It Happened One Doomsday (26 page)

“And
that
,” Rane said from the darkness, “is how you do it.”

Dru and Greyson followed her inside. Salem's place occupied the top floor of the abandoned building, a maze of antiques and magical junk packed under a slanted roof. Clusters of candles burned here and there on foundations of built-up melted wax.

An old cigar box sat near the door, its lid flipped open. It was half full of sand, and someone, presumably Salem, had drawn an unfamiliar sorcio sign in it. A grid of four crystals sat at the corners of the box to focus whatever magic power the symbol conjured up. Nearby sat the red zincite crystal Dru had sold him the other day.

Looking around the room, Dru was reminded why she had started dating Nate in the first place. A sorcerer like Salem couldn't have a secure, supportive relationship with anyone. Then again, Salem wasn't typical of most sorcerers. Some of them were even crazier.

“Over here,” Greyson called. “You're going to want to see this.” He stood before an entire wall turned into a vision board for the end of the world.

Ancient drawings, newspaper clippings, photos, maps, and printouts all hung layered one over another, forming a ragged collage of the apocalypse. It took Dru a minute to soak it in.

Rane let out a long whistle.

“Salem's been at this for a while.” Dru pointed out torn sections of city maps that identified three individual houses, colored in with a yellow highlighter. “He told me that he was investigating a string of disappearances.”

Hand-drawn lines led from each house to a row of mugshots of three scruffy, unsavory-looking men with sunken eyes and hard stares. Beneath each photo was pinned a printout listing a name, description, address, and a list of criminal offenses: assault, burglary, and worse. Someone had written in bold marker above each, “Red. White. Silver.”

In the fourth column, labeled “Black,” was nothing but a hand-drawn rectangle containing a question mark.

Rane tapped her finger on the rectangle. “That's where you go, bub.”

Greyson shook his head. “Doesn't make sense. These are the other three Horsemen? They're all criminals.”

“Weak-willed,” Dru said. “Easy prey for demons. But in your case, Hellbringer was drawn to your innate magical power.”

“Unless,” Rane added, “you've got some kind of sordid, criminal-mastermind past we don't know about?”

Greyson looked directly at her. “It's true. You didn't know?”

Rane rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

His red eyes turned back to Dru, the trace of amusement in them vanishing. He didn't have to say out loud what they were both thinking: he would be the fourth Horseman right now if it weren't for her.

“Hey.” Rane tapped her fingers on a cluster of handwritten pages. “Looks like Salem tore these out of your book.”

Cursing inwardly, Dru scanned the pages. They were definitely torn from the Harbingers' journal. The scribbled handwriting ranted endlessly about overpopulation, nuclear escalation, the destruction of the environment, even the moon landing. Clearly, whatever nameless sorcerer had written this was disgusted with the state of the world in the late 1960s.

Someone had recently highlighted the phrase she had seen earlier:

The day has come to wipe the slate clean. Do it over, and do it right. Apokalipso voluta is the key. With it, we Harbingers will remake the world the way it was meant to be.

“
Apokalipso voluta.
‘The apocalypse scroll,'” Dru translated aloud. Nearby hung a drawing taken from a faded medieval text, showing a single scroll with seven seals. She skimmed over the lengthy notes pinned around it. “Breaking the seven seals on this scroll supposedly triggers the apocalypse. People have been searching for it for centuries. Some, because they want to save the world. Others, because they want to destroy it.”

“Do you think the Harbingers found it?” Greyson said.

“They had to, in order to summon the Four Horsemen. But it couldn't have been easy.” Dru pointed to a map of New Mexico. A scanned and blown-up series of hand-drawn symbols laid out the now-familiar sorcio code for
causeway
. “What if there was a reason no one had ever found the scroll before? What if it wasn't anywhere on earth? If the apocalypse scroll was hidden in the netherworld, the Harbingers could've built this portal to gain access to the causeways and go find it.”

She spotted a black-and-white photo of the Harbingers. The shot was similar to the one she had already seen, but taken from slightly farther away, revealing that the Harbingers were standing at the base of their archway in the desert.

