Minutes to Midnight (13 page)

Cruorem
.

The cult I'd stupidly joined. Bonville's
four quarters.

I'd just been drugged by one of them.

Jack Klinsky.

Fire Quarter.

And that's about the moment I stopped
remembering anything.

THE CRAZY TRAiN

We pay for our mistakes.

My mom used to say that all the time in her
own way. "Darren, just remember that whatever you put out into the
world, it will come back to you threefold."

I didn't realize until later what it meant.
She was referencing to what's known as the Threefold Law. If you
treat others with kindness, then you get three times the kindness
back. And if you were an asshole, then you'd get three times the
asshole.

I interpreted it a little differently than
most. I didn't think your credits and debits come back three times
the value of what you bought and sold. I believe the "threefold"
meant that they would come back to you on three planes. That if you
were kind, that kindness would effect you on the Material, the
Mind, and the Spirit.

But lately, with the events of my life
unfolding in an ever-changing pattern, I was starting to think I
had it wrong. I usually did right by people, so shouldn't that be
racking good points on the threefold angle? You would think. Yet I
still had people trying to kill me.

There I was, shirtless, shoeless, and locked
in some dark place with a wet concrete floor. My jeans were soaked
and I couldn't stop shivering. I woke to find my wrists tied
tightly behind my back, my phone and keys gone, and a clobbering
headache. I lay there on my side, shaking, as I tried to orient
myself. I was in a small space—five by five, maybe—in a corner of a
basement room. Or at least a room somewhere underground. I was
inside a cage of rusted bars. From the looks of the ceiling, dimly
lit by a low-wattage bulb hanging outside the makeshift cell, I
figured I was under one of the larger, older homes in Old Savannah.
No windows, and a few broken wooden wine racks stacked just outside
my cell—wine cellar, maybe? I tried to recall the layout of Chatham
Square but couldn't. I just wasn't as familiar with the city as I
should have been.

I had lost all feeling in my hands, which I
suspected was the point of the tight binding. I guessed the
headache was from whatever drug he'd used on me. I tried to keep
still so my brain didn't feel like it would rock out of my
skull.

A door opened, or at least that's what it
sounded like, and I watched with blurry vision as sneakers and
jeans descended the steps on the other side of the single hanging
bulb. I recognized Jack again when his head came down. He'd changed
clothes—or was it the next day? The thought that I'd lost part of a
day again alarmed me. If it was somehow the next day, then I had
even less time to find a way into the Peripheral and get Stella. I
wondered if Mike had gotten my message and understood it. The
longer I was here, the lower my hope meter hung because it meant he
hadn't found me yet. I regretted sending him such a cryptic text
but it would have to do. I had faith in him.

I had to. I had nothing else at the
moment.

"You're awake…sort of. Got a headache?"

I nodded, and that was a bad idea. I winced
at the bowling ball moving with the motion of my head, smashing
forward and back against the inside of my skull. Even the sound of
his voice was fingernails against a chalkboard.

"Sorry about the accommodations, but I'm
sure you don't have a complaint since you've been through worse."
He put his hands to his mouth and ducked his head. "Oh…but that's
right. You don't remember, do you? I heard you lost this entire
last year. What a shame you can't remember what they did to
you."

I cleared my throat. "They?"

"Rodriguez."

I frowned. "Who?"

"Francisco Rodriguez. He kidnapped you as
ransom to get the Grimoire from that Witch?"

I swallowed. So…I'd been
used as bait? Was that why she put the book
inside
of me?

He laughed. "That is so weird that you don't
remember any of it. So, nothing about being tortured?"

I stared at him with what I knew was a blank
expression.

"Nothing about me shooting you?"

Oh? Well, that explained the weird starburst
scar on my chest.

"But you're still alive. That's what I'd
like a few answers about because some of the elders of my order
can't seem to get their stories straight."

"Stories…" I paused so my teeth could chime
in, chattering against each other. "You're going to have to give me
a little context."

"I can't tell if you're naturally addled or
the bars are doing their job. They're preventing you from using
that book." He touched the bars. "Iron. Best damn defense against
your kind, did you know that?"

My
kind? What the hell was he talking about? I tried to recall
the spell for fire. It was one I used a lot. And there was one
for
open
so I could
open the cage. But…what were the words? I couldn't focus on the
intent, and without the intent, the spell was
meaningless.

"Who knew you actually had
the blood of God Mother running through your veins? Do you know who
that is, Darren?
The
Mother? But you're not full blood, so the iron can only keep
you fogged and incoherent. Can't conjure, can you? No
spells?"

I stared at him.

Jack pulled a set of keys out of his pocket
and unlocked the padlock holding the bars together. I watched as he
stepped in and knelt down in front of me. I shifted, but not far.
I'd been leaning on my left elbow and my shoulder was asleep. "You
really don't remember, do you?"

I shrugged. That hurt. "No."

"You don't remember what you did to Bonville
before then?"

I frowned. It was less painful than shaking
my head. "No."

Jack was a little on the creepy scarecrow
side. Skinny. Straw-like hair. And here was something not right
with his eyes. I didn't think anything was overshadowing him.
Nothing like that Djin. I suspected his crazy was all his own. And
when he held up his hands, I saw the tattoos on his palms. They
were the same style as mine hand been, but his had subtle
differences. "You see these? They're just like Lei's and Rayne's.
Just ink slipped under the skin. Nothing special. No real power.
But yours? Yours have power. And I wanted that power. Rodriguez was
going to give it to me."

