Masked (2010) (28 page)

When I’d finished my shot, Don Mateo poured another for himself, and drank the contents and spat the libation just as ritual demanded. Then, the necessary business of the greeting concluded, he set the glass and bottle aside and began to shove open the lid of the coffin in which my tools are stored.

“Four nights you’ve hunted this demon, little brother,” he said, lifting out the inky black greatcoat and handing it over. “Perhaps tonight will be the night.”

I drew the greatcoat on over my suit. “Three victims already is three too many.” Settling the attached short cape over my shoulders, I fastened the buttons. “But what kind of demon freezes its victims to death?”

The old daykeeper treated me to a grin, shrugging. “You are the one with the Sight, not I.” His grin began to falter as he handed over the shoulder-holster rig. “Though Don Javier might have known.”

I checked the spring releases on both of the silver-plated Colt .45s and then arranged the short cape over my shoulders to conceal them. “Perhaps,” I said. But it had been years since the great owl of the old daykeeper had visited us in dreams.

As I slid a half-dozen loaded clips, pouches of salt, a Zippo lighter, and a small collection of crystals into the greatcoat’s pockets, Don Mateo held the mask out to me, the light from the bare bulb overhead glinting on the skull’s silvered surface.

The metal of the mask, cool against my cheeks and forehead, always reminds me of the weeks and months I spent in the Rattling House, learning to shadow through solid objects, cold patches left behind as I rotated back into the world. I never did master the art
of shifting to other branches of the World Tree, though, much to Don Javier’s regret.

The slouch hat was last out of the coffin, and when I had settled it on my head, Don Mateo regarded me with something like paternal pride. “I should like to see those upstarts in San Francisco and Chicago cut so fine a figure.”

The mask hid my scowl, for which I was grateful.

Since beginning my nocturnal activities in Recondito in ’31 I’ve apparently inspired others to follow suit—the Black Hand in San Francisco, the Scarlet Scarab in New York, the Scorpion in Chicago. Perhaps the pulp magazine’s ruse works as intended, and like so many here in the city, they assume the Wraith to be entirely fictional. There are times when I regret the decision to hide in plain sight, fictionalizing accounts of my activities in the pages of
The Wraith Magazine
so that any reports of a silver masked figure seen lurking in the streets of Recondito will be written off as an overimaginative reader with more costuming skill than sense.

But noisome as such crass imitators are, whether inspired by the reality or the fiction, as I tooled up this evening I never imagined that I’d be forced to contend with one here in my own city.

Don Mateo recited a benediction, invoking the names Dark Jaguar and Macaw House, the first mother-father pair of daykeepers, and of White Sparkstriker, who had brought the knowledge to our branch of the World Tree. He called upon Ah Puch the Fleshless, the patron deity of Xibalba, to guide our hands and expand my sight. Had we still been in the Yucatan, the old daykeeper would have worn his half-mask of jaguar pelt and burned incense as offering to his forebears’ gods. Since coming to California, though, he’s gradually relaxed his observances, and now the curling smoke of a smoldering Lucky Strike usually suffices.

This demon of cold has struck the days previous without pattern or warning, once each in Northside, Hyde Park, and the waterfront. When Don Mateo and I headed out in the hearse, as a result, we proceeded at random, roaming from neighborhood to neighborhood, the old daykeeper on the lookout for any signs of
disturbance, me searching not with my eyes but with my Sight for any intrusion from the Otherworld.

I glimpsed some evidence of incursion near the Pinnacle Tower, but quickly determined it was another of Carmody’s damnable “experiments.” I’ve warned Rex before that I won’t allow his institute to put the city at risk unnecessarily, but they have proven useful on rare occasions, so I haven’t yet taken any serious steps to curtail their activities. I know that his wife agrees with me, though, if only for the sake of their son Jacob.

I caught a glimpse of the cold demon in the Financial District, and I shadowed out of the moving hearse and into the dark alley with a Colt in one hand and a fistful of salt in the other, ready to disrupt the invader’s tenuous connection to reality. But I’d not even gotten a good look at the demon when it turned in midair and vanished entirely from view.