A detail caught her eye, something she hadn't noticed before: a line of sorcio signs carved into the base of the archway. They were so tiny she had trouble making them out. She took off her glasses and squinted. “I asked Salem if he knew the sign of a seven-fingered hand. He said no. Why would he lie to me?”

“I was trying to protect you,” a voice said from across the room. Startled, Dru shoved her glasses back on and straightened up.

Salem stood in the doorway, his top hat casting a shadow over his features. He turned toward Greyson. “Who's your friend here? He seems not so fresh.”

Dru pointed angrily at the pages torn from the Harbinger journal. “You stole this book from me. You lied about the Harbingers.”

Salem shrugged and strolled inside, kicking the door shut behind him. “I try to keep amateurs out of the line of fire. Misplaced sense of duty, I suppose. Maybe instead I should just let you sacrifice your mortal soul. Your call.” He took off his top hat, letting his long hair cascade over his face.

Rane planted a fist on her hip. “You could've just asked us for help and not been a complete jackwad about it.”

Inwardly, Dru groaned. She should've known better than to risk putting Rane in the same room with Salem. She certainly hadn't forgiven him yet, and maybe never would, considering she apparently couldn't help but antagonize him.

It seemed to be working. Salem's face stiffened with anger, and he lifted one arm to point his long fingers at Rane. They rippled in a spidery, arcane gesture, and the air around his fingertips rippled with magic.

Instantly, Rane tightened her fist around her ring and transformed her body into shimmering titanium.

“Stop!” Dru shouted, drawing a startled look from Salem. She stepped between him and Rane. “You can keep the book. And we'll just leave. As soon as you tell me how to undo what the Harbingers did.”

Slowly, Salem lowered his arm. He shook his hair out of his face and sniffed, smiling sadly. “You can't.”

“I don't believe that,” Dru said, with more conviction than she felt.

“Ooh. Denial. I like that strategy.” He fixed her with a half-crazy stare, made even starker by the black eyeliner around his eyes. “What are the stages again? We've already had anger. Next we're onto, what, bargaining?”

“You think this is some kind of joke?” Dru said.

He gave her a look of mock sorrow. “Darling, it's all one big cosmic joke being played on us. Don't you know that by now?”

With an effort, Dru resisted getting drawn into Salem's unhinged logic. “Look, you've obviously been studying these Harbingers. So just tell me. Did they really break the seals on the apocalypse scroll? Is that what's happening?”

He folded his arms. “Do you actually need me to tell you that?”

With a whisper of metal, Rane turned human again. “Forget it, D. He'll just keep messing with you until you can't think straight.”

“No.” Dru shook her head. “Salem, you know me. We're in this together. Talk to me.”

Salem paced, his twitchy black-outlined eyes studying Greyson, paying considerable attention to the nubs of his horns. Greyson just stood his ground, shoulders back, locking stares with Salem until the sorcerer finally averted his gaze.

“They broke the first seal on the scroll in 1969,” Salem said. “The apocalypse has been a long time coming, you know. You can't stop it just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “They planned this all out from the beginning. They wanted to remake the world. Wipe the slate clean. Start over fresh and new, and do everything right.”

“Sounds like you admire them,” Dru said, unable to hide her disgust.

He shrugged. “We all have to die someday.”

“But not all on the
same
day. So how do we stop it?”

“You?” He seemed amused by that. “Well, first, find the apocalypse scroll before all seven seals are broken. Good luck with that.”

“How do you know they haven't broken all the seals already?”

“Because we're still standing here.” With a sigh, Salem slunk across the room and gestured to a section of the wall over Dru's head, where he'd listed the seven seals as bullet points. “The first four seals have already been broken, conjuring up the Four Horsemen. Breaking the fifth seal makes the dead rise from the grave. And considering that the streets aren't crawling with hordes of zombies yet, I'm thinking seal number five is still wrapped for freshness.”

“For now,” Rane said.

