The Dark Communion (The Midnight Defenders) (22 page)

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27

At the base of the stairwell was a narrow hallway, maybe eight-feet tall, five wide. It wasn’t the kind of place you wanted to be if you were claustrophobic, that’s for sure. It was tight quarters, dark as pitch, and smelled like old sewage and mildew.

I kept the light low as we moved, sweeping across the concrete floor, smooth like an unfinished basement but for the cracks. Ape moved quickly ahead of me, trusting his glasses to show him the way, his steps silent, feet clad in his ninja shoes.

My footsteps, however, rebounded from the stone walls, sounding at times almost like they were coming from behind us. I’m not normally paranoid, but I’m not usually so confined. I can handle myself if I have room to maneuver. Down there, I didn’t. And that worried me.

I kept turning around, my light playing across the walls that looked like they’d protect some massive fortress, comprised of those elephant bricks, each one about the size of a large shoe box, but there was never anything except darkness and the echoing sound.

It was hard to say how far or how long we walked in the darkness, but eventually the hallway emptied out into a slightly bigger room, some kind of empty alcove, littered loosely with old tabloid papers and gossip magazines like the lining of a hamster’s cage. A single hallway to the right appeared to be the only exit.

As we walked, a static hum began to form into voices somewhere ahead. Ape looked at me, and I nodded I heard it, too.

The last time I’d come into the old town, I walked larger hallways and seen rooms as large as caverns, streets that had been long forgotten. The hallway we’d taken wasn’t like that. And when the second hallway ended, I realized why. What we’d been walking through was a private entrance into Seven’s living room.

The room wasn’t large, maybe the size of Ape’s entryway at the Manor. The floor was carpeted in more sleazy catalogues, old coats, strips of flannel, and what looked like a moth-eaten Persian rug whose design was muted and masked over with the crap that had been stacked atop it. Intermingled among the books and cloth were empty Pringles tubes and potato chip bags, spent cans of creamed corn and mini raviolis. Yet despite the mess, the fucker had a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, and the only light in the room came from the strobe effect of the flickering monitor that rolled the credits of some late night talk show.

Seven was sitting in a beat-up, old recliner at the room’s center. His mousey hair was tousled chaotically, and his head lay against one of his shoulders. His eyes were half-opened, his mouth was agape, and a half-eaten cheese puff balanced on his bottom lip, orange cheese dust lightly coated the breast of the old t-shirt he wore. One hand was tucked into the beltline of his khaki cargos.

I was tempted to snap a photo of him like that, post it behind the bar of all the places he liked to go. Just for shits and giggles.

I glanced at Ape, saw the anticipation in his eyes, some crazy quirk in the twist at the corner of his lips. He looked unstable, and I grabbed his shoulder to stay him as he tried to march forward at Seven. I motioned for him to hang back. He argued, but reluctantly backed away and stood against the wall, balanced his sword-cane in an open hand.

I took three steps toward Seven and kicked the side of his chair, catching the little lip of the arm and sending the entire recliner onto its side with a crash. He fell end-overend, his bare feet tossed into the air. A loud whine followed, and Seven’s buggy eyes and wild mop popped up over the arm of the chair and twitched back and forth between me and Ape.

I couldn’t see Seven’s mouth, but could hear his tongue flapping, the blabbering stutter of incomprehensible syllables spilling over his teeth, and then that became a string of words and names that would make a sailor in a bar blush. “Swyftt?” he managed to say, finally, his voice as full of surprise as anger, fear, and confusion. “Swyfswyf-swyf-swyf…. Fucking Christ. What the Hell are you doing here? How…I mean, how the…you know where I live?”

“Put a sock in it,” I ordered. “The how is not important at present, Mate. All that matters now is the what and the who and, well, maybe quite possibly a why. So start talking.”

“What?” he stammered. “What…what…”

“Okay. Start with the what.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, still hiding behind the toppled chair.

“You know bloody well what I’m talking about. The tramps and the children.” I looked at Ape. “Sounds like a folk song.” He didn’t find that funny. I smiled a little.

“Oh…shit,” Seven said.

“Start. Fucking. Talking,” Ape said, teeth clenched.

“I told you,” he said. “I don’t know anything. I swear to fucking Zeus. I told you at the Song, Swyftt.” He looked over at me frantically, his eyes wide. “I don’t fucking know shit. I swear to fucking Set. Just get the fuck outta my house, or…”

“Or what?”

