Death's Hand (18 page)

Or like wind blowing in the trees, sweeping through the branches.

Her muscles were leaden. Her eyes couldn’t open.

The walls of the room collapsed slowly inward. Moss spread beneath her cheek as vines of ivy slithered up James’s bookshelves. Leaves spread between the pages of the books.

Thunder rolled. Papers dripped onto the desk one by one and drizzled onto the floor.

Ivory fingers reached out to turn off the lamp, leaving the only light an occasional flash of lightning in the bellies of the red clouds. Rain began to tumble down the walls like a sticky-sweet waterfall.

Elise's parents stood beside the desk, waiting for her arrival as the second hands on the clock rushed toward twelve. She was running late. Somehow, she had gotten caught in the storm and lost her way.

She twisted and turned in search of a path. They were waiting. She couldn't keep them waiting.

A cool hand smoothed over her cheek, light as the kiss of the breeze. Forgiving. Her parents smiled down at her, calm but unseeing. Her mother's left eye socket was empty, and it rained within her skull.

The sky poured down, and Elise sat, her pale skin bared to the elements.

“
Crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux...
”

“Let the holy cross be my light, let the serpent not lead me astray.”

“
Vade retro, Satana...
”

“Step back, Satan.”

What do you think that means, Elise?
A gentle smile. But who smiled? Where were the eyes belonging to those lips?

“
Nunquam suade mihi vana...
”

“What you offer me is evil...”

But what is evil?

The question wasn't part of the exorcism ritual. And neither was the second part—
what is goodness?
She had no answers for either. “
Sunt mala quae libas...
”

Such a sweet smile.

“
Ipse venena bibas...
”

“Drink the poison yourself...”

Fluid dripped from the corner of that mouth. There were hands, but they didn’t wipe the poison away. It was dark burgundy, the crimson of wine… or blood.

One more time, Elise. From the top.

“
Crux sacra sit mihi lux, non draco sit mihi dux. Vade retro, Satana, nunquam suade mihi vana. Sunt mala quae libas, ipse venena bibas.
”

Very good. Again.

The branches scraped her vulnerable body.

“
Crux sacra sit mihi lux…
”

The ground disappeared. Elise fell, and fell…

The yawning blackness devoured her whole.

And fell…

Drink the poison yourself…

“I am the cold kiss of Death,” the goddess whispered into her ear, “and you can never defeat me.”

Elise’s arms were bound to the stone wall behind her. Her face was bloody but set in a determined glare. Mud packed the open wound on her hip. A red cloak she didn’t remember wearing pooled around her body. The death goddess—had she any other name?—stood high above her, swathed in shadow and holding a staff of sharpened human bone.

“Alive or dead, I will come back for you,” the goddess murmured.

“You can’t think this will do any good,” Elise spat. The sky outside, visible through a small window near the ceiling, was black, blue, purple, and scarlet. Blood and pus bubbled from her wound. “You can’t kill me yet. Not without screwing up your apocalyptic plans.”

She laughed. Deep, throaty, bubbling like Elise’s blood. “Who says I plan to use you?”

In her other hand, she clutched a stone dagger that sang with power. It was covered in symbols, some more familiar than others.

Her blood bulged in her veins.
Ipse venena bibas…

The witch had clutched a stone, too.

James.

The sky faded to orange and back to red.

He ran through the jungle searching for Elise. The branches scraped at him, though the trees never moved, but still he searched. She watched him from her prison with the goddess, and she almost wished he wouldn’t find her as much as she longed for him to save her.

The death goddess drew intricate designs in Elise’s skin with vivid crimson ink.

Her breast rose and fell with breath. Her heartbeat fluttered.

The witch. The stone staff. Death.

Who says I plan to use you?

Her eyes flew open, and she
saw
.

Sleep ripped away from Elise. Consciousness slammed into her body. She gasped, flinching against the blow that never came—and then realized she heard the familiar sound of cars rushing by on the street outside.

Elise sat up. Nothing inside the room made noise but James's erratic breathing. He had pushed the sheets off to bare his body to the waist even though the room was only sixty degrees. She pressed her hand to his back. His temperature almost scorched her palm.

He made a small noise and moved into her touch, rolling over without waking up. His eyelids were dark, almost bruised.

“James,” she said softly.

She searched for her cell phone in the darkness. Only an hour and a half had passed.

Elise slipped out of bed to search the closet for spare clothes. She located clean jeans and a shirt by touch, identifying it as her Black Death concert top by the hole near the hem.

When she finished changing, she returned to James. She checked his temperature with a hand to his forehead, and he was even hotter than he had been before. Sleep had done neither of them any good. James hadn’t improved, and Elise had lost time.

Someone knocked at the door. She looked out the window to confirm that Stephanie’s car was in the lot before meeting her at the door. The doctor’s normally neat coif was frazzled.

“Thanks for coming,” Elise said as Stephanie pushed past her into the house.

“Is he in bed?”

Elise nodded, and the doctor blew into his bedroom.

She sat beside him on the mattress and opened her bag. Elise waited in the doorway while Stephanie gave James a short and clinical examination. After a few minutes, the doctor took off her gloves.

“Can you take care of him here?” Elise asked.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Stephanie said. “He doesn’t seem to have lost enough blood to be struggling, and there hasn’t been enough time for infection to set in.” The doctor leveled a stern look at Elise. “He needs to be taken to a hospital.”

“Will he die if he remains untreated for a few hours?”

“I can’t be sure.”

“I need you to stay and monitor him,” Elise said. “I have to find the person that did this. Once they’re out of the picture, you can send him to any hospital you want.”

“Don’t you think you should call the police?” Stephanie asked, following Elise out of the room. “Whoever attacked him is deranged.”

