.  Some flew away.  Some hung, connect still by the strings.  The monster laughed as he slung the remnants across the attic.

Freed from the horse, the girl slid to the floor, having difficulty standing.  Her empty hand snatched up the bow.  She held it like a sword, fending off the monster.

He looked at her with delight.  “Oh, you’re going to fight me?  That didn’t work out so well for you last time, you know?  You got a spanking for that.”