Brooklyn Knight (12 page)

“But that, of course,” he growled, “would be too easy.”

Knowing the ring Knight had given him was somehow protecting him and that without it he would have burst into flames long ago, James Albert Dollins hefted the now-empty metal cylinder in his hands like a club. Hunched over, breathing hard from the heat, he pulled forth all he had within himself, throwing himself erect. Then, screaming in defiance, the detective sergeant raced forward, battering with all his strength at the slice of Hell trying to set foot in his world.

“I regret to inform you, sir, that the object you commissioned us to obtain for you has apparently been destroyed.”

Of course it has
, the man thought, drumming his fingers against his leg with increasing violence. Within his mind, a dozen voices seethed, writhing in confused anger, pushing at him, screeching—but the rage of one in particular, the new one, the only one that mattered, was beyond description. Its fury was about to boil over, to explode.

“We have our own code of procedure for such regrettable occurrences,” the electronic voice said. Despite its heavy masking, the sound of it seemed one of genuine regret, leaning far more toward sincere apology rather than indifference. “And we are ready to render unto you full and unconditional recompense. But we do have a few questions.”

“Questions?” The man on the other end of the line choked out the word in a tone situated roughly halfway in
between laughter and a snarl, threw it out to the caller as if the thought were beyond his comprehension.

“Yes. First,” answered the electronic voice, seemingly unaware of the level of distress present on the other end of the line, “the obvious thing we need to know is whether or not you truly needed to possess the article, or if, perhaps, your need was to keep it out of the hands of others?”

The fingers of the man listening to the electronic voice stopped beating against his leg. Instead, clawlike, they began to dig harshly into his flesh, unnoticed, as if of their own volition. Staring off into space, his eyes unable to focus on anything within his surroundings, the man’s head began to vibrate, shaking uncontrollably. While the distorted voice continued to speak into his ear, the man closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight of the real world around him to any greater extent than that found within his eyelids. His teeth clamped together, a twisted, feral growl began to grow deep within his throat.

Cheated, lied to, betrayed—

The voice from the back of his mind was hissing now, the words of it like steaming fangs within his brain, chewing upon his memories, tearing at them, consuming vast portions of the man, bending him into its willing vessel.

“Sir,” the electronic voice droned somewhere in the distance, attempting to make its case, “we understand you must be feeling a certain sense of loss. We here cannot stress how much we regret this. Our organization is not used to having to report such failure. If you could but—”

“Silence, animal—”

The distorted voice broke off, somewhat alarmed. The familiar tone it had come to know, the person it had been conversing with over the past day, was somehow suddenly gone. Something the speaker on the other end of the line could not fathom had transpired.
In the business of making his firm’s rather exotic clientele happy, the owner of the electronic voice pushed past any concerns for himself, asking;

“Sir … ?”

“I said
silence
!”

And then, a crackling burst of energy surged from within the speaker’s mind, flashing into his cell phone, following the transmission back to its source. At the speed of light it arrived in the spot halfway around the world where those who had attempted to arrange the theft of the Dream Stone dwelt. Its unexpected arrival spelled the end for everyone there.

The shock wave erupted violently through the receiver on the other end, flooding the room, and then flashed throughout the entire building. Impossibly, it grew exponentially, killing everyone within—more than killing them. It consumed them, obliterating each person within reach from their innermost core outward, swallowing their spirits, devouring their souls. So violent was the attack, it burst the bodies open, splattering their blood across the walls, superheating it so that in many instances the sizzling liquid melted the plaster where it struck.

In an instant the deed was accomplished. Those who had failed were destroyed, their essence stolen and delivered to what up until that moment had merely been a whisper in the back of the caller’s mind. Now, however, it was more. Those who had failed it had paid the price for disappointing it with their lives.

Disgusting fools—

Destroying those who had failed it, however, in no way lightened the sinister voice’s foul mood. The darkly growing thing in no way felt compensated—it could not. The Dream Stone held too major a spot within its plans.

But, what was done was done.

Releasing the vessel of which it had taken command’s grip on its
own leg, the invader immersed itself within the energies it had just stolen, then recessed to the back of the man’s mind once more. It had gained a great deal of power and it could see that more would be just as easily obtained. Further, as it studied its newfound freedom, even while concealing it away within the folds of its host’s subconscious, it knew its actions were still undetected. Satisfied, the voice that had traveled so far pushed aside its remaining regrets over the Dream Stone. There were other ways to accomplish its goals. Settling its essence, it basked in the warmth of its newly stolen energies, delighted in their taste. Looked forward to more.

“This place,” it whispered, its grease-drenched words oozing their way into the furthest corner of the man’s mind, “it is so incredibly rich. So invitingly full of life—

“It is so wonderfully good to be back.”

“It’s been a long night,” suggested LaRaja, his voice tense, sounding close to snapping. Raising one hand, moving his index finger back and forth between himself and Knight, he told the professor, “Everyone’s wrung out and, as at least you and I know, there isn’t anyone here that has the slightest clue as to what’s been going on. So, why don’t you stop getting in our way and take this poor kid out of here? I can always start harassing you again in the morning.”

“Thank you,” answered the professor. “And of course, I am assuming there was nothing in the way of humor in that… .”

“You assume real good, Piers.”

Knight nodded, grateful for the detective’s reprieve, as well as his candor. Still, the professor was concerned enough about his assistant to worry about LaRaja and whatever further questions the police might have later. For the moment, he had to admit that LaRaja was correct
about one thing—Bridget Elkins had been within the city limits of New York for not even half a day and already her mind was pulsing toward overload. Knight himself had completely overwhelmed her sense of size and order in the world immediately upon her arrival with their little trip to the top of the Empire State Building.

