The Golden Age of Death (A CALLIOPE REAPER-JONES NOVEL) (22 page)

“You think he’s asleep already?” I asked as I sat up on my knees, trying to get a good look inside.

Marcel nodded.

“I do.”

We’d been camped out in Purgatory for the past three hours, watching and waiting. I’d never been on a full-fledged stakeout before, but freezing your butt off while nestled inside a prickly bush wasn’t my idea of a “good time.” Of the three aspects of the Afterlife—Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory—I liked Purgatory second least, or second best, depending on how positive I was feeling at the time.

Except for the gargantuan brimstone skyscraper housing Death, Inc., Purgatory was a wasteland, devoid of indigenous life, and windy and miserable as all get-out. True, here and there you could find nomadic camps of escaped denizens from Hell who thought braving the Purgatorial badlands was better than being brutalized down in Hell, but other than those brave few, it was an empty landscape, drab and inhospitable.

No one in their right mind would choose such a desolate existence, one so far removed from all the modern conveniences—malls, 7-Elevens, fast-food joints, movie houses, yoga studios—so I had to assume the head of the Harvesters and Transporters Union was a total nut job. Because here, in this wasteland, was exactly where Uriah Drood had decided to build his compound.

If his “home”—and I use the term lightly here—was any indication of the wealth the union possessed, then I was definitely in the wrong business. The place made Sea Verge look like a McDonald’s Playland. It was sprawling, with one main house and five gigantic outbuildings, a tennis court (because who doesn’t like to play tennis in a wasteland?), and a stable someone had retrofitted into a massive garage.

The main house was crafted entirely out of glass, the large plate glass walls letting you see the lavish furnishings you would
never be invited inside to inspect all up close and personal-like. The outbuildings were vertiginous rectangles constructed from high-gloss aluminum, but the pale blue light that infused all of Purgatory did nothing to illuminate their beauty, making them seem flat and drab instead of shiny and new.

I was very curious to find out what Uriah Drood was housing in those towering outbuildings, but we didn’t have time to sneak a peek at them. Our goal was to get inside the main house and squeeze Drood until we got every last drop of information out of his protuberant gut.

“I’m sick of waiting,” I said, standing up and shaking out my left leg, which had fallen asleep. “Let’s do this thing.”

Before we’d left Sea Verge, Jarvis, Marcel, and I had conferred on the best way to infiltrate Uriah Drood’s compound. Since Jarvis had been inside the place—when the Harvesters and Transporters Union had originally threatened to go on strike, he and my dad had spent a tedious afternoon trapped inside Drood’s conference room before the first round of negotiations began—he was the only one who knew all the glass walls were spelled so anyone could enter the house, but only those with a special counter-spell could leave it.

I thought this was an illogical way to protect your home, but Jarvis explained that Uriah Drood was like a spider and his home was just a giant web in which to entangle his prey.

This made me feel better.

Not.

Marcel had taken Jarvis at his word. If he was going to be dealing with a spider, he was going to go in prepared. He’d suggested we hit a hardware store before leaving for Purgatory—and the first thing he’d put in our shiny metal shopping cart, after he’d loaded up on shoe polish, of course, was a can of bug spray. I’d gone for the more “subtle” approach: a length of rope, a palette knife, a ball peen hammer, and a pair of supersharp wire cutters. I had a good idea of what I was going to be doing with my newly purchased tools and it was not pretty.

I’d also purchased a dark brown leather tool belt, one that snapped into place around my hips and made me feel like a DIY version of Lara Croft from
Tomb Raider
. I’d coiled the rope and clipped it into place on the left side of the belt, then
I’d slid the remaining tools into various other loops and pockets, so I jangled when I walked. I think Marcel was amused by my purchases, as was the gawky dude with the bright orange smock who rang us up at the checkout counter. He’d eyed my palette knife with what I thought was suspicion, but then he’d surprised me by asking if I wanted a “real” knife instead of the blunt one I’d chosen.

I might’ve taken him up on the offer, but I thought there was something rather ironic about using a painting knife to inflict pain—and I especially liked the idea I was turning torture into an art form. It appealed to my baser senses.