He didn’t answer. The chair that he was hiding behind shook a little, lifted a foot into the air, floated there a second, and launched at my head.

Everything happened so fast I barely had time to react, but managed to throw myself to the side. The chair just narrowly missed me as it hit the wall and collapsed into a heap of parts.

The moment I dodged, I heard a rustle, the Shinnnng of metal, knew Ape had made a move. When I rolled over to glance at Seven, I was only half-surprised to see not the TV’s erratic light illuminating the half-Kory, but the violet glow of Ape’s cane-sword as he held Seven by the throat, pinned him to the floor with a knee to the chest and bladepoint to the jugular.

But that wasn’t all the purple light shone on: Ape’s face, his features twisted by rage and his thirsty need for vengeance. “Make a move,” he challenged. “Just make one move.”

“Swyftt?” Seven mewled.

I stood slowly, dusted myself off. “Fuck you, Seven. He’s going to kill you, and you fucking deserve it, you piece of shit. I’ll have to find someone else to feed me answers from now on, but I think in the long run, it’ll be worth it. You chose to fear the wrong person, Seven.

Whatever knots your knickers isn’t here right now to do you in.” I smiled, made sure he saw. “I am.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait,” he said. “I…I…” His eyes darted to the blade against his neck and then followed the steel up to the hairy hand that had a firm grasp of the eagle’s talon. He managed to take a deep breath and said, “I can tell you something.”

“Oh, sure,” Ape spat. “Now he can talk.”

“What happened to how it used to be, Seven?” I asked. “I’d show up, slip you a hundred bucks and a new issue of Hustler, and you’d just tell me whatever you knew. You had to go and make things all complicated. I can’t have that, so I had to track you down and teach you a lesson.”

Ape must have pushed the blade in a little more, that or my words had moved him, because Seven began to panic and whimper, “Please, Swyftt. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll tell you now. I swear it, I’ll tell you what I know.” I could actually hear his skin sizzling where the iron touched him.

“It’s too late,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual. “I already know about the Bogey, Seven.”

Seven stopped cold and confusion sat heavy on his brows for a brief instant before his eyes went wide. “Lorelei,” he said. “That bitch said something….” But as Ape pressed harder, Seven just started to gurgle.

“I’d watch how you talk about certain mutual friends of the female persuasion, Seven. I would think you’d be trying to garner my favor.” I was never good at acting. The fact that I kept the surprise and horror from my voice amazed me. I should have gotten an Oscar for how cool I played it. But…Lorelei? What did she know about this? “Ape…,” I said.

Ape didn’t look at me, his facial features hard and focused. “Ape,” I said again. “He’s gonna talk.”

“It’s all lies,” he said. His voice sounded hollow. His eyes were hidden behind the glasses, the lenses of which had turned a solid, opaque red. “He’ll just play you for a fool, Jono. You can’t trust a word this dog says.”

“How does he do it, Seven?” I said louder, ignoring Ape’s words. Seven didn’t seem to understand my meaning so I said, “The Bogey, Seven. How is he controlling them?”

“I…,” he started to say. “Fuck, Swyftt. I don’t…” He threw his hands up suddenly, a fresh panic sweeping across his face. Ape must have applied more pressure. “I swear to you, Swyftt. I didn’t know anything about a Bogey. I swear. I fucking swear. I heard people talk, that’s it. I heard something about a new player. That’s what I know. Please…”

“You heard something about a ‘new player’? That’s what’s got you so fucking spooked?” I shook my head. “I don’t believe it.”

The sizzling grew louder, like bacon frying in a skillet. Seven’s voice became a falsetto as he said, “Look…fuck…look. Swyftt, I swear. I swear to fucking Zeus, I had no idea it was a Bogey. I had no idea. If I did, I woulda told ya. Honest. I mean, what good is it to get scared from a Bogey, right? He’d just feed offa me. I mean, c’mon. Fuck. Come on!”

I had to laugh a little. He sounded like Mickey Mouse.

Still, he had a point, and I’m not sure why, but I believed him. “Ape. Let him up.”

“Jono…?”

“Let him up.”

