Dark Heart (9 page)

The flames in Kalzar’s eyes flickered. He flashed a smile. “I wish I knew for certain. I was standing in front of my mirror, and I wanted to look in on you. Of course, you know that has been impossible for decades now, divided as we are by the mandate. Imagine my surprise when it actually worked. I wondered what would happen if I stepped through. And here I am. What do you think that means, Justin?”

“It means the master will speak with you, Kalzar, and I will enjoy the aftermath. If you think you’ve found some way to travel the mirror without his knowing it, you’re a fool.”

“I really don’t think so. I’m telling you the truth, you see.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You wouldn’t.” Kalzar smiled thinly. “But you’re growing more sloppy every day, and the master knows it. Perhaps he hoped I would check up on you. Your recent actions endanger us all. Even I, isolated from you for a century, far away in Libya, know this. Imagine my surprise when I received a report from Omar saying that some female detective has been tracking you, and you have not yet killed her.”

“I know about the detective,” Justin said. “She knows nothing I don’t want her to know.”

“Oh, she doesn’t, does she? How pleasant. Omar says she knows more than she should. So when
are
you planning to kill her?”

Justin shivered with rage. “Your oaf Omar has given the Dragon and his disciples a far bigger risk of exposure than I ever will. Like you, he talks about things to others who should not know. I have covered for him so far. His murder of Carlton Wheeler, which I planned for him, was flawless in every way, or at least it would have been if Omar had been capable of keeping his mouth shut. But he babbled about it, a piece of carelessness that would have led straight back to the Dragon had I not taken steps to prevent it. The woman detective knows nothing compared to the information Omar has dropped. I have followed Sandra McCormick’s progress on the Baxter case closely. She’s gotten nowhere with it, but tonight Jack Madrone, the policeman investigating Omar’s murder of Wheeler, almost discovered everything, thanks to Omar’s loose lips!”

“Omar is young, Justin. He is learning. It is your job to train him.”

“If he does something stupid like that again, he’s not worth training. I will kill him then. Lesser disciples must obey or the punishment is death.”

Kalzar’s eyes flashed and he gestured to the needle. “You have no room to talk.
You
are the one who lacks discipline. You have too many weaknesses. Serving the master, spreading his lesson should leave you no time, no room in your heart for your needles, your pitiful drawings, or your women.”

“If the master had not decreed against it, I would have your heart in my hand, Kalzar, and I would squeeze it to dust before your eyes as you passed from this world. Perhaps the master has eased his mandate about this, too. Shall I test it?”

Justin walked toward Kalzar.

The Arab’s eyes narrowed but he held his ground. He wanted the fight, but he wanted Justin to start it.

“I want you out of Chicago,” Justin said. “And I want you to take Omar with you.”

“Omar is here to learn, and he will remain here. Those are the Dragon’s orders, not mine. I have, however, sent him on a small errand tonight, one needed to clean up the loose ends
you
left behind.”

“What I do, I do for a reason,” Justin said. “If Omar interferes with anything I have set in motion, I will destroy him. And then you. We shall see which one of us the master chooses to burn when he takes us both beyond the mirror.”

Kalzar paused, waiting for something, perhaps a sign from the Dragon. No such sign came. Turning, he stepped on the dais. The mirror shimmered as he walked through it and was gone.

S
andra woke up for the third time that night, chased from sleep by nightmares. As she sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes, sirens screamed beyond her windows. She looked at her clock—it was 4:45 in the morning. Her white gauze curtains glowed, lit by the flashing red lights of emergency vehicles. She kicked off the covers, winced as her bare feet hit the cold oak-planked floor, stood up, and stretched. Finally she walked to her window and pushed back the curtains.

Her bedroom faced the street—she’d chosen the room for its southern exposure and large expanse of glass. Fire trucks were parked at the greasy spoon across from her building. She could see flames and smoke billowing from inside the diner. Three firemen with axes were chopping a hole in the roof of the restaurant. More firefighters were on ladders, spraying the roof with water, while others worked on the ground to keep the hoses straight.

She ran her hands through her hair, massaging her scalp. No relief from the headache caused by too little sleep and too much tension. She wondered why so many fires seemed to start at night. Maybe they were just more obvious in the dark…

She let the curtains fall closed, wandered back across the floor, and collapsed limply onto her bed. Between working late, the murder, and her nightmares, she knew she’d never get back to sleep. Maybe that was a good thing. She was afraid the nightmares would return.

They’d been the same for the last several days. Something was chasing her, hunting her. Closing in, even though she was running hard, faster than she’d ever run before. Just as it caught up with her, when she could feel its breath on her back, its sharp teeth on her neck, its claws brushing her skin, she’d wake up, heart hammering like a steam engine.

She shook her head, exasperated.
I don’t jump at shadows. Not anymore
.

Not since she’d left her ex-husband. She’d left that waking, walking nightmare far behind. Chuck was out of her life. Permanently. And that was fine.