“Yes, now is the time,” Marcel said as he stood up, leaving the cover of the bushes.

Silent as a cat, he began to steal toward one of the large plate glass walls, crossing the ten-foot gap separating the bushes from the house without incident.

“Here we go,” I whispered to Runt as, tools jangling at my hip, we left the safety of the bushes to follow Marcel’s path to the house.

When we caught up to him, he placed a finger to his lips, the universal symbol for silence, then, fascinated, I watched as he focused his energy on the window, lifting his left fist into the air and plunging it into the glass. Logic predicted his hand would shatter the pane, but logic wasn’t working. As his flesh hit the pane, the glass transformed from a solid state into something resembling a clear gelatin mold. Marcel looked over at me and grinned, arm half deep in the gelatinous substance.

“Shall I?” he asked.

I watched as he pressed the rest of himself through the gelatin, disappearing into the interior of the house. Once inside, he turned and waved at me to follow him.

I looked down at Runt.

“You ready for this?” I asked.

She wagged her tail and I took that to mean, “yes.”

With Runt at my heels, I closed my eyes and walked quickly toward the plate glass wall. I tensed, expecting the gelatinous substance to envelop my body—but this didn’t happen. Instead, my nose and forehead smashed into an unyielding wall of glass.

“Ow!” I yelped, as a caromed off the glass and fell backward onto the ground.

Barred from entering the house, I’d been left out in the cold emptiness of the Purgatorial wasteland. Immediately, my fingers went up to my nose, the hot wetness they found there making me woozy.

“Runt?” I called, the hand covering my lower face muffling her name so it came out as “Rub.”

I was worried she’d been hurt, too, but then I looked over and saw her face pressed up against the other side of the glass. She’d made it inside with Marcel, but she didn’t look very happy about it. When she caught my gaze, she began to paw at the glass, fighting to get back outside to me.

That’s when I remembered what Jarvis had said about Drood’s compound being like a spider web—you could get in, but you couldn’t get out.

I felt discombobulated as I climbed to my feet, and I had to fight the urge to give up and sit back down again. Instead, I took a tentative step toward the glass, my legs like shaky noodles not wanting to hold me up.

“I’m all right,” I called to Runt, giving her a reassuring smile—though my nose hurt like a sonofabitch and I had the beginnings of a massive headache.

With a frantic energy I could feel even from outside, she continued to paw at the glass, her tail slapping against Marcel’s leg in her panic.

“It’s okay,” I said, as I knelt down across from her and pressed my palm against the solid pane of glass. “I’ll find a way in.”

Runt snuffled, trying to get closer to my hand, but the glass made it impossible.

I felt awful. I was supposed to protect her, but here I was, on the other side of the glass, totally unable to help her if something bad happened.

Marcel said something to me, but I couldn’t make out the words. I tried to read his lips, but discovered I sucked at lipreading. Finally, he pantomimed I should go around to the front door and meet them there.

I very much doubted I’d be able to get in that way, but I figured anything was worth a shot.

Following Marcel and Runt’s lead, I walked around to the other side of the house, happy the building was made of glass, so I could keep an eye on Runt.

I’d expected Drood to have guards, razor wire, spotlights…anything a normal person would have to secure their home. But there was none of this, just a dark and empty house waiting for us to enter it.

Spider web.

The words echoed in my head.

Short and rotund with a baldpate and pale, bluish-tinged alabaster skin, Uriah Drood liked to wear expensively tailored suits that made him seem sleeker than he actually was, their dark silhouettes giving him a rather spider-like appearance, though I’d never noticed the resemblance before.

Marcel and Runt had stumbled into his web because he didn’t think they were a threat. They were more like flies, or roly-poly bugs he could dispose of easily and without thought. I, on the other hand, frightened him.

That I frightened
anyone
was kind of amusing—that I frightened someone like Uriah Drood was amazing.

He may have blocked me from entering his house for now,
I thought.
But between the three of us—me, Marcel, and Runt—I’m sure we can find a loophole to get me inside.

