Awakenings Page 9

  They heard a police call again and checked Cal’s radio, which was still off. They followed the chatter to the police car up ahead in front of the three-story brick building the MacDonnells resided in. A uniformed cop in the driver’s seat was unconscious, as was a detective on the ground by the rear tire.

  The front door to the building was smashed in. Broken glass littered the walk, which they realized came from the window above the fire escape.

  Lelani’s terrified face said it all—she had miscalculated the enemy’s intentions.

  Gunshots thundered above.

  Lelani bolted up the stairs with Cal mysteriously clinging to her back. Although unhindered, Seth could not keep pace with the redhead, even as he wondered whether following her was a smart choice.

  When Seth reached the second floor, he cautiously peered into the apartment. There was a living room on the left where Cal had been unceremoniously dumped on the couch. Some vanilla candles were lit in the kitchen on the far right. Vociferous noises, high winds, and a special effects light show emanated from a room down a short hallway in the back of the apartment. Seth sat on the couch back above the unconscious cop; after all, someone had to stay out front and guard him. He noticed the gun in Cal’s holster and drew it.

  The banging in the back room rattled the building. Seth imagined the rest of the building coming awake and a slew of noisy neighbors to contend with. A sound ripped through the air that could only be described as Chewbacca getting his leg amputated. Each footstep shook the floor; the china clanged, porcelain cracked, furniture hopped and crashed back to earth with loud thuds as the giant tread heavily from the bedroom toward Seth.

  The gun shook in Seth’s hand as he aimed at the running behemoth. He squeezed the trigger, but the safety was on. Seth shut his eyes expecting an impact, only to hear Hesz run past him as he bolted from the apartment. The hallway stairs splintered as Hesz blundered down them. Seth could hear his heart beat in his ears. He was shocked to be alive. It took him a few moments to spot the trail of blood leading from the bedroom and out the front door.

  Seth stood, shaking. His first thought was to leave. It occurred to him that hulk could be on the sidewalk waiting to come back. He looked around the small apartment for a place to lay low. A rustling in the bedroom caught his attention. Lelani, he thought. Slowly he walked toward the back, past what looked like a child’s room. A dog lay on the floor, its head at a sick angle. He played with the gun’s latches until he was sure he had released the trigger. The master bedroom was at an angle to the hall, so he couldn’t see inside unless he stepped through it.

  “Lelani?”

  He poked his head around the corner. The room looked like it had been put through a Cuisinart. A hasty exit was set in the wall where a window used to be. The cop’s wife was helping a dazed Lelani stand. Then she spotted Seth, grabbed her gun off the floor, and aimed at him.

  “I’m the good guy,” Seth said, holding his hands up. He forgot he had the pistol.

  “Drop it,” the wife said.

  “No, really. Your husband’s on the couch.”

  “He’s with me,” Lelani said.

  The woman kept her gun focused on Seth.

  “If you’re her friend, where were you when she was fighting those creeps?”

  Lelani looked at Seth. She expected an answer, too. He was afraid. They both knew it and the truth lodged in his throat waiting for a lie to supplant it.

  “He covered the front in case there were reinforcements,” Lelani said. She let him off the hook. Seth gazed at the floor, unable to meet her eyes.

  They heard crying.

  “Bree!” The mother looked about frantic, the gun now abandoned.

  The little girl pulled herself out from under the bed, the single-digit generation’s refuge of choice.

  “Are the bad men gone?” the girl asked. Mother wrapped daughter in her arms.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “For now,” Lelani added.

  CHAPTER 7

  DEAD ON HIS FEET

  The scene was almost pastoral. A worn-down country road bordered by dirt, weeds, and gravel. Across the street an old wood-slatted New England–style church, steeple halfway to heaven, persevered like a white sentinel over the souls in the adjacent cemetery. Down the road the only gas station in town still washed your windshield and checked your oil. Across from it was the pastel blue-and-pink brick post office. Built in 1977, it was an enduring reminder of an era hell-bent on destroying traditional aesthetics. One lonely traffic light marked the center of town. It rehearsed unceasingly, waiting to reproach the next vehicle. The buildings were far enough apart, and the town high enough in elevation, that Colby could see the pines, birches, and rolling hills and fields of Dutchess County in the distance—a long way from the steel and glass canyons outside his office in New York City.