The body of the demon’s fourth and latest victim lay at my feet. It was an older man, looking like a statue that had been toppled off its base. Arms up in a defensive posture, one foot held aloft to take a step the victim never completed. On the victim’s face, hoarfroast riming the line of his jaw, was an expression of shock and terror. But before I had a chance to examine the body further, I heard the sounds of screaming from the next street over.

There is a body
, I Sent to Don Mateo’s thoughts as I raced down the alleyway to investigate. Had the demon retreated from reality only to reemerge a short distance away?

But it was no denizen of the Otherworld menacing the young woman huddled in the wan pool of the streetlamp’s light. Her attackers were of a far more mundane variety—or so I believed. I pocketed the salt and filled both hands with silver-plated steel.

Eleven years writing purple prose for
The Wraith Magazine
, and it creeps even into my private thoughts. Ernest would doubtless consider his point made, if he knew, and that bet made in Paris decades ago finally to be won.

The young woman was Mexican, and from her dress I took her to be a housekeeper, likely returning from a day’s work cleaning one
of the miniature mansions that lined the avenues of Northside. She was sprawled on the pavement, one shoe off, arms raised to shield her face. Two men stood over her, Caucasians in dungarees, workshirts, and heavy boots. The older of the two had the faded blue of old tattoos shadowing his forearms, suggesting a previous career in the merchant marine, while the younger had the seedy look of a garden-variety hoodlum. With hands clenched in fists and teeth bared, it was unclear whether they wanted to beat the poor girl or take advantage of her—likely both, and in that order.

The hoodlum reached down and grabbed the woman’s arm roughly, and as he attempted to yank her to her feet she looked up and her gaze fell on me. Or rather, her gaze fell on the mask, which in the shadows she might have taken to be a disembodied silver skull floating in the darkness. Already terrified by her attackers, the woman’s eyes widened on seeing me, and her shouts for help fell into a hushed, awestruck silence.

The prevention of crime, even acts of violence, is not the Wraith’s primary mission, nor did the situation seem at first glance to have any bearing on my quest for vengeance, but still I couldn’t stand idly by and see an innocent imperiled. But even before springing into action, my Sight caught a glimpse of the tendril that rose from the shoulders of the tattooed man, disappearing in an unseen direction. No mere sailor down on his luck, the tattooed man was possessed, being “ridden” by an intelligence from beyond space and time. And protecting the people of Recondito from such incursions
is
the mission of the Wraith—and if the Ridden was in league with those whom I suspected, vengeance might be served, as well.

“Unhand her,”
I said, stepping out of the shadows and into view. I Sent as I spoke, the reverberation of thought and sound having a disorienting effect on the listener that I often used to my advantage.
“Or answer to me.”

The two men turned, and while the hoodlum snarled at my interruption, there glinted in the eyes of the Ridden a dark glimmer of recognition.

The possessed, or Ridden, can be deterred by running water
and by fire, both of which tend to disorient them, but neither is capable of stopping them altogether. Even killing the Ridden’s body is not a permanent solution, since the Otherworldly parasite will continue to move and operate the body even in death. The only way to put a Ridden down is to introduce pure silver into the body, by bullet or by blade, which serves to sever the connection between the parasite and host.

That’s where my twin Colts come in.

The hoodlum released his hold on the woman’s arm, letting her slump back onto the pavement, as the Ridden turned to face me, his eyes darting to the silver-plated .45s in my fists. I wondered whether the hoodlum knew that his companion was more than he seemed to the naked eye.

Typically the Ridden I encounter in Recondito are lackeys of the Guildhall, working as muscle for a political machine whose methods and reach would have eclipsed Tammany Hall in its heyday; the demon parasites from beyond are offered the chance to experience the sensual joys of reality in exchange for their services, while the hosts are most often thugs for hire who have disappointed their employers once too often. That one of the two attackers was Ridden suggested strongly that these two were Guildhall bruisers enjoying a night away from roughing up the machine’s political enemies.

“Now step away,”
I ordered, aiming a pistol at each of them.

