Scarlet Dream (13 page)

He took another step closer, foot crossing foot, peering around the small balcony as if scenting his territory, and Brigid found herself backed into her bedroom. The glass-eyed dolls watched her like artifacts from another's life. When the man stepped through the balcony doors and over the threshold Brigid let out the tiniest whimper, suddenly fearful of having this creature here, of what he
might do. Yet, she wanted to feel him within her, to feel his body pressed against hers.

“Oh, wicked, wicked heart,” her mind cried out, and there was a voice in her head asking to be heard.

She took another step back, passing the mirror with the flowers painted across its surface. Where the moonlight seeped into the room from the open doors of the balcony, Brigid saw her reflection in the mirror's surface, saw her pale lips and long hair, honey-blond curls flowing down her shoulders, her blue eyes catching the light.

The man reached for her, his hand grasping her wrist and—

Brigid threw the book aside, found herself sitting in the lounge of the strange mansion house out in the middle of the Louisiana bayou. She was alone in the room now, candles flickering and the vanilla smell of incense assaulting her nostrils as she looked all around her in confusion.

“What the hell just happened?” Brigid asked, her voice just a whisper.

“Baptiste?” Kane's voice drummed through her skull over the Commtact link. “I repeat, it's Kane. Do you read me?”

“Kane?” Brigid replied, her voice breathy as if she had been running fast. “I'm…”

“We all are,” Kane reported. “I'm upstairs. At least, I think I am.”

“I'll find you,” Brigid told him.

Then Kane cut their link, busy with his own dilemma once more.

Warily, Brigid looked down to the carpet at her feet, saw the leather-bound book lying there, its pages open but pressed facedown into the thick pile of the scarlet weave.

“That book,” Brigid affirmed, mouthing the words to reassure herself that she was real. Her voice seemed
strained, a sound that she had almost forgotten. She had been inside the book, reading it and yet living it. A girl— Mary—no more than sixteen years old, with blond hair and sapphire eyes, had somehow become her, or perhaps Brigid had become Mary; it was hard to tell, since the whole thing was blurred like a waking dream. She had been romanced—was that the word for it?—by some sort of nether creature, a man who was also a wolf.

Trying to recall it felt strange, like a dream half remembered, piecing together something that had no substance, that had never been real. As she thought of the man-wolf she felt a tremble of desire deep within her, immediately followed by stinging embarrassment flushing at her pallid cheeks.

Fixed by her gaze, the book seemed to loom on the floor, tempting her to pick it up, to reengage with the world within.

Brigid looked away, peering around her, her hand reaching for the hip holster that still held her TP-9 semiautomatic. She had been left alone in this room, held in place somehow by the uncanny book. It was only on seeing her reflection—or, more accurately, seeing the reflection of another woman, of Mary, the book's heroine—that she had realized all was not as it should be. Had Kane's voice been speaking to her inside the book? Perhaps. And so she had broken the spell, the same way that one can flinch oneself awake from a nightmare. But, just like waking from a nightmare, Brigid struggled to suppress the feeling that the horror had not gone away.

Standing, Brigid reached for the metal bar that remained at her side, propped against the couch she had sat upon. Semiautomatic in one hand, metal staff in the other, Brigid warily made her way toward the open doorway and out into the hallway that ran beside the
magnificent staircase of the house. She had to find Kane and Grant before they, too, got sucked deeper into some kind of nightmare over which they had no control.

What you see is what you get, or so the saying goes.

Kane had been born a Magistrate and he would die a Magistrate, if not in name then doubtless in nature. He had been born Kane, named after his father, who, had also been a Magistrate, a defender of the laws of Cobaltville.

The Magistrates were not recruited; rather they were born, selected before they had even been conceived, chosen to follow in their father's footsteps for when the old men got too old to pound the streets of Cobaltville or enter the Tartarus Pits where the human detritus lived in squalor. Thus, being a Magistrate was quite literally in Kane's genetic makeup, a part of his DNA. He was not so much born as crafted, bred like livestock to do the job of a Magistrate.