  He watched the sunrise from the diner window as he ground the remainder of his cigarette into the ashtray. It was still long, mostly unused. He lit the damn things out of habit now, not because of the nicotine plea that had become his intimate companion for the past two decades.

  He did everything out of habit at this point, like sitting in a country diner to avoid a chill, even though cold did not affect him anymore. Coffee packed no punch, food sat flavorless and undigested in his gut, and every nick and scrape he collected stayed with him unhealed. There was a tourniquet on his pinky where a paper cut had left him a quart low of A positive. His hair and nails continued to grow, but he didn’t dare shave. Back in the city, Colby snorted cocaine for the first time in a decade in an attempt to jump-start his humanity. Nothing affected him.

  Clammy described the overall sensation best. Like a humid, sealed attic on a hundred-degree day, except that the staleness was packed under his skin. Nothing moved internally, nothing vented. Gas occasionally emanated from a twist or a bend, the foulest smell imaginable. As the days wore on, the last vestiges of his humanity dwindled like the final swirl of water circling the drain. He looked at the old cemetery, and even the trepidation of realizing he belonged there was as absent as his heart.

  Carla sat across from him. She was clearly more traumatized by what had happened to them and subsisted in a perpetual fazed state. Her hair was a mess and the buttons on her blouse misaligned. She had that “freshly fucked” look cosmopolitan women strived to imitate at great expense, except that Carla strove for nothing these days. She had lost her head the night of the attack and insisted they call the police. Colby convinced her otherwise. They would have been quarantined, subjected to study—two walking, talking, seemingly breathing beings without hearts. There was no guarantee the police could even handle Dorn and his crew. And then there was the matter of the million-dollar payoff, which would be jeopardized if they brought in the authorities.

  Soon after, Carla had gone catatonic—unable to accept the reality of their plight. She had become incontinent until their bodies purged the last elements in their systems. Colby had dressed and bathed her at first, until he ran out of patience. She hadn’t said a word in days. She followed Colby when he prompted her, like a puppy tracking snacks.

  Colby’s “friends” and acquaintances had disassociated themselves from him long ago. There was nothing like a government indictment for extortion to separate the faithful from the frivolous. There was an older sister living in a trailer park in the Carolinas, but they had not spoken in fifteen years, and this was not a situation that would aid any reconciliation. Even with Carla sharing the same nightmare, Colby felt forlorn. Even when he shamelessly fondled Carla in the bath in another vain attempt to reclaim his humanity and maybe help her snap out of her stupor, he was unable to attain an erection. Colby caught his reflection in the glass; his skin had become almost translucent. Purple veins and the bags under his eyes were darker, probably from the congealed blood. He stopped worrying about going to hell. He was already there.

  The diner hadn’t been redecorated since a great man sat in the White House; sparkling stars on g
littery aqua-blue tabletops banded with corrugated tarnished steel. Holes dotted the hard plastic top where cigarettes lingered—small brown burns like sculpted phlegm. A graveyard of bug husks withered on the window ledge, held together by dust. The checkered linoleum was decades thick with grit and gristle, mopped around nightly in a futile effort to meet the health code. A fat, greasy-haired waitress in her forties who smelled like yesterday and cheap perfume walked up to the table with a pot of steaming coffee.

  “Jeez mister, don’t you get any sun down in the city? You look white as a ghost.”

  Colby just pointed at his cup. The waitress poured, glanced at Carla who just stared blankly, then shuffled off.

  Colby drank the coffee straight. Milk would only cool it. Flavor and texture had become meaningless to him, but heat was a different story. It was his new addiction, the only sensation that registered. As the black liquid flowed down his gullet, he absorbed the energy from each excited molecule. It would be three to four minutes before the fluid in his stomach cooled to room temperature, and at least an hour before it ran through him, coming out coffee, exactly as it went in.