After I recovered Cager’s body from the jungle, I took his Colt M1911 and my own and plated them with silver from the daykeeper’s secret mine, and cast silver bullets to match. I usually carry a pistol in either hand, but make it a habit never to fire more than one at a time. Despite what the pulp magazines would have readers believe, no one can hit the broad side of a barn firing two guns at once. The first time I tried it, honing my skills in the forest above Xibalba, the recoil drove the pistol in my left hand crashing into the one in my right, with my thumb caught in between, the skin scraped off like cheese through a grater. And though the gloves I wear as the Wraith would save me from another such injury, I’ve found that
the second Colt is much more useful as a ward against attack—the silver serving to keep any Ridden from venturing too close—and then ready with a full magazine to fire if the seven rounds in the other pistol run out before the job is done.

The silver of the Colt in my right hand was enough to make the Ridden think twice about rushing me, while the bullets in the Colt in my left were sufficient to give the hoodlum pause—I wouldn’t fire on a man who wasn’t possessed unless it was absolutely necessary, but it was clear that
he
didn’t know that.

“Por favor. . .”
the woman said in pleading tones, scuttling back across the pavement from me, seeming as frightened of the Wraith’s silver mask as she’d been of her two attackers’ fists only moments before.
“Ayuda me. . .”
I knew it wasn’t me she was asking for help. But then, who? The shadows?

I intended to end the suffering of the Ridden’s host-body, a single silver bullet driving the parasite back to its home beyond the sky, and to chase the hoodlum into the night with enough fear instilled in him that he wouldn’t soon menace another girl walking alone by night.

“Now,”
I said and Sent, gesturing toward the hoodlum with the Colt in my left hand,
“one of you I shall send back to your Guildhall masters with a message. . .”

The hoodlum began to turn away, shifting his weight as he prepared to take to his heels and flee.

I smiled behind my mask, raising the pistol in my right hand and training it between the eyes of the Ridden.
“. . . and the other shall
be
that message. . .”

And then, the arrival of my clowned-up imitator made a hash of all my plans.

“No,
malvado
,” came a somewhat muffled voice shouting from the shadows, “you’re not going anywhere!”

Before the hoodlum knew what had hit him, a blur of silver and black came rushing out of the shadows, tackling him to the ground. Raining a welter of blows down on the hoodlum’s head and shoulders, the newcomer kept his opponent pinned to the ground
like a wrestler on a mat. And the impression of a wrestler was only strengthened when he looked up in my direction and I saw the black leather mask he wore—it was of the same type as those worn by the Mexican wrestlers, but this one had a stylized white skull stitched over the face.

The young woman still huddled at the edge of the streetlamp’s light, looking in wide-eyed shock at the strange figure dispensing a beating on her erstwhile attacker. She whispered,
“Sepultura,”
and I wondered why she spoke of the grave.

“Don’t worry,
señorita
,” the masked man said, leaping to his feet and striking a faintly ridiculous pose, hands on his hips and arms akimbo. “Sepultura is here to help!”

The masked man—this Sepultura—wore a gray boilersuit, black leather paratrooper boots, and black leather gloves, with an army officer’s web belt cinched at his waist with pouches all around. He stood perhaps a few inches shorter than me, and while he was clearly in fighting trim—the moaning hoodlum on the pavement a testament to the strength of his blows—the ill-fitting boilersuit made him look somewhat paunchy.

“Depart, interloper!”
I took a half-step forward and waved him away with the barrel of the Colt in my left fist.
“This is none of your concern. . .”

In the confusion created by the arrival of this so-called Sepultura, the Ridden saw the opportunity to escape. And while I warned the masked fool away, the tattooed Ridden spun on his heel and started to run off in the opposite direction.

“Don’t worry,
Señor
Wraith,” Sepultura said with a jaunty wave, lunging after the fleeing Ridden. “I’ll stop him. . .”

The Ridden looked back and glared at the pursuing Sepultura, and the phantasm that clung to the Ridden’s shoulders flared bright with hatred, feeding off the emotions of its host body.

At that precise moment Sepultura stumbled, throwing his hands up before him protectively, his eyes widening in surprise visibly behind the eye-slits of his mask.

The Ridden was already several strides away and increasing the
distance between us with every footfall. But Sepultura was now directly in my way, and any shot fired might strike him by mistake. Fool that he clearly was, I wasn’t about to shoot him down, but at the same time I wasn’t going to let the Ridden escape back into the city.