Kane had been trained from birth, schooled in the ways of the Magistrates so that he could defend Cobaltville from the insidious forces that might topple its carefully balanced regime. Where other children had grown up in an environment where they learned through play, Kane had grown up in one of stern discipline, and his mind had been schooled to embrace and employ that discipline.

There had been exercises from the very earliest days of Kane's life, drills to make his body firm and strong. And there had been other exercises, too, mental tools that made his mind strong, that kept him fiercely focused on his goals, whatever they may be. Part of that had been to
teach him to accept the word of Baron Cobalt as immutable fact, a teaching he had had to break in later life, but there had been more to it than that—he had been taught to retain facts, to compartmentalize and to apply logic no matter how dangerous or tense the situation.

In time, Kane had broken that indoctrination, and he and his partner Grant had found themselves exiled from Cobaltville, defending freedom once they learned that what they believed in was nothing but a sham, a scheme designed to trick humanity and to make them obey.

Yet still Kane remained a Magistrate, deep down in the core of his being, his mind a disciplined, structured landscape that respected boundaries and could place things in sections and subsections, file experience within boxes.

And so now he found himself lying atop the mattress in one of the beautiful bedrooms of the whorehouse called Lilandera, with two stunning women pleading for him to take them, to satisfy them that he might satisfy himself, and he reluctantly closed his eyes and ignored all extraneous detail, trusting the disciplined aspect of his mind to take control where his surface thoughts had become distracted.

To stop looking was easy; that only required the closing of one's eyes. Kane had done that when Grant had alerted him to something not being right here, had ignited that fear that had preyed at his mind with almost every step he had taken into the House Lilandera. His heart was still racing, adrenaline coursing through his veins with the desire he felt for the two incredibly beautiful women who had thrown themselves at him, who still promised delights beyond imagination. In his mind's eye, Kane clung to that surge of adrenaline, for he knew he would need it before this moment was passed.

He slowed his breathing then, consciously taking deeper breaths, slower and more controlled, enforcing a calmness on his body that it yearned to break from. The smell of the incense was still strong in his nostrils, creating mood, enticing the ex-Magistrate to succumb to the needs of the flesh. Smell is that strangest of senses, capable of affecting one's thoughts, one's appetite, even one's mood. With the application of abrupt logic, Kane switched to breathing through his mouth to tune out the incense smell; doing so didn't matter, he wouldn't be here long.

Eyes still shut, Kane next blocked out the murmurings of desire from his ears, wilfully ignoring the crude whisperings of blue-eyed Kirsten and her friend with the prettiest mouth and the greenest eyes. Instead he tuned in to something deeper within him, the rhythm of his body, the pace of his own breathing, of his beating heart. It was an old Magistrate trick, a way to still one's thoughts as the surrounding world became chaotic; it was the very same trick he used when he went into high alert and employed what he called his point man sense. Thus, the murmurings of desire faded from Kane's ears, and instead he heard the organic music within him, the beating of his heart, the pumping of his blood.

With the blocking of the sounds, Kane forced himself to block out the touch of the women's bodies against his, making them just a minor irritation that he could simply ignore for his resolve was strong. An individual can block out a lot merely by allowing the mind to rest; the way one is not conscious of the feel of a seat once one is comfortable in it. So Kane employed the same sensibilities as the sitter, letting all his concerns float away, and thus stilling his mind.

He was at peace now, the world around him no longer important.

And yes, it's true—what you see is what you get. The thing is, you have to know what it is that you're looking at.

Four seconds later, when Kane opened his eyes, he saw the room for the first time. It wasn't a candlelit bedchamber, with ornate decorations and a window looking out at the reddening ball of the setting sun. No, in fact the description that came to Kane's mind was “a rat hole.”

The mattress he lay on was soiled and torn, and it sat low to the floor not through some convention of the bed but because there was no bed. The walls of the room showed expanses of green mould and dark patches of damp assaulted the deteriorated plasterboard across two of them. The polished walnut door was no longer polished nor walnut—Kane saw it now as a broken thing with panels missing, an eczema of peeling paint marring its surface. Additionally, there were black streaks across the door frame where it had been damaged by smoke; presumably the door itself had been replaced after that.