He had meant to do so, had done so partly for his own amusement but also, he knew, ultimately for her own good. One of the Big Apple’s specialties was knocking people for a loop. The quicker she caught on to that fact, he felt—the faster she took that rocket ride to the top and followed it up with the inevitable, crashing disappointment the city always eventually provided—then the better off she would be. But from there on, things had progressed at a far more rapid pace than he could have ever predicted.

Hell
, thought Knight, allowing himself a faint touch of self-pity,
she’d better have been overwhelmed by it all. I’m feeling fairly overwhelmed myself right now.

The professor did not bother to chastise himself for taking his new assistant to the museum that night. She was young and full of energy. To see the fabled Brooklyn Museum, the art of Africa and the Pacific, of ancient Egypt and the modern Islamic world, to walk its corridors overflowing with seven hundred years of European painting, it was paradise for any who understood the joys of a repository experience. And that was the regular, render-your-donation-and-enter-with-the-public experience.

To see it as she would have, after hours, to walk its beautifully laid out, well-appointed stone hallways, to view its seemingly limitless treasures in private—especially in the dark, with its wonderful ability to make anything seem forbidden—their work then would have been the icing on a slice of cake the flavor of which she would have remembered fondly for all her days. Possessed of a few of his own cherished remembrances, he had meant it as a gift.

“Instead of a happy memory, however, the poor child ends up traumatized.”

Knight wanted to curse the luck of it, but had no direction in which to sling the abuse he so desperately wanted to hurl away from himself. Who, after all, could he blame? Ungari? The thieves or the police? Maybe himself, he thought. Maybe he could find nowhere else to hurl it because none deserved it more than he did.

Fie, it’s all or none
, the back of his mind snapped, to which another voice within his brain responded,
But then, isn’t it always?

When they had first driven to the precinct house, Knight had been allowed to take his own car. He had driven Bridget there as well, since the detectives had insisted on her coming to be questioned. New to town or not, the young woman was a witness, after all, and the professor knew the police were offering both himself and his new assistant quite a grand amount of consideration by allowing them to travel both together and without an escort.

If there had been even the slightest substantial suspicion that either of them might be responsible for the deaths in the museum that night, of course, such would never have been allowed. It did not pay to give suspects the chance to get their stories straight between themselves before questioning them.

But Dollins and LaRaja both were seasoned professionals. They could tell from every movement of Bridget’s body language, from every glance she offered them and the tone of every word she spoke, that there was nothing of the criminal about her. If she was hiding anything from them, LaRaja had actually commented to his partner at one point, she was damn good enough to keep it hidden.

The large man had agreed, smiling as he did so.

As he offered his hand to the redhead, helped her up from the hard wooden bench upon which she had fallen asleep, Knight
could not help but think of Dollins and his incredible sacrifice. No one, not even himself, he was quite certain, would ever know exactly what had happened to the detective. But the professor was also certain his guess would be far more accurate than that of anyone else.

The big man had not been one to quit. With the protection of Knight’s ring, Dollins would have been able to approach the elemental sent to the property room. When bullets failed him, the detective would have gone for the direct approach.

“You were never one to give up,” the professor mused to himself while waiting for Bridget to stretch out the cramps that had invaded her muscles while she dozed on the uncomfortable slats. “Not that it did you very much good in the end.”

Dollins’ remains had been brought up out of the basement in several bags, all three of them giving off a reeking steam. When questioned by LaRaja, the firemen explained that the body had been so charred it had crumbled when first they attempted to move it. In a whisper that Knight had caught only because he could read lips, the fireman stopped by the precinct house’s captain admitted the only way he and his men could gather up the detective’s remains had been with a shovel.

Within hearing distance of the conversation, LaRaja had nodded his understanding, simply staring at the men carrying away his partner as if they were moving out nothing of any more consequence than lumps of kitchen trash. Knight watched the detective’s face carefully, however, witnessed the subtle hardening of the older man’s eyes, the bursting of capillaries within them from the strain of holding back his tears. He also noted the slight draining of the policeman’s usually far brighter spirit.

The changes did not encourage the museum director.

LaRaja was in his fifties, old for a police detective. He had his twenty years in, could have retired at any time over the preceding
six years. He continually put off those who questioned him over the fact by saying he wanted a larger piece of the retirement pie, that he would “laugh all the way to the bank” once he made his thirty.

The truth was he had always enjoyed the work, and once partnered with Dollins had enjoyed it even more.

But now the big man was gone, burned to death by a thing barely aware of the fact that it had taken the detective’s life. Knight was certain the monstrosity’s tally would have been far higher if Dollins had not confronted it. Calling on the powers that had granted the creature its momentary existence came at a price. Once its task was completed, it was understood the demonic presence would be free to spill as much blood as it could in whatever amount of time it had remaining to it. Dollins had sacrificed himself to contain the horror—to keep it surrounded by brick and concrete.

How, Jimmy?
Knight wondered, his mind unable to find even the beginnings of a theory.
How did you manage to contain such a thing?

The professor’s unspoken question was not unreasonable.

He had recognized the odor and color of the creature sent to the property room. He knew the standard list of demons, knew of what they were capable. Even if the thing sent against them had been the most minor of its species, still Dollins should not have been able to contain it. It was a creature of mindless needs. Once it had procured the Dream Stone, done as requested of it, then it should have been freed to follow its own desires.

Thousands should have died.

Why they had not was a complete and utter mystery to the professor.

“My God,” he muttered, “if that thing had managed to reach the surface …”