Black Magic (24 page)

It wasn’t the dream, but a presence in the room that awakened him. He sat up in the darkness. Distant lightning flickered along the horizon outside his window.
 

An armadillo stood on the impossibly narrow window ledge. Rain coursed down its armor-like plating. It tapped the glass twice with its tail and hopped down.

Two times in two nights his spirit guide appeared to him. Walking Bear had never been so blessed. Or was it cursed. Something dark and evil had infested the creatures of the forest, and if he interpreted his dream correctly, was leading them to certain destruction.

But his spirit guide had awakened him so he would have the presence of mind to use caution. He took a deep breath and soaked in the auras around him. Some of the animals he sensed outside were torn, conflicted by a drive for vengeful violence that ran against their natures. But there was something wrong inside the home as well, a spirit half-dark with hate and half-red with rage.
 

As he stood up he heard the echoing thunk of the lockdown latches on the exterior doors around the home. That could not be good. He dressed in the dark.

Walking Bear cracked open his door and peered out. Empty and quiet. He slipped out of his room. He crept down to the nurses’ station. The night nurse sat sprawled in her chair. A slick, still waterfall of blood traced a path from her chest to the floor. Her face was forever frozen in a look of shock.

Something crashed at the far end of the hallway. Walking Bear crouched down and looked over the edge of the nurses’ station counter. Denny Dean pushed Mr. Bingham’s bed down the hallway at breakneck speed. Mr. Bingham was still strapped into it. Chester Tobias stood on top, riding it like a surfboard. He jumped off and Denny let go just before the gurney careened into a cart of empty dinner trays. The two broke out laughing like drunken high schoolers.

None of this made a bit of sense to Walking Bear. Those two were idiots, but they wouldn’t go so psycho without…

Then his question was answered. Shane Hudson stepped into the hallway, wearing a doctor’s lab coat and brandishing his infernal cane. Walking Bear did a double take to confirm that indeed the old rat was walking. More proof that something was very wrong with the balance of nature, both inside and outside of Elysian.

“Enough!” Shane yelled. His two accomplices straightened up like chastised children. All three ignored Mr. Bingham’s moans from the crashed gurney. Shane pointed the head of his cane down the hall in the direction of Walking Bear’s room. “Time to scalp the Chief.”

The click of a closing door sounded as Shane led Denny and Chester around the corner of the nurses’ station. The sound was too close to have been from any room but Walking Bear’s.
 

No matter,
Shane thought.
Awake or asleep. Even the big Chief can’t handle three-on-one.

The three stopped in front of Walking Bear’s door. Shane tried the handle. Locked. He whipped out the nurses’ master key and unlocked it.

“Time to have the Chief experience a personal Trail of Tears,” Shane said.

He kicked open the door.

“Doctor Hudson making his rounds,” Shane announced. His face screwed up in anger when he saw the room was empty. “Son of a bitch. Find that Indian.”

Chester and Denny whipped through closets and peeled back the mattress from the bed. No Walking Bear. The three reentered the hallway. Shane planted a finger in each of his minion’s chests.

“Go find him. He’s a big bastard. He can’t hide many places.”

Shane gave the swelling in his pants a tug.

“I’ve got something else to take care of.”

Dolly was lost within a vivid dream.

In it, she saw the black shape again. The one she had seen before. The one she had painted to get it out of her head. This time lightning flashed and she could make it out, the rusting hulk of the Apex Sugar plant with the NSA tower at its side.
 

The building flexed, like a great breathing lung. With each inhalation, blue light seeped from the expanded cracks in the walls. Inside, the wails of tortured souls echoed in the emptiness. Each contraction of the building exuded the foul stench of rotting corpses.

A hawk’s feather appeared in one of her hands. Pruning shears in the other. She crossed them. The ground rumbled and she looked up to see the radio tower collapse onto the plant. It crashed through the roof and the building dissolved into a blue roiling mushroom cloud.