"Jack, I don't—"

He struck me in the face. And because I
couldn't really move my head away, I took the full brunt. Stars
danced in front of my eyes and I felt something trickle over my
upper lip then down my cheek toward my ear. The ache pounded
against my sinuses. I was more aware than ever of my predicament.
Captive to a crazy person.

Score.

Something else happened seconds after the
punch—my thoughts sharpened because of the pain.

"See…you don't talk. You listen so I can
tell you what happened. Bonville screwed up that night, and I lost
what menial power I had after he put these tattoos on me. So did
Lei and Rayne. We were normal again. So I went to see you. You
know, see if the same thing happened to you. But I saw you use it,
Darren. I saw you use this power you had against some weird Shadow
creature. We didn't have that power. But you did. When I confronted
Bonville and told him, he was angry. Very angry. He wanted you back
so he could finish the ritual he started. The one where we were
going to bring his dead wife back. She had something he
wanted."

I sort of remembered fighting Shadow People
in the loft of the Livery in Roswell, Georgia where I used to work.
Had Jack been watching?

Jack shifted and squatted, staring at his
hands. "He stupidly yanked you into that circle that night—just
bam!—and there you were. I was awed by his power. He'd actually
made you materialize in front of us all. But you weren't alone.
That woman had come with you. The tall one we'd seen you with. She
screwed up the ritual we were going to do. Went all batwings and
nasty and then we were all back in our homes with rough hangovers
and nightmares.

"Except for me. I remembered what happened.
I remembered seeing Bonville's wife and his lover, that Maureen
Lafferty, hovering over you." He looked at me and narrowed his
eyes. "You don't remember them either?"

"I never met Mrs. Bonville,"
I said in an even, calm voice, even though I wanted to scream for
help and cry. I'd been trying to come up with an escape plan in my
head, but it hurt so bad I couldn't concentrate hard enough to open
the
Grimoire
. The
pain from my nose was helping a lot. At least now I could focus on
the word.

The word…is…iso…

"Maybe you didn't know his wife, but you
knew Maureen. Hell, everyone wanted to know Maureen. Do you know
Bonville killed her?"

"Maureen's dead?"

He laughed. Short staccato noises at first.
But then it became this deep, guttural roll as he leaned back
against the bars. I waited, patiently, as I focused the pain into
the intent I needed.

Isa…tim…

When he finished, he sat on the wet concrete
with me and crossed his legs Indian style and faced me. "You don't
know where they went?"

"They?"

He shook his head. "Doesn't
matter. I just regret Bonville never saw what that witch did with
the
Cruorem
Grimoire
. You blinded him. Burned his
eyes out. It was quite entertaining, and I must say—" he leaned in
close "—quite the accomplishment all on your own, without the
book."

The news stunned me. I
didn't have any real sympathies for Allard Bonville. He'd been a
bastard. What did bother me was that I was capable of that kind of
destruction. Me? I didn't know the circumstances that led to me
burning out his eyes. Hell, I wasn't even sure I believed Jack. But
I sensed
he
believed it. "You're lying."

"'Fraid not. There are
witnesses, Darren. They saw what you did
before
that witch shoved
Bonville's
Grimoire
into you. I figure with that book in your soul, I'll have
enough power to complete my spell and carve a new window into the
Worlds."

Isa…tum…

"Your spell? Are
you
the one making the
pentagram?"

"Not just me. I've got a good teacher. It
was so easy to catch you, you know. They told me you were in
Savannah. Looked you up, set up house nearby, and watched you. I
figured…the best way to catch you was to dress someone up like that
witch. So…easy."

My shoulder and arm were completely cold
now, and I needed to lean up. Moving was awkward, but I did manage
a semi-different position and hissed as the blood rushed back into
my shoulder. I tried building up enough energy—Great Electron
Willing—to blast this asshole into the wall of his own hell. Jack
seemed to think the bars would stop me. I honestly didn't know. I'd
been around iron before and it never bothered me. So I didn't think
my difficulty in focusing came from that.

Or did it? Had something changed? "What are
you planning on doing?"

"I know about a place the other witches
don't like to talk about. And I know how to get to it."

"Where?" Please don't let it be the
Peripheral, please don't let it be the Peripheral, please don't let
it be the Peripheral…

"Faerie."

I narrowed my eyes at him and swallowed.
"Faerie?"

"Yes. See, that's my spell.
The
Cruorem
split
up into two camps. Their side, Lei and Rayne's, want to make you
join them. They want to use you. But the rest of us…" He chuckled
and that crazy in his eyes looked a whole lot…crazier. "We want me
to make a stationary gate into a different world. A big fucking
gate."

"Jack…" I shifted to a better but not a more
comfortable position. "You don't want to go into Faerie. You have
no idea the weirdness that's in there."

"Oh, I don't want to just go into it. I want
to own it. I want to turn this house into a Cairn, a place for the
Faerie to come and go and call me king…"

All at once the pieces—the pentagram, the
bodies, the banishing ritual—fell into place. I'd read about this
kind of thing in the BBOE. "You're making a gigantic Coyote
Flame."

"Hell yeah, I am. Only I'm making it big
enough to cover this entire house!"

Cairns were the doorways into the
Peripheral, but they weren't the actual world. They were tiny
foyers, anterooms where anything trapped in them could wander for
days, weeks, or even years. People lived out their lives in Cairns,
never realizing their dreams of seeing the Alfheim of legend never
really happened.