Beyond the Reflection’s Edge (3 page)

Clara picked up a baseball bat. “You’d better not try to stop us if you know what’s good for you.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Dr. Simon said, “but you have far greater obstacles to overcome.” With beads of sweat dotting his bare head, he nodded toward the tri-fold mirror standing behind the coffins. “We will soon have company, a man we must not rile. I insist that you remain silent and let me do all the talking.”

Nathan gritted his teeth. “Why should I do what you say? I’ll just —”

“Look in the mirror,” Dr. Simon said, pointing at the reflection. “You will see.”

Nathan stared at the crystal clear image — the three of them, standing in the dim props room, but two other figures had joined them, the two who had stood at the performance hall exit, the tall man and the guy in the blue blazer. Nathan swung his head back toward the door. The other men weren’t there.

Grabbing his mother’s coffin with one hand, Nathan wagged his head, trying to watch reality and the reflected image at the same time. Dr. Simon was just trying to distract him. The mirror couldn’t show —

Footsteps clopped along the hall above their heads. Nathan glanced up. Could the men in the mirror really be coming? Tightening his fingers around the neck of his violin, he flexed his muscles. He was ready. One way or another, he and Clara were going to make a getaway.

Dr. Simon folded the mirror, hiding its reflective surface. As he slid it behind a bookshelf, the door at the top of the stairs swung open, singing a low creak. He waved frantically at Clara, whispering, “Hide your weapon!”

As she laid the bat at her feet, heavy footfalls rumbled down the steps, drawing closer. When a man entered the prop room, Dr. Simon’s flashlight beam illuminated the emblem on the newcomer’s blazer — three infinity symbols in a vertical stack, close to each other so that their lines intermeshed.

Nathan took a deep breath. Bad guy number two would be tougher than Simon.

“Dr. Gordon,” Dr. Simon said, flashing a nervous grin. “You have come just in time. Where is Mictar?”

“He’s nearby.” Stroking his chin, Dr. Gordon scanned the room, first eyeing Nathan, then Clara before calling out, “It’s safe.”

More footsteps sounded from the stairs, slower this time, more like the tiptoe steps of a child rather than a man of any gravity. When Mictar finally entered, his thin pallid face seemed to hover over Dr. Gordon’s shoulder. With his slick white hair pulled back into a collar-length ponytail, he looked like a lost hippie who forgot to die of old age.

As Mictar gazed across the room, a half smile turned one of his hollow cheeks upward. “What have we here, Dr. Simon? I hope you have not acted too hastily.” His words echoed, though the room seemed to dampen everyone else’s voice.

Nathan shuddered. This guy seemed more like a ghost than a man, a walking corpse fresh from the graveyard. He gripped his instrument once again. Now he had three guys to get past.

Dr. Simon laughed nervously. “I wanted to wait for you, but they were getting suspicious. I had to make sure they didn’t run.”

As if floating along the floor, Mictar padded up to the coffins and leaned his tall body over the lifeless forms, studying them from top to bottom. “A bullet in the heart and a slashed throat,” he said, caressing Francesca’s colorless cheek. “This is lovely work, Simon. Did you do the deeds yourself?”

Folding his hands behind him, Simon raised up on his toes, blinking rapidly. “Of course. No one else knows of your plan.”

Nathan boiled inside. He watched for a good opening, maybe when at least two of the creeps had their backs turned.

“Is that so?” Mictar licked the end of the finger that had touched Francesca’s cheek. “Show me your palms.”

Dr. Simon lifted his hands. Mictar drew close and latched on to each of Dr. Simon’s wrists with his spindly fingers. After taking a long sniff of Simon’s palms, Mictar furrowed his brow. “I smell the blood of your victims as well as the gun’s residue, but the sweet aroma of residual fear is missing.”

Simon cleared his throat. “The Shepherds displayed no fear at all.”

Mictar nodded slowly. “Ah! I see. But your fear is now so strong, I would wager that even the ungifted can detect its odor.”

“Is that so unusual?” Dr. Simon jerked his hands away and wrung them more vigorously than ever. “Anyone who has seen your power would be frightened at your displeasure.”

“That is true of my enemies. My loyal friends have no reason to fear me.” Mictar reached into Nathan’s mother’s coffin and lifted her eyelid. “Her light is extinguished. They no longer have value.”

“No value? I don’t understand.”