Anyway, the dreams she used to have about him were nothing like this. In those dreams, he would hold her underwater until she drowned. She could never break his grip, no matter how hard she struggled, and the more she screamed, the more water filled her lungs.

The highlight of tonight’s nightmare had been that disturbing beast, sharp-toothed and armed with claws. When she woke up it slithered into the shadows of her mind, its precise shape forgotten. But though she couldn’t remember a single clear detail, the dream still left a lingering chill in the air, a darkness around her heart.

Blinking her eyes, she crawled out of bed, opened her door, and, yawning, walked down the hall. There was a light on in the kitchen. Benny was up. The smell of brewing coffee filled the air. He swiveled his wheelchair around as she came into the room and raised one quizzical eyebrow.

“You’re up early,” he said.

Sandra focused her attention on his eyes, not on the scars where half his nose was scraped away. She knew the skin there wasn’t wet, but it always looked that way, slick and shiny, so smooth it glistened in the light.

She forced her gaze to remain steady on his. She knew he hated it when people stared at his disfigurement. He’d been a cute kid before the accident, the sort of gawky, computer geek kind of cute that was all the more endearing because he never seemed to know he was cute.

The other scars on his face wouldn’t be so noticeable, if not for his nose. The surgeons had told them they could do more restorative work, but Benny had refused. He insisted he’d already spent as much time under the knife as he planned to in his life.

And maybe he had a point. Who was she to judge? She wished she didn’t think about it so much. She could only imagine how much
he
must think about it.

“
I’m
up early? What about you? Unless, of course, you haven’t gone to bed yet.” It wasn’t unusual to find Benny still tapping on his computer in the shank of the night, but she had never found him in the kitchen, making coffee at five
A
.
M
.

“Couldn’t sleep,” he said. The coffee machine bubbled and gasped into silence. He swiveled back to it. “Want a cup?”

“Yeah. Please.”

He filled two mugs and put them on the kitchen table. She opened a cupboard, looking for the box of artificial creamer. After years of greasy spoon coffee, she liked the fake stuff better than real cream. Her spoon made small metallic chimes hitting the side of her cup as she stirred.

“Why couldn’t you sleep?” she asked finally.

Benny shrugged, “Well, you know how it is. Those stewardesses, Bambi and Candi—”

“Yeah, yeah.” She grinned. “It’s tough being you.”

Benny chuckled, then turned abruptly serious. “Bad dreams,” he said.

“You, too, huh?”

“You had bad dreams?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Well, that’s kinda strange, both of us getting the night frights,” he said.

“Yeah. What were yours like?”

He shook his head, sipped his coffee. “Someone was chasing me. I can’t really remember, but I think they caught me. That was when I woke up. Hey, did you see what’s happening across the street?”

“Fire or something.”

“Yeah.”

“I had the same kind of dream, you know.”

“You did? Someone chasing you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Shit, that’s freaky.” He sipped thoughtfully, then went on. “Maybe we jumped into one another’s dreams. There’s this guy on-line who talks about stuff like that all the time. I should ask him what it means.” He paused again. “So…who was chasing you? I can’t remember anything about the one after me.”

“I can’t remember much, either.”

Benny shot an exaggerated glance left and right. “
Oooweeeooo
. Bugga bugga!” He wiggled his fingers and grinned. “You think someone’s fuckin’ with us?”

“Yes.” She sighed. “You.”

“No, seriously. Maybe it was some old Indian shaman you put behind bars years ago. He’s come back for his revenge, sneaking into our dreams and messing with our heads.”

“Yeah, right. I never busted a shaman, pal.”

“Sure you did. And right before you busted him, he came to the realization that he was never going to get past level 13 of
Watcher’s Chosen,
and in his insane but wise mind he decided to kill me for my insolence. I told you I designed that, didn’t I?”

“Hmmmmm…” she said. “Your new game, right? Maybe you’re on to something.”

They grinned at each other like idiots.

She got up, wandered out of the kitchen and into the living room, and peered out a window. Rain had been falling all night, and it looked as if it wouldn’t stop any time soon. Gray, dull, and misty out there. Fog off the lake. Not exactly the best start to a morning.

She stood silently, sipping and musing. It was always fun to chat with Benny. They hardly got to talk at all anymore.

Five years ago, she and Benny had almost never left each others’ sides. Benny had been in the hospital recovering from his accident—and she’d been shaky herself, having finally broken free of Chuck.

What an odd pair they’d made then. The cripple and the emotional wreck. But each of them strong in the ways the other was weak—they were like two broken pillars that had fallen onto each other and formed an arch that would endure forever.

Sandra remembered Benny before his accident. She hated to admit it to herself, but she hadn’t really come to enjoy him until after the motorcycle crash. Even as brother and sister, they’d been different, lived in different worlds.

But, even taking that into account, in the years right before the crack-up he’d been something of an intellectual bully. Quietly arrogant. She was sure he’d been picked on in high school for being an egghead, because he’d taken to stinging people in conversation as a sort of revenge on everyone who was more popular and less intelligent than he was. It had started as a defense mechanism, but later she’d seen him verbally vivisect half of their relatives during the course of an afternoon just to amuse himself.

