Authors: Edward Lazellari
As Dorn read, the fluid emitted a phosphorescent glow. The room went dark like the passing of a storm cloud as the elixir greedily absorbed all light and took on mass. An oppressive painful pressure filled the suite, like the entire room had been expelled to the bottom of the ocean. Even the henchmen shifted about nervously.
“Dorn! Stop!” Cat yelled. But the wizard was possessed. Dorn cut his finger and dropped his own blood into the cauldron. “Hesz!” he shouted and held out his hand. Hesz produced a ziplock bag from his jacket with hairbrush, pillowcase, and little bits at the bottom that looked like nail clippings and dried skin. Dorn selected some hairs from the brush and ripped a piece off the pillowcase and into they beaker they went. Catherine realized those items must belong to the prince. Whatever Dorn was doing was custom targeted to Daniel. He chanted a last series of phrases and shut off the flame.
It was an ugly brew, not quite green or purple or brown at first but quickly morphing into a dark crimson. Catherine felt the pulsating vibrancy of life within this creation. It seemed to her that Dorn had placed enough material into the beaker to fill it five times over and yet not a drop spilled over. Dorn added one more ingredient … he dropped Catherine’s ovary into the beaker. A part of her died as Dorn stirred vigorously, breaking up the ovary’s tissue and releasing her eggs into the mix; her babies were gone forever. He poured the final brew into a conical lead-glass flask.
Hesz placed five petri dishes along the floor next to one another.
“Farther apart,” said Dorn.
Using an eyedropper, Dorn deposited a single drop of the compound in each dish, and sealed the remaining elixir with a rubber stop. He poured some water into the dishes.
Cat had never been more frightened in her life. As if the aftershock of her violation and the gruesome death of Ilyana weren’t enough to send her to therapy for life, there was something cursed in those scrolls, beyond evil, older than man, older than dinosaurs, that every living being across the multiverse has been programmed down to their DNA to reject. Even Hesz and Kraten wanted to be elsewhere. Magic had been around since the creation of the universe, used by beings far older than man—Aandor’s stumbling across it was like children stumbling across a loaded pistol. Who decides when a race is mature enough to play with the knowledge they discover?
“Lelani said these magicks are dangerous … uncontrollable,” Cat told Dorn. “They get away from the wizard’s control. The reactions are too fast, sometime instantaneous … lots of wizards have died trying to do these spells. That’s why your people banned them.”
Cat’s purpose in saying these things to Dorn was twofold: that by some slim chance, he would listen to reason, and that maybe one of his lackeys would get spooked and turn on him. They looked as nervous as she did … this was beyond normal spell casting. The radio droned,
“I am, I am, I am, Superman … and I know what’s happening
.”
Bad call by the DJ,
Cat realized.
There’s a more appropriate R.E.M. song for this day.
Dorn approached the petri dishes with all his remaining mana stones. He chanted the third verse in that ancient language bringing back the oppressive, invisible singularity that sucked life and hope from the room to feed itself. Dorn chanted until the room shook and the mana stones cracked and splintered.
Three stalks sprouted from each dish like tentacles. Dorn looked disappointed. “Only fifteen?” he said, to no one in particular.
The sprouts continued to grow before their eyes. Plant like appendages unfolded and began to fill like animal-shaped balloons. Sounds emerged from their nascent throats; a high-pitched squeal of pain. The creatures reached five feet, eight feet, ten, dwarfing even Hesz. Dorn continued chanting and their bulk filled out, manlike shapes merged with beasts. The backward bend of wolf legs, massive arms like a bear’s with downy white hair. Heavy brows hung over black deep-set eyes. The creatures lacked a true neck, their heads jutted from immense muscular shoulders. Noses like snouts pushed flat. Fangs competing for space in a mouth surrounded by thin black leathery lips, large enough to bite a human head off. Pawlike hands with black leathery palms, fingers tipped with black talons.
Dorn performed like a rapturous conductor before a symphony. He was mad. No sane person could bring forth such a thing and think it good. He motioned with his arms. Some of the creatures mimicked him, then finally all of them did. He’d made a connection, like a puppeteer testing strings. The room was filled with drooling beasts. Dorn was joyous.