Mictar pulled away from the coffin. “You disappoint me, Simon. I wanted her eyes while they still breathed the light, her eyes above any others. And I was hoping to keep at least one of the Solomons alive long enough to learn their secrets.”

Simon squirmed like a scolded schoolboy. “I didn’t know. I mean, if I had known, I would have —”

“You have no need to explain.” Mictar turned to Nathan and smiled, though his pointed yellow teeth revealed ravenous hunger rather than joy. “You have brought one of the offspring to replace what has been lost. An excellent gift, indeed, for he will likely possess what I wanted from her.”

Mictar’s gaze flooded Nathan’s body with icy shivers. As weakness buckled his knees, he braced himself on the side of a coffin.

“Of course I brought him,” Simon replied. “Never let it be said that Flavius Simon leaves any task undone.”

Mictar’s rapacious smile returned. “You have spoken well, for your tasks are now complete. With the four adult Shepherds dead, I no longer have need of your services. The fewer people who know, the better. The seeds of interdimensional disharmony are best sown by the hands of the ignorant.”

Dr. Gordon grabbed Simon and twisted his arm behind his back, while Mictar glided closer and raised his splayed fingers. His cadaverous body seemed to become a shadow, darkening with each step.

Nathan heaved deep breaths, trying to keep from shaking uncontrollably. What was this … this thing? He slid between Clara and the shadowy phantom. “Just stay cool,” he whispered. “We’ll get out of here somehow.”

As Mictar drew within an arm’s reach, Dr. Simon thrashed. “Just give me another assignment!” he cried. “I’ll do anything you want!”

Dr. Gordon yanked Simon’s arm up toward his neck, freezing him in place.

“Anything I want?” Mictar covered Dr. Simon’s eyes with his dark hand and spoke softly. “I want you to die.”

Dr. Simon’s body stiffened, his mouth locked open in a voiceless scream. As Mictar kept his hand over his victim’s eyes, sparks flew around his fingers, and the two men seemed to hover a few inches off the floor. Simon quaked violently, while Mictar’s body gradually regained its light.

Nathan spread out his arms, shielding Clara. All he could do was try to protect his tutor. There seemed no way to stop whatever was happening to Dr. Simon.

After a few torturous seconds, Mictar pulled his hand back, revealing Dr. Simon’s eye sockets, now blackened by emptiness; something had consumed his eyeballs and left behind nothing but gaping pits. With the sickening odor of charred flesh now permeating the room, Dr. Simon collapsed on the floor.

Mictar took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The combination of fear and death is an aroma surpassing all others.” He turned to Dr. Gordon. “Collins and Mills stayed on guard in the hallway upstairs. Call them down. You will need help to dispose of all five bodies.”

Nathan cringed. Five bodies?

Gordon pulled a cell phone from his pocket and pressed a button on the side. “Collins. Get down here.”

Again tightening his fingers around the violin, Nathan whispered to Clara. “It’s now or never.”

Clara slowly crouched toward her bat. “You get the tall one.”

Nathan lunged and swung wildly at Mictar’s head. The wood smashed against his thin cheek with a loud crack, and the tightly wound strings sliced into his skin. The violin shattered into a dozen varnished shards, leaving only the fingerboard in Nathan’s hands.

Mictar fell against the wall, covering his mouth as dark blood poured between his fingers and dripped onto the floor. Clara bashed Gordon in the groin. He collapsed to his knees and let out a loud groan, his eyes clenched shut.

Nathan latched on to Clara’s arm and pulled. “Run!” They stormed out of the prop room, sidestepped a man with a gray beard as he neared the stairwell landing, and dashed through the other doorway into the dim air-duct room. Lowering their heads, they clattered along the narrow catwalk under a maze of interconnected duct work.

A muffled voice called behind them. “Don’t worry about us. Get them!”

When they reached the end of the room, a single bulb attached to the low ceiling shone on a gray double door that rose no higher than Nathan’s chest. He gave the door a hefty push with both hands. Although it bent outward a few inches, it
snapped right back. He dropped to his bottom and thrust his feet against the latch. The wood cracked but didn’t give way.

Behind them, footsteps rattled the catwalk. Nathan kicked again. The door splintered and banged open, revealing a four-foot drop to a hallway below. He sprang to his feet, ducked into the opening, and dropped to the ground. Clara followed. Her white evening gown poofed out like a parachute as she bent her knees to absorb the impact.