“Who else knows about this?” Dru indicated the whole wall with a sweep of her arm. “We need all the help we can get. Every sorcerer, everywhere.”

His crazed eyes turned toward her, suddenly piercing. “You think you're the first one to try to band everyone together into some kind of rah-rah super team to save the world? Please.”

A sour feeling filled Dru's stomach. “You've already tried to stop this, haven't you?”

“Darling, half the sorcerers out there think the end is inevitable, and they're just waiting for the clock to run out. Others think the world
needs
to be put out of its misery. The rest suspect it's all some kind of cruel hoax, a trick to get them to show their cards. You know how we sorcerers are.” He gave her a gaunt smile. “Trust is an issue.”

“Shocking.”

Rane put a heavy hand on Dru's shoulder. “Speaking of trust, don't listen to him. You don't know how much of this is gospel and how much is total crap.”

Salem didn't seem fazed. “Notice how I've refrained from pointing out that you thieves callously invaded my sanctuary and snooped through my research.”

Rane cocked her head. “Notice how I'm not kicking your ass?”

“Okay,” Dru said, pushing Rane toward the door. “Okay. Time to go.” As much as Dru wanted to count on Salem's help, it was obvious they were on their own.

“Just so we're clear,” Greyson said to Salem, “we find the apocalypse scroll before the rest of the seals are broken, and this all ends.”

Salem looked him over, one eye twitching. “You're an unusually sharp one, aren't you?”

“Greyson?” Dru called, holding the door open for Rane.

She could practically feel the intensity in the air as Greyson and Salem stared each other down. Finally, Greyson turned and followed Rane out onto the roof.

“Why isn't he like the other Horsemen?” Salem said just before Dru closed the door. His gaze turned icy. “Why is he still human?”

“How should I know?” Dru answered as sweetly as she could. “I'm just an amateur.”

33

RADIOACTIVE

Find the scroll. That was all they had to do. But how?

Hellbringer carried them through the crowded night streets back toward The Crystal Connection. Even the growl of its engine seemed subdued by the impossible task ahead of them. The foul, brimstone-tainted air glowed in its headlights.

Dru's mind kept going back to that photo. There was something about that line of symbols beneath the archway that tugged at her, but now there was no way to know what they said. Besides, Salem was more fluent in sorcio signs than anyone she knew. If even he hadn't found anything important in that photo, there was probably nothing to find.

All of which put her back at square one. No clues, no scroll, nothing.

“By the way,” Greyson said, breaking into her thoughts, “this is for you.” He reached inside his leather jacket, pulled out a crinkled photo, and handed it over to her.

It was the photo of the Harbingers. The one with the line of symbols across the base of the archway.

He glanced up in the rearview mirror for a moment, headlights reflecting on his face, then turned his attention back to the road. “I saw you looking at it when Mr. Personality showed up. Rane was distracting him, so I took a chance and grabbed it for you.”

She could have kissed him. Except for the possible magical consequences. “You're the best, you know that?”

Seeing her elated smile, his expression softened. “See? I am a criminal mastermind after all.”

* * *

Back at the shop, Dru took off her glasses and studied the photograph under a magnifying glass. For once, being nearsighted had its advantages.

The edges of the black-and-white photo were notched and browned with age. A rusty U-shape was pressed into one edge, where it had been paper-clipped to something for many years.

She studied the line of symbols carved into the stone ramp beneath the Harbingers' feet. She hadn't noticed the symbols when she'd been at the archway, possibly because the base was covered up by desert sand, but mostly because they were busy running for their lives. She did have, however, the distinct feeling that the stones were built to accommodate a trapdoor or compartment of some kind.

Lips moving, she puzzled out the meaning of the symbols, occasionally checking them against the books she had opened up beside her. Connecting the dots simply made her more uneasy.

Rane leaned against her back, hair hanging down. “What does it say?”

Dru set down the photo and cleared her throat. “‘Herein lies the end and the beginning.'”

Rane wrinkled her nose. “The hell does that mean?”

“We were right there, and we didn't see it. It's in there, buried inside the base of the archway.”