Their snarls and grunts drowned out the music; when they moved, the room shook. They were frenzied for the hunt, drooling, flexing, flailing, knocking the walls behind them with their massive feral arms, yet they stayed anchored awaiting Dorn’s word. Cat squeezed into the middle of the crowded space between Hesz, Tom, and Lhars. Even the ever-smirking Kraten looked unsure for once and joined them. Cat would rather have been in a room with a hundred rabid pitbulls.
“My children,” Dorn cried, tears streaming down a face twisted with rapturous glee. “I can see them in my mind,” he said. “Smell what they smell, hear what they hear. And they hear me. Daniel Hauer is in the city. They smell him.”
A shudder ran through Catherine.
Fifteen,
she realized—fifteen of these abominations hunting the prince. And where the prince was, so were Cal and Bree … The last glimmer of hope left Catherine. Her rescue didn’t seem as important anymore … but what could she do? Hesz’s phone rang, and he had the wherewithal to answer.
Dorn hunched over holding his head, like his brain was growing too big for his skull. The strain of the spell while in the midst of migraines was more than he could bear. In symbiotic unity with him, the creatures roared in anguish. Dorn squeezed his nose between the eyes to drive away the pain.
“Symian has found another lay line,” said Hesz.
“Yes! He will die today,” Dorn said, ignoring his frost giant’s message. “Danel must DIE!
“GO!” he ordered. The creatures burst from the room, some smashing through the window, shimmying down the side of the building, others bursting into the stairwell—all gone in a flash to wreak havoc at the Waldorf—to kill a boy.
The room was in shambles.
My God,
Cat thought, as Kraten restrained her.
My God.
CHAPTER 37
THINGS MEN DO
Although only days had passed, it felt like years since Seth had been back in the old neighborhood. The usual suspects were there—the shopkeepers, artists, kids, homeless—but they had changed. They were different—distant now, like a mirage of something familiar that never got clearer. His experience broadened his knowledge of himself and the world, changed expectations, but “home” remained fixed to the dimensions of his former life. If mileage took its toll on the soul, then Seth traveled the equivalent of four continents. There was wisdom in the saying, “You can’t go home again.”
Seth thought he had the right tenement—it was one of the ones to either side of Earl’s building. Half the names were missing from the buzzer directory, and he didn’t see the one he wanted. He knew it was the third floor, but not the apartment number. If he’d been a better man he’d have known … he’d have spent every day there doing what men did. A brightly bundled woman in a knitted wool cap with cat ears rushed out. Seth caught the door, hoping not to have his presence challenged, but she was already on the sidewalk and running down the street, probably late to an audition. It made sense that this was not a secure building since Darcy was too fucked up to get out of bed most of the time. The junk had to come to her.
He knocked on the door. A girl’s voice responded.
“It’s Mr. Picture Man,” Seth said.
Caitlin opened the door, held at a crack by a few inches of chain. Her single eye in the opening looked puzzled by Seth’s appearance. Seth had always been a street buddy, someone to trade quips with when he walked by—maybe score money for pizza.
“Hey Sassafras. Is your mom home?” Seth said. He knew that she was.
“She in bed.”
Seth’s watch said 10:00
A.M.
He’d forgotten what day it was, but was fairly sure it was a weekday. “It’s important.”
Caitlin thought about it. It broke Seth’s heart when the girl granted him access. He could have been a robber or worse.
The front door led into a small kitchen area that extended into a small living room to the left of and behind the front door. The linoleum was cracked and faded under the kitchen’s single circular fluorescent light. To the right beyond the kitchen were two bedroom doors side by side—one was closed.
“Nice stick,” Caitlin said.
Seth handed her his staff. She ran her fingers across the grooves and etchings, examining his workmanship. The staff was almost done, yet Seth already felt a connection to the device both emotional and functional, like a child’s first key to his home.
The apartment was a shambles, half empty of furniture; loveseat but no couch, entertainment center but no television, stereo, CDs, or computer. They’d been gone for some time. Caitlin had a schoolbook opened on the kitchen table with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch next to it.