There was a ruffle of motion and noise and Ape backed away from Seven’s chest. He kept the blade held tightly in his hand, and the violet glow seemed even more menacing than ever.

As soon as Ape was away, Seven scurried backward until his neck and shoulders met the wall and pulled his legs up near him, hugged his knees to his chest. He whimpered like a cowed dog, touched the mark on his neck light and quick, as though it were still hot.

“Can we talk civilized now, Mate?” I asked.

Seven looked at me a moment and said, “If I tell you what I know, will you get out of my house?”

“What, before the grand tour?”

He sucked in a quick breath and took his time blowing it out, then looked me straight in the eye and said, “This is what I know, Swyftt. I swear, I swear, I swear this is all the shit that I know. I heard somebody say some shit about something called the Dark Communion.” He must have seen the look in my eyes and read the question on my face before I could ask it. “I don’t know what the fuck it is. Some ritual or something. Ancient magic. That’s what I got. That’s all I know.”

“Seven…?”

“Look, that’s it. I swear. Fuck, I swear.”

“You mentioned Lorelei’s name. Why?”

“Look, I told you everything I got,” he said quickly.

I pulled Grace and pointed her straight at his face. “Lorelei. What does she have to do with it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I heard her say something, Swyftt. That’s it. She said something to someone. I don’t know who she was talking to. I was sitting at a table and I could hear her voice real low, like, from inside one of the dancing tents.”

“And what did she say?”

“I told you, Swyftt. Fuck! She said the Dark Communion. She didn’t say anything else about it, just that he was using it…or was going to use it. How the fuck should I know?”

“Who’s he?” Ape asked, taking a step closer.

Seven’s eyes widened and he lurched a few inches away from Ape. “I don’t know, man. Shit. That’s all I heard. You want to know more you go fucking ask that whore.”

There was a loud crack and pop that reverberated through the little stone room as Grace bitch-smacked Seven on the side of the head, toppled him into the corner. He spat what looked like bloody diarrhea into his open palm. Brownish purple stuff on the barrel of my gun, too. Fucking Korys.

“Don’t talk about her like that,” I spat and kicked him swiftly in the stomach, made him lurch again.

I picked up a scrap of cloth from the floor and used it to wipe Grace, then turned to Ape. “What do you think?”

He considered the informant a minute and said, “I think he still knows something he’s not saying.”

“I don’t, man,” Seven groaned. “I fucking swear I don’t. Shit, Swyftt. You gotta believe me. There’s not a lot of people that know what I just told you. They say there’s a new player, nobody knows who it is. I didn’t even know it was a Bogey…please, Swyftt.” His words faded into mumbling sobs, and his whimpering became crying. He managed to sit up like before and buried his head in his knees and wept.

I sat and watched him, feeling a mixture of anger and sorrow and pity. He shook in a muffled cry. Ape watched, too, but his snarl didn’t waver.

I motioned for him, and he came near. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, “We’re done here. You can put the sword away.”

There must have been some internal conflict, because it took him a moment, looking from Seven to me. He let out a deep breath and surrendered, turned the ambient glow into a couple dozen colored sigils that gave off no more actual light than a glow-in-the-dark children’s toy.

“Seven isn’t responsible,” I said.

Ape didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on Seven. Said nothing for a minute, then something in his demeanor changed, the hardness broke, and he nodded. “I know. We’re done here.”

I nodded and let him lead the way once more through the tunnel. This time I wasn’t being cautious for myself, letting him go first, I just wanted to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t do anything stupid once I turned my back.

When we were topside again, we slid the dumpster back into place and walked back to the car. I opened my door, but he hesitated, held loosely to the handle.

“Jono,” he said. “About that…back there.”

I looked up at him, and he stared down at the car, maybe his reflection in the glass. “It wasn’t you,” I said and didn’t doubt it for a minute. “It was the pain.”

He nodded. “I’m embarrassed still. It’s… I mean, I’m…”

I shook my head. “Just get in the fucking car.”

He nodded.

As I drove, I watched the road intently, thinking about Seven’s words. “I need to see Lorelei,” I said.

“Okay. I think that’s a good idea. But I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re too emotional. You need distance.”

I felt his hand on my forearm. “When it comes to Lorelei, Jono, I’m not the one that’s emotional. You’re not going without me.”

I considered it for a moment. “Okay. Then let’s go see her.”