Nathan pointed at a sign over an alcove opening just a few paces away. “A fire escape!”

They dashed into the short corridor that ended abruptly at a tall window. Nathan threw the sash open, letting in a blast of cool air. After stepping out onto the wobbly fire escape landing, he helped Clara through. Just as he pushed the window closed, Mictar’s henchmen turned into the alcove, the gray-bearded one drawing a pistol.

Nathan thrust his finger downward. “Go!”

Clara kicked off her high-heels and clambered down the steps. A bullet shattered the glass and zinged past Nathan’s ear. He leaped halfway down the first flight, shaking the entire framework as he landed. “Faster!”

As his footfalls rang through the metal stairs, a shout sounded from above. “You follow. I’ll get the car.”

Scrambling across a landing, Nathan caught up with Clara as she turned down the next flight. Another gunshot cracked through the whistling wind. Nathan hopped up on the railing, slid past Clara, and dropped feet first to the landing. “Come on!” he shouted as Clara caught up. “He can’t get a good shot through the steps!”

As they closed in on the ground level, they dropped below the top floor of the parking garage across the street. Nathan glanced up. Their pursuer was galloping down the steps two levels above.

Seconds later, Nathan halted at the final stretch, a long,
horizontal ladder that would swing them down to the sidewalk as they added their weight to the stairs. He leaped out, grabbed the railing, and rode the metal bridge to the ground. When the supports smacked against the concrete, Clara hopped on the rail and slid down, almost beating Nathan to the bottom.

They jumped from the stairs. As the rusty span sprang back up, Clara pointed down the road. “The limo’s that way!” They broke into a mad sprint, Nathan intentionally staying one step behind, glancing back constantly. Suddenly the black Mustang careened around a corner three blocks to their rear and thundered toward them.

“They have wheels now!” Nathan shouted.

“So do we!” Clara turned down an alley where the black stretch limo idled. A stubby man in a chauffeur’s cap leaned against the front fender, tipping back a bottle of Mountain Dew.

“Mike!” Clara waved her hands as she slowed down. “I’ll take the car!”

Mike spun around and opened the door for them. “In trouble again?” he asked.

“Big time!” Now puffing heavily Clara slid behind the wheel. Nathan leaped on the hood and vaulted to the other side. Throwing open the passenger’s door, he dove in and jerked upright in his seat.

The Mustang, its convertible top now folded down, skidded to a stop in front of them, blocking the alley’s exit. Clara lowered the window and glanced between Mike and the Mustang, her eyes wide as she tried to catch her breath. “How do I get to the expressway?”

Mike pointed at the street in front of them. “That’s Congress. Turn right, cross the bridge, and you’re there.”

As the window hummed back to the top, Clara smacked the floor stick into gear. “Get buckled!”

Nathan clicked the buckle and grabbed the hand rest. “Let’s do it!”

She slammed down the accelerator. The limousine roared away, the tires squealing as she angled toward a narrow gap between the Mustang and a lamppost.

As they closed in, the bearded man stood on the seat, propped a foot on the window frame, and aimed his gun.

Clara ducked behind the wheel. “Get down!”

Nathan scrunched but kept his eye on the action. A bullet clanked into their limo as it clipped the Mustang’s fender, shoving it to the side. The gunman toppled over and rolled onto the pavement.

Clara barged into traffic amid a hail of honking horns. “Maybe they learned their lesson and won’t follow.”

As he rocked upright, a tight lump squeezed into Nathan’s throat. “Think we can somehow sneak back and get Mom and Dad?”

Clara grabbed his shoulder. “Nathan, they’re —” She released him and spun the wheel, wedging the long car into the left lane between two yellow taxis. “Watch my back and tell me if you see them.”

Nathan wheeled around. The black Mustang roared into view, weaving back and forth as it darted past car after car. Setting his fists on top of the windshield, the gray-bearded man aimed his pistol.

“He’s going to shoot!” Nathan shouted. “Step on it!”

Clara jerked the car through traffic, zigzagging from lane to lane. They bumped a Mercedes on one side, then a pickup truck on the other. Tires squealed. Horns blared. A bullet ripped through the rear window and into the dashboard, shattering the radio.

Clara stomped the accelerator to pass a city bus, flattening Nathan against the passenger seat. He pushed back up and peered over the headrest. The Mustang careened around the bus but slowed as a car swerved in front of it.