Seth walked to the closed bedroom door and entered without knocking. Darcy’s bedroom was as dark and cold as a tomb. It smelled musty, like unwashed laundry. Darcy was invisible in bed—black skin, on black sheets, in a black room—as absent here as she was in her daughter’s life. Seth opened the blinds, allowing the sun in. On the bureau was Darcy’s paraphernalia: needle, tablespoon, burner, rubber band, and a tiny plastic bag filled with what Seth assumed was heroin. In the trash were several used condoms of different makes and sizes—he stopped counting at eleven. Caitlin, he realized, remained at the kitchen table, staring into her cereal, which she stirred around in its milk. Again, his heart broke—a strange man showing up and going into her mother’s bedroom was normal to her.
Darcy slept facedown, legs spread, naked. Her once beautiful, muscular body looked thin, haggard. Seth checked her pulse, which was slow but steady.
“Darcy,” he said, rocking her gently.
She moaned.
He continued until she turned over and took note of him through half-open bloodshot eyes. Her small breasts sagged. Dried semen was clumped in her tuft of pubic hair. Guess some customers were just too stupid for their own good.
Darcy had been his first nude model. She was stunning when they’d met eight years ago, muscular and radiant—Naomi Campbell’s heir apparent. Her father was a Maasai tribesman from East Africa who had come to New York to study at Columbia on a scholarship. There he met Darcy’s mother, an African-American from Forest Hills, Queens. Darcy’s skin was such a beautiful deep brown as to be a few shades short of true black. Seth couldn’t believe he’d successfully seduced her even after they’d had sex. She even fell for him. He was the worst thing that’d ever happened to her.
He’d sold her nude pictures to a second-rate
Hustler
wannabe. All the work she’d put toward her legitimate modeling career went into the toilet. No designer wanted anything to do with a woman who’d appeared in a porn magazine; no mainstream agency wanted to rep her. Seth continued to shoot her nudes until she’d appeared in every trashy girlie book being published. She never made more than a few hundred dollars from the shoots. With each photo Seth consumed another piece of her soul. He paraded her at the worst parties like a trophy. It was his callous use of her, his willingness to sell out someone who meant something to him that had earned him a reputation as someone to do business with in the industry. A porn photographer with a soft spot for women was useless. Bigger industry sharks, sensing his spinelessness and insecurities, preyed on her as well, demanding their pound of flesh, promising her more than Seth could deliver, and delivering nothing except film shoots where she was passed around by multiple lovers in the most degrading videos imaginable. Darcy drank to excess and experimented with substances to shut out what her life had become. Then she became pregnant with Caitlin. So of course, Seth dumped her and washed his hands of her entirely.
Seth had felt betrayed. It was never a huge leap for him to tap into anger; it always lurked there around the corner in easy reach. He needed legs like a millipede to count his grievances in life. He’d convinced himself (and there is a distinction here from “he was convinced”) that Caitlin was some porn star’s spawn, some amateur cock jockey too eager to pull out in time for the money shot. But as Caitlin grew, her hazel eyes, shaped like crescents standing on their tips, and her milk-in-the-coffee coloring, offered evidence to the contrary.
Still, Seth used Darcy’s parade of bareback partners to inoculate him from claiming the girl or any other part in Darcy’s life. And digging down deep, parentage had never truly been the issue. It was Seth’s commitment to his eternal adolescence. He’d resented Darcy for not getting an abortion. He was only nineteen at the time and there was a parade of pussy to attain. Why the hell abandon that for a used-up wife and a brat?
Seth was as bad a father as Clyde Knoffler had been to Daniel. The important difference was he was still alive. He could improve upon the past. Ben Reyes spoke to him from inside his head.
What is good?
Seth wiped a tear with his finger. The floodgates would hold for now. He had business to finish.
Caitlin ate her cereal, innocent as a cherub. Seth checked the cupboards and fridge. There was actually food where Caitlin could reach it.
“Who gets your groceries?” he asked.
“Mrs. Gomez,” she said, as though Seth were supposed to know who that was. “And sometimes Sister Gladys from St. Emeric. Ain’t you going to jump Mommy?” she asked.
Seth waited for his gut to reset before asking, “Are you here when men come by?”
“I stay in my room. Sometimes I sneak out. Mommy makes noise like it hurts, but she tells me it don’t.”
Seth pulled up a chair. He sat across from her, eye to eye with his progeny. Was it worth telling her? Would it make a difference? He’d get her hopes up, and then what? Dorn was still at large, sending people after him. What would be the point in telling her if he died a few days from now?… Or if he went back to Aandor? He’d just get her hopes up and then disappear.