“The police won’t be able to help. You have to stay.”

She folded her arms. “It goes against every good practice I know.”

“Great,” Elise said. “Now listen close. I’m going to lock all the doors and windows before I leave. Don’t open any of them until I come back. James has set up wards around the apartment, so he’ll be safe as long as they’re shut. Don’t let anyone in, don’t call an ambulance, don’t call the police. If you want James to make it to the hospital at all, you have to keep quiet.”

Stephanie nodded reluctantly. “I’ll take care of him.”

“Thanks,” Elise said. “Don’t let him die.”

She disappeared into the night.

The casino was full at three in the morning. Tricks of light and shadow made the room an endless plane of slot machines, where the drunk and down-on-their-luck hunched before digital screens. Listless, addicted gamblers fidgeted nearby as they watched for the next game to make them lucky.

Day, night. Neither mattered. Neither existed.

Money passed from player to casino attendant and became chips, and the chips went from hand to table, then to the dealer, and back to the attendants. The artificial clattering, jingling, singing sounds of slots and video poker paying out or begging to be played filled the air with discordant chorus.

The air was thick, and not with cigarette smoke. What it masked was impossible to ignore—an eternal depression, a feeling of being trapped. The feel of people imprisoning themselves in a place where the odds were low and wishing for a row of lucky sevens to change their ruined lives.

Elise moved quickly across the floor, watching each table as she passed. Cards whispered across the velvet—ten of spades, three of hearts, suicide king—and were taken into hands with nails yellow from tobacco.

She didn’t enjoy the casinos here. She had been to Vegas and little back-alley stands in Eastern Europe where the dice were all hand-carved, and either was better. At least there was fun and good company to be had elsewhere.

It didn’t take long for Elise to spot who she was looking for. David Nicholas never slept, and seldom worked, so he made up for decades of spare time with a platinum gambling card at every casino and a reserved spot at the Texas Hold-‘Em table. He was a ghost beside two swarthy tourists with purple rings under their eyes. He cupped a stack of dwindling chips in one hand.

“Check,” he said, tapping his cards on the table. He glanced up as Elise approached, his hand half-raised as though he expected a cocktail waitress. Then he realized who it actually was, and his face fell. “Shit.”

Elise hauled him out of his chair and dragged him to the back door, flinging him into the alley behind the casino. The nightmare splashed into a puddle of rainwater and trash. He stared up at her with an expression like that of a rabbit spotting a hawk.

Jerking him up by the collar, she slammed him into the wall. “Tell me what you know,” she snarled, pushing her dagger against the nightmare’s stomach.

“Hang on, wait, whoa,” David Nicholas said, holding his hands up. “All I know is I was winning a hand of hold-‘em and you interrupted my streak. What do you think you’re doing?”

“I’ve been inspired to take a break from accounting. If you cooperate, I can cut my vacation short. Understand?”

“I've got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You’re the one who told me something was coming when I visited Craven’s,” she said. “I’m starting to suspect you might have been onto something. I’m here to chat about it.” Elise jerked on his collar again. He gurgled. “Chat, David Nicholas.”

She dropped him back into the trash. Rats scurried away. “Don’t think I got to chat about anything with you,” he said. “It isn’t profitable to play with humans…unless you want to try to make it that way, if you’re catching my meaning.”

She studied the blade of her knife, testing the edge against her thumb. “Tell you what. You tell me what you were talking about at the club, and I’ll make it profitable by not stabbing you… again. I’m looking for a demon that can resurrect people.”

He slipped a pack of cigarettes out of his sleeve and tapped one into his hand. He lit it, but didn’t take a puff, contemplating the glowing end as he rolled it between his first finger and thumb.

“Demons can’t resurrect people on their own.”

“Yeah, but something is doing it anyway. Does the name
le Main de Morte
ring a bell?”

“The what
de
what?”

“The Hand of Death. That’s what I said, the Hand of Death.”

He sneered. “Death’s Hand,” David Nicholas murmured. “Old bastard.”

“You know it, then.”

“Know of it, yeah. It’s hellborn. There was lots of talk about Death’s Hand a few years ago. It was some big fad to talk about it, like, ooh, it’s going to kill us dead, it’s going to destroy Earth.” David Nicholas took a drag. “Didn’t happen, as you see. I wasn’t worried about it. I never worry about that kind of thing.”

“So it can resurrect people,” Elise pressed.

“It can
reanimate
. Huge difference,” he said, leaning one elbow on an orange crate. “Move corpses. You know, like a puppet.”

“A little girl died,” she said. “This Death’s Hand thing possessed her. I performed an exorcism, and when he was gone, she was alive again.”

“Treaty of Dis says demons can’t perform resurrections. Only humans can do it, and not many of them at that. Just those special witches—you know, necromancers.” He dropped his cigarette on the top of a nearby crate and ground it in with his fingers. His other hand was already moving to bring a second to his lips. “So can I go back to my game now?”

“No. What were you trying to warn me about?”

David Nicholas spread his hands wide. “What am I supposed to say? I got four hundred and sixty-three years of knowledge rattling around inside my skull. I could warn you about things that would give the Night Hag nightmares.” His black eyes grew shadowed. “You got a necromancer on your hands, and you’re in bigger trouble than anyone would be able to help you with.”

“Tell me why.”

“Death’s Hand reanimates, right? Useful trick. You work your slaves to death, then bring ‘em back and do it all over again.” He shrugged, and it looked like his bony shoulders could almost pierce his jacket. “If it got a necromancer, though, it could resurrect, too. All Death’s Hand’s got to do is reanimate a freshly dead necromancer to create a bond with it, and—”