Her eyes snapped open to the comforting darkness and familiarity of her room. From down the hallway she heard laughter, mean, sadistic laughter in the unmistakable timbre of Shane Hudson’s voice. Two voices twittered in response and she knew all three heads of Cerberus were up and at ‘em. At this hour, that did not bode well.

She reached for her robe and thought better of it. Whatever was going on in the hall wasn’t something to face down in pink terrycloth and fuzzy slippers. She slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

Heavy sheets of rain pounded her window so hard it flexed in the frame. Things were heading south inside and outside of the Elysian walls. What a night.

She crept over to her door and cracked it open. She peered out in the hallway. Something crashed down around the hallway corner. Chilling laughter followed. She edged out of her room and inched down the hallway.

She hung her head into Shane’s open doorway. Dwayne lay on the floor, a pulverized, bloody mess. Shane’s wheelchair was still there. But Shane was not. How could he…?

Walking Bear’s room was a few doors over. Something about being with that big quiet Anamassee felt really safe right now.

“Well, looky who’s up to party with the big boys.”

Chester stood in the hallway in all his splendid stupidity, pupils wide as sinkholes from whatever he was hopped up on. Blood splattered the front of his shirt. Denny stepped out from behind him and gave a lupine smile.

“Well, hello Dolly!” he said.

Shivers ran up Dolly’s spine. These two were out of control.

Shane stepped between his two henchmen and pulled each back with a hand on a shoulder.

“No, no, boys. This bitch is mine.”

Shane alone was more terrifying than the three of them together. Denny and Chester might have a shred of rational thought. Shane was psychotic. Without them to check him…
 

Dolly ran down the hallway.

“Nowhere to run,” Shane called. He followed at a steady pace, long strong strides down the hallway. “It’s an old-fashioned lock-in. A pajama party. Don’t be antisocial.”

Dolly had seen the tent in the sick bastard’s pants. He probably hadn’t had solid wood for years and she had a sickening idea what he’d be ready to do with it. She slipped on the floor as she rounded a corner and slammed into the wall. Something in her shoulder crunched and a flamethrower of pain raced through her right side.

“Don’t hurt yourself, Dolly,” Shane’s voice called from down the corridor. “That’s my job tonight.”

Dolly pushed off the wall and ran for her room. She slammed the door behind her and locked it. Shane might have had a miraculous recovery, but even in his prime he couldn’t break down that solid wood door. She leaned back against her work table and tried to stop hyperventilating.

The door handle rattled. Shane’s face appeared in the window like some twisted apparition. In the shadow she swore his eyes had a blue hue.

“Dolly, Dolly, Dolly,” he admonished her. “Fate can’t keep us apart.” He shook the nurses’ key ring in front of his face. “I’ve got the keys to your heart.”

She was trapped. The window barely opened and she couldn’t break it. Once he got in here…

Lightning flashed and something boomed outside the building, like a bomb exploding. The lights flickered and went dark. Emergency lighting far down the hallway kicked in.

“What the fuck was that?” Shane yelled down the hall.
 

Dolly could not make out the muffled response.
 

“Check the goddamn generator,” Shane ordered. Then in a quiet voice he whispered through the crack in the door jamb. “Dim lighting
is
much more romantic anyway.”

Keys jangled as Shane searched for the master. Dolly’s hand brushed against a cold metal cylinder. Clear gloss paint. She remembered the warning on the label:

Danger! Flammable!

She spun around and grabbed the can. She groped in the dark with her other hand, smacking away paints and brushes. It was here somewhere. She had just seen it.

The door behind her burst open.

“Say, bitch,” Shane said. He slapped his cane against one hand. “It’s time to party.”

Dolly felt it at her fingertips, a cool metal-tipped plastic cylinder. She snatched it and the spray can and spun around.

Shane was inches from her, a dark shadow backlit by the dim hallway lights. She aimed the lacquer at the dark recess of his face and sprayed.