I caught sight of the thin man with the weasely face and red hair just as we were nearing the front entrance. He was standing just beyond Marcel and Runt’s field of vision, his body tucked into a shadowy doorway leading off into another wing of the house. I could see him clear as day—and I could also see the curved knife he was jauntily tossing back and forth between his hands. I raced to the glass and started to pound on its transparent surface, screaming at Marcel to look behind him.

The glass stood between us, making my words unintelligible. Marcel stared at me, trying to understand what I was saying. I stabbed the air with my finger, trying to get him to turn around, but it was too late, the man had already launched his attack.

I was trapped on the wrong side of the glass, unable to do anything but watch as Weasely Face raised his knife into the air and slashed down, shearing off Marcel’s arm just below the elbow.

Blood streaked across the glass, blurring my view as Weasely Face drew back his knife to attack again. But Marcel was ready this time, twisting out of the way, so Weasely Face’s blade sliced through empty air. Marcel dodged another thrust of the knife, jumping out of the way as Weasely Face pressed forward, attacking with unheralded violence.

With his uninjured hand, Marcel reached into his pocket and pulled out the bug repellent he’d picked up at the hardware store. Still sidestepping Weasely Face’s frontal attack, he used his teeth to pop off the bug spray’s lid, depressing the button with his thumb and shooting a stream of clear liquid directly into Weasely Face’s eyes.

Weasely Face dropped the knife, his fingers tearing at his eyes as he tried to wipe the bug spray away. Runt used Marcel’s distraction to sink her teeth into Weasely Face’s ankle and, with a silent scream (at least on my end), the man went down like a sack of flour, clutching at his ankle with one hand and his eyes with the other.

Marcel turned to the glass and gave me a “thumbs up” sign. Then he went back to Weasely Face and began to kick him in the gut. Weasely Face writhed on the floor, each kick connecting with his soft belly until he got wise and twisted himself into a protective fetal position. Marcel shrugged and changed his tactic, slamming his huarache into the back of Weasely Face’s head over and over again.

I felt a surge of joy as Marcel and Runt turned the tables on their attacker. I sighed, the tension going out of me as I rested my forehead against the glass, once more wishing I was inside the house with them, or they were outside the house with me.

When I looked up again, I was just in time to observe a tall, menacing figure emerge from the shadows and make a beeline for Marcel. I tried to catch Runt’s attention, to let her know they weren’t safe, but she was crouched in front of Weasely Face, guarding him for Marcel, and didn’t see me. I began to beat on the window, screaming for them to watch out for this new assailant, but Marcel was too intent on beating the shit out of Weasely Face to notice my frantic pantomimes.

I screamed until my throat was raw, but it was futile. I was impotent. I had to watch, again, as Marcel was attacked from behind, the shadowy man grasping him around the back of the
neck with pale white hands. The man lifted Marcel off his feet, twisting him in the air like a rag doll until he got a good grip on Marcel’s throat. The Ender of Death began to flail, eyes going wide as a tourniquet of long white fingers cut off his air.

He’s immortal,
I thought.
They can make him pass out, but he won’t die.

Still it was a horrible scene to have to be a party to.

Marcel’s eyes began to bug out of his head, his face turning puce as the man increased the pressure on his trachea. Runt made a dive for the man’s leg, but he’d seen her go for Weasely Face and was prepared, kicking out with his foot to catch her in the belly. The movement propelled her backward and she slid across the concrete floor, crashing into a side table, where she lay, unmoving.

I beat my fists against the glass until they ached, but it was no good. My mind raced, trying to come up with a way to break the glass, so I could climb inside.

That’s when I remembered my tool belt.

I reached down and ripped the ball peen hammer from its loop, hefting it in the air. Using all my strength, I slammed the head of the hammer into the windowpane, the force of the action jarring the bones in my hands and wrists and arms—but the glass held firm. I repeated the action two more times and found myself rewarded as a small crack appeared in the surface of the glass. I raised the hammer and pounded the butt end of the wooden handle against the crack, hitting it again and again with all my energy until the crack grew in size.

Still, it wouldn’t break.

For the first time, the shadowy man’s gaze strayed in my direction. My heart stopped as we locked eyes, and I felt the gorge rise in my throat, anger and impotence duking it out in my stomach for prominence.