  A yellow cab pulled up in front of the diner. Dorn and two new associates got out. No effort was made to compensate the driver. Colby wondered about the fare from New York City to Dutchess County. Dorn entered alone and sat next to Carla.

  “Colby, my good man. Looking quite provincial,” he said, with a rub at his jaw. “Any progress?”

  Carla stirred for the first time. She backed as far into the booth as possible. Her arms floundered to get her even farther from Dorn, but the window prevented further regress. Dorn was oblivious. He exuded cold perfection. Chiseled jaw with azure, almost violet, eyes. A Scandinavian god from the scenes of an Abercrombie & Fitch polo game, who’d just as soon cut your heart out as say hello. His cell phone rang and he answered in one swift motion.

  “Yes?” Dorn’s mood darkened as the buzzing in his ear continued. He rubbed his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his other hand. “No,” he said, cutting short the buzzing on the other end. The next thing he said was in a language Colby had never heard. Dorn’s tone betrayed all was not well. “I’ll deal with them when I get back,” Dorn said, slipping back to English.

  Seeing his powerful employer upset gave Colby some vague sense of hope. Someone out there had disturbed his designs, which meant they were playing at his level—someone who could cross swords with a bona fide heart-stealing sorcerer.

  Dorn cut the connection in the middle of the other person’s sentence and then turned off the phone. “Mr. Colby, what have you discovered?” he asked again, in a mocked attempt at formality. He looked like he had a major migraine.

  Carla’s floundering increased. The gallery of insect husks shuddered off the ledge as she tried to push herself through the wall behind her.

  “Can you let Carla out, please?” Colby asked.

  Dorn looked to his side, seeing her for the first time. He made a face akin to discovering raw sewage on new shoes, and moved aside.

  Carla stumbled out of the diner and ran across the street toward the church.

  “That one didn’t turn out as planned,” Dorn said.

  “No kidding.”

  Colby motioned to an emaciated nearly toothless Vietnam veteran in red flannel wearing a John Deere cap behind the counter. He came over like a man preparing to go onstage.

  “This is Sweeny. He was working here thirteen years ago when a strange couple with a baby came in from the rain. Tell Mr. Dorn what you saw, Sweeny.”

  Sweeny gave the god the look tax cheats give an auditor. He sniffed, and with the reluctance of a man who had told the same story too many times said, “’Twas about October. I remember cause we was making cakes ’n’ things for the Halloween party at the church. We was having mighty big weather that night. Couple came in to get out of the rain. The missus started changing diapers right here on this very table. I came out to tell her she can’t do that on account of health codes. Woman had no good sense to be changing crap on a table what people eat on. The baby had the dangdest birthmark, like a tattoo of a Camero bird. What kind of damned freak’d ever tattoo a babe? I got me a tattoo in ’Nam. Hurt like hell. Dang if I didn’t near pass out. And I had two bottles of sock-ee in me. Sock-ee couldn’ cut it. Tequila is the best hootch, if you gonna get a tattoo—”

  “Thank you, Sweeny,” Colby said.

  “Pitiful shame though what happened to them folks…”

  “That will be all, Sweeny.”

  Sweeny’s mouth gaped like a man who wasn’t used to having the curtain drop on his act. “You gonna git anything to eat,” he said to Dorn, “or just sit there like a fancy boy, taking up a customer’s space?”

  “We’ll be going now,” Colby said.

  Outside, the detective met Dorn’s new companions who were waiting by the cab. Both looked like Edward Gorey renditions of a Victorian butler. They wore black long-tail tuxedos with bowties, gray pinstriped trousers, and spats. Both held ornate walking sticks, the tall one with a brass ball handle, the other clutched a gnarled wooden cane. The shorter man was stocky, round of face, wore a bowler hat, and looked unkempt despite his classic ensemble. The fabric of his jacket was dusty and frayed. The cut tips of his white gloves revealed brown-stained fingernails. He was in need of a shave and teeth cleaning. The other was tall and thin, clean-shaven, impeccably manicured, and crowned by a silk-lined top hat. Colby half expected Queen Victoria’s carriage to turn the corner any second. The smaller “twin’s” eyes reminded Colby of a kid from grammar school who had been sent to juvenile hall for dousing a dog with gasoline and lighting it on fire. The cabbie, who still sat behind the wheel, was a Middle Eastern type with heavy bags under his eyes, who looked very unhappy.