Then, after the accident, he changed dramatically. How could he not? It was one of the things she admired most about him—he’d made something positive out of the most damaging experience of his life. It was amazing how someone who so desperately needed care and tenderness himself could turn and make it his mission in life to give that care to others.

She thought that in many ways, his new personality, too, was a defense mechanism, a reaction to the way people cringed at his appearance and his handicap. Perhaps he doubted that anyone would want to be around him after his accident. Or maybe he found out for himself how good it felt to help others. Or he’d just set out to prove to himself, and everyone else, that he could rise above what had happened to him. Whatever the reason, he’d changed his personality, and changed it for the better.

Now he was fast, fascinating, and fun to be around. If you could get past the grisly scars on his face, Benny was fabulous company. His light-hearted jests were never at the expense of others. He was a wonderful raconteur. He never poked at people’s soft spots. He also seemed impervious to jibes aimed at him.

She wondered how much of this new facade was real interest in the people around him and how much of it was a new, rock-solid defense mechanism against his own pain. The way he joked about his condition sometimes worried her. She sighed, drained her mug, and returned to the kitchen.

“I’m going to take my coffee and go shut myself up in the dungeon again.” Benny said. “I’m almost done with the latest thing in computer games, if I do say so myself.”

Sandra smiled at him. “Okay. When you put the final touches on it, tell me. We’ll celebrate.”

“Are you kidding? I’ll be jumping up and down with glee—oops, cancel that, just a figure of speech. Rolling back and forth with glee!” He turned and trundled off down the hall.

Just before he went through his bedroom door, Sandra called after him. “Hey, Benny?”

“Yeah?” He performed a consummately graceful turn in the confined space of the hall. His feet on their rests came within half an inch of the wall as he whipped around.

“Can I get you to play webmaster for me? I may need some pretty esoteric information on this case.”

“Sure. Why?”

“The murder scene had some pretty strange aspects. I’m thinking it might be some cult thing. So I wondered if there are modern cults responsible for similar killings. Like maybe if the Aztecs are taking hearts again, it should probably turn up on the Web somewhere, right? And there was something that looked like a footprint in the carpet, though not like anything I’ve ever seen. Anyway, I may need you to go digging.”

“Easy. When?”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

“You give the word, Ace. I’m all over it.”

Sandra nodded. “Thanks, Benny.”

“Never mention it.” He turned and went into his room.

Sandra watched until he’d vanished from her sight. She glanced at her empty coffee cup, then placed it carefully in the sink.

“Okay,” she said to her rain-splattered reflection in the kitchen window, “another day, another dollar, girl.” She headed for the shower. Benny’s personality had helped. It really had.

But it was still probably going to be a lousy day.

By the time Sandra descended the stairs of her condo, the sun was rising, filling the world with a flat, gray light, and she was feeling pretty good despite the lack of sleep.

Half a bowl of sugar-coated cereal and a second cup of coffee did wonders for the body. She wished her mind were in the same state. Pausing at the gate of the small yard in front of the building, she looked at the gray clouds above her, at the way the whole world was shrunken into a cage of mist. Chicago in the fall…chilly.

Cab drivers were honking at the fire trucks still obstructing traffic in the street. In the building next door, a young mother was yelling at her wailing kid. The ordinary sounds of the city had her jumping today, had her adrenaline pumping.

The dreams she could not remember still clutched at her with heavy, invisible tendrils. Each time she thought she had the threads in her grasp, they snapped, broke away. Yet every time she concentrated on something else, they reached for her again, making her gut clench. Irrational, but there it was.

She shook her head in irritation and began walking to her car. The drive through the commuter-clogged Chicago streets was uneventful, as she listened to traffic bulletins about huge jams on the Eisenhower and the Dan Ryan Expressway.

The tops of midtown skyscrapers that towered overhead were invisible now, enveloped by mist and rain, the Sears Tower off to the south completely vanished. Before she was ready for it, the Eighteenth District Station appeared, looming out of the gloom on West Chicago Avenue. She turned into the parking garage and grabbed the first available space.

She got out, picked up her briefcase, and closed the door. The soft
chunk
echoed in the garage. It was almost too quiet. Sandra narrowed her eyes and looked around. To all appearances she was alone. So why did she feel like something was
watching
…?

She looked around again.

Nothing. She shook her head in irritation and marched purposefully toward the doors leading into the station. Inside, things were pretty much normal. Surly gangbangers, whores still in their evening drag, drug users, drug dealers, batterers, and all the people who’d had their ordinary lives interrupted by one or more of the above, surged and yammered at each other, the typical urban stew.

The uniforms in charge of dealing with the chaos looked stolid, braced against the tide of human misery. The desk sergeant gave her a wink as she passed by.

There wasn’t a news hound in sight, so the lid was still on the Madrone story. Breathing a sigh of relief, she headed upstairs to her own turf, the detective squad room. McKenzie was talking on the phone to someone.