“Fuck!” Shane halted. He flinched and spit as the spray coated his face.

Dolly brought the lighter up with her other hand and flicked it beneath the spray can’s stream. The plume exploded into a roaring torrent of yellow fire. Like dragon’s breath it lit the room and rolled toward Shane’s head. He raised a hand in weak defense from the sudden light and approaching heat.

Flames raced through his outstretched fingers. His face ignited into a sizzling yellow fireball. Shane screeched like a terrified child.

Dolly cut the stream. Shane pounded at his face with his hands, one of which was already a flaming torch. He staggered one step back, and then rocketed backward out the door like he’d been sucked out an airlock. He hit the far wall, then went careening down the hallway like a burning torch. The stink of scorched hair and flesh filled the room.

Dolly stood frozen, lighter and paint can pointed at the door and ready to fire at the next face to threaten her. Walking Bear stuck his head in the threshold.

“Hold up,” he said. “I thought you could use a hand, but that was before I knew you had a flamethrower in here.”

Dolly dropped her makeshift weapons to the floor and ran into Walking Bear’s arms. He enveloped her like a big warm blanket. She buried her head in his chest. His shirt smelled like pine needles.

“Am I glad to see you.”

She noticed that Denny and Chester lay in a crumpled pile at the end of the hall. She looked up at Walking Bear.

“Well?”

“They ran into each other in the dark. You ready to get out of here?”

“We can’t,” Dolly said. “The doors are locked.”

“Lightning blew the generator. No power, no locks.”

She looked up at his big broad face. “I’d face the storm before I stayed here.”

“I have a car,” Walking Bear said.

“You have a car?” Dolly said with surprise. “How come you never drove it?”

“Well, I didn’t have anywhere I needed to go.”

Dolly shook her head in wonder.
 

She knew the town’s hurricane protocol. Andy would be at the DPW, ready to respond when the storm let up enough to get things back up and running. And her vision said she needed him.

“We have to stop this madness. At the source. I know just where to go for help,” she said.

They walked out of the home and an armadillo stood at the edge of the sidewalk in the lee of a shrub. It looked up at Walking Bear and tracked him as he approached. Walking Bear nodded to the armadillo. Dolly gave Walking Bear a quizzical look.

“My spirit guide,” he said.
 

The armadillo waddled up to Dolly. It stopped at her feet and sat up on its hind legs like a begging dog. It wagged its snout at Dolly.

Dolly never liked armadillos. They dug up her garden and looked like something God assembled out of spare parts. But she did not recoil, though this creature was just inches from her. It stared up at her with its tiny black eyes set in its pointy armored face.
 

The armadillo radiated some dynamic living power. She felt a strange, calm attraction, and an irresistible urge.

She bent over and reached out with two fingers. She touched the armadillo’s forehead. Her fingertips went warm and energy soft as a summer breeze flowed into her hand. The armadillo dropped down on all fours and sauntered off into the woods. Dolly stared after it in stark amazement, as if the armadillo’s touch had the same effect as Midas’. Walking Bear had to pull her back upright.

“Where’s he going?” she managed to say.

“He will prepare our way.”

“How?”

“I don’t know,” Walking Bear said. “But he does.”

Chapter Fifty-Five

The mosquito swarm surged out of the Magic Shop doorway. It split into three and descended on Andy, Autumn and Felix. The insects coated Andy’s arms like two throbbing black blankets. Bites like needle-pricks raced up his skin like machine gun fire. He dropped the rifle and swept a hand down his left arm. Mosquito bodies crunched against his skin and left a trail of bright red blood. Hundreds more dove in to take their place.

Mosquitoes swarmed his neck like their vampiric brethren. Twin groups surged up his pants and attacked his legs. Mosquitoes flew into his ears and up his nose. They alighted on his eyeballs. He shut his eyes tight and felt their bodies crush. The whine of the insects inspired visions of them inside his brain. He inhaled and insects coated his mouth.