  “You didn’t bring me all the way up here for one fool’s walk down memory lane?” Dorn asked.

  “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friends?”

  “The last thing anyone wants, Colby, is an introduction to Oulfsan and Krebe. Why did you bring me up here?”

  Colby motioned Dorn to walk. Now that he’d met Oulfsan and Krebe, he preferred to be far away.

  “I did some checking in the county office. Since I had a definite time period I was hoping to find a property purchase, tax return, adoption record, speeding ticket, parking violation, you name it. What I found was an accident report.” Colby pulled out forensic photos of a dead man and woman. “Sweeny identified them as the kid’s parents. Said you couldn’t mistake those two.”

  “How did they die?”

  “Fatal car crash. Driving in a storm when they should have been indoors. They were blown off their lane and went head to head with a semi. The couple were a pair of Does. Their IDs were fake. No way to trace them, no history, no sense of having come from anywhere remotely familiar.” Colby pulled out another photocopy. “They were in possession of a lot of cash and some strange coins, but not from any country the authorities could identify. The coins have since disappeared—they were made of eighteen-karat gold—but here’s a photo of them.” The profile of a nobleman adorned the head side, and an elaborate phoenix flew on the tail side. An unknown alphabet encircled the images.

  Dorn’s eyes lit up at the photo of the coins. “Are you telling me the child is dead?”

  “No. The child is gone. It survived, but it’s lost in the system. Illegally adopted, possibly kidnapped. For all we know Sweeny could have raised him and he’s washing dishes in the diner for condom money. There’s no trail.”

  “Not good enough. I have to see him—if he’s not alive, I need a corpse.”

  “What the hell makes a thirteen-year-old kid so important, Dorn? Is there a shortage of acne where you come from?”

  “Everything you need to know to do your job has been made available, detective.”

  “Not enough when it comes to politics and money. There are always people working for the other side, and that could get a man killed. Again. It is politics and money, rig
ht?”

  Dorn looked away for a minute, considered Colby’s remark, then said, “It’s always politics. The boy, my second cousin, is an heir, the son of an archduke. What he stands to inherit is an empire.”

  “You mean that literally. We’re not talking stock options?”

  “Correct. Four hundred million inhabitants, twelve kingdoms, a treasury equal to the GDP of Europe. Head of state. Head of government. Head of religion … head of life itself. The power to shape our society in his image.” There was contempt in the way Dorn ended that phrase.

  “But you have other plans?”

  “There are closer relations we’d prefer to see inherit the crown. We’ve waited just as long; they merely had a more successful breeding program.”

  “What’re you going to do, get him to sign a waiver relinquishing his claim?” Colby said, sardonically. A devilish grin supplanted Dorn’s calm indifference. Colby almost felt a chill. There wouldn’t be any runes or spells used when Dorn went after this boy’s heart.

  “Didn’t think so,” Colby said.

  They came to the graveyard and stopped. Two Doberman watchdogs approached from the other side of the picket fence. Dorn reached over and petted them. They accepted his graces.

  “They recognize one of their own,” Colby muttered.

  “What’s the price?” Dorn asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You brought me here to clarify the stakes and renegotiate our deal. I suppose you want your heart back before you go any farther.”

  “This kid can be anywhere in the country. Maybe farther.”

  “You know how I feel about loyalty, Colby.”

  “No one else can dig this kid up like I can. Half the tabloids in the country published off my leads.”

  “I don’t negotiate with dead men.”

  “I’m not dead, goddamn you!”

  “Enjoy any good meals lately?”

  “How do I know you can fix me? How do I know you even want to? If you can’t reverse what you did to me, you can go fuck yourself. No little lost cousin for you.” Colby clammed up for dramatic effect, but it was wasted on Dorn.