In the corner where the incense sticks had once appeared to be burning, Kane saw now just a hole in the bare floorboards. As he watched, a mouse scurried from the hole, scrambling across the room on its tiny pink feet until it disappeared in a hole in the skirting board, peering back out at him with its twitching nose.

All of this, Kane took in in a matter of just a few seconds, his eyes wandering over the room as he stilled his tremulous heart.

However, the biggest revelation hit Kane like a punch to the gut. The two women, with their radiant skin and long blond hair, had been replaced. They were no longer the divinely beautiful creatures that Kane had been almost
unable to keep his eyes—or hands—off. In their place, clambering on the soiled mattress, Kane saw two hairless, emaciated things, their flesh incomplete, their faces malformed. They reminded him of fetuses, with their large eyes in dark pink sockets and the whole thing not fully formed, as if they had somehow grown to adulthood without altering from their early fetal state. The darkness around their eyes, the way their skin seemed tight in places yet sagged in others, reminded Kane of newborn birds, just waking in the nest for the first time.

With a kick of his feet, Kane shoved himself back on the bed, pulling away from the fetuslike women as they watched him, smiling with their lipless mouths. The one to the left had blue eyes the color of cornflowers while the one on the right had eyes as green as the ocean. Stripped naked, sharing a bed with these things, Kane felt sick.

As his stomach turned, Kane felt his self-control slip, and for just a single flashbulb instant he saw the women as beautiful once more, the cozy warmth of the red room vying for attention in his muddled senses. He took another breath through clenched teeth, tried to stay in the moment, to see things as they truly were. A man with less discipline would find such a thing impossible, the illusion was so pervasive, but Kane knew it was an illusion now, and so he knew he must hang on to whatever tentative grip he had on the reality or he would lose himself to this perverse dream that sucked at him like quicksand.

The unformed things that had once seemed beautiful made their way toward Kane, the one with blue eyes reaching for him with a fleshy hand of pink so dark it looked as if the skin had been scalded. She reached for Kane, walking her short pudgy fingers up his leg toward his groin, a coquettish twinkle in her eye. Kane batted her
hand away, rolling himself from the bed and out of the creature's reach.

“Keep away from me,” he warned, backing to the mould-dappled wall.

“Come back to bed,” the one with green eyes pleaded. Her voice was soft, husky, laced with desire. If Kane didn't look at her, hadn't seen her for what she really was, he could still believe she was that beautiful woman who had enticed him here. Instead he had no idea what she—what either of them—were. They weren't human, not really. They were more like something that had been aborted before it could achieve true life. Succubi perhaps, those mythological prostitutes who drained the life from their lovers, left them as nothing but empty shells. Even as the thought occurred to him, Kane was struck by the similarity of the classical succubus to Lilitu, the Annunaki goddess who had been reborn as Ezili Coeur Noir. Were these things somehow a part of her, related to her in some way? It was like seeing pieces of a puzzle with only the scantest idea of what they formed.

Swiftly, Kane moved across the room, reaching for the pile of his clothing. Curiously, he still wore his Sin Eater in its wrist holster—all thoughts of it had evaporated while he had been under the spell of the house and these malformed creatures had obviously considered it no threat to them while he was under the spell. The things that had once appeared as women watched him, cooing to him and pleading he stay in bed with them, satisfy them, abuse them. For a lightning-flash moment he saw them again as he had seen them before, beautiful and alluring, and the room was painted red and lined with candles once more.

Kane screwed up his eyes, forcing the illusion out of his head as he concentrated on pulling on his pants. The
women continued to taunt him, asking him to return to the bed, to come, to be with them.

“Keep away from me,” Kane told them again, opening his gray-blue eyes to slits so as to watch them. “I can see you now.”

The emaciated, sticklike things writhed on the bed, pressing their mouths to one another as if kissing, the noises they made as they touched no longer alluring, sounding now like grinding bones to Kane's ears. He could see them if he looked hard enough, if he kept his mind disciplined and held the illusory power of the house at bay.

“Baptiste?” Kane called, engaging the Commtact as he pulled the sleeves of the shadow suit over his arms. “How are things with you? Still on top of it?”

 

D
OWNSTAIRS
, Brigid was just making her way to the foot of the staircase beneath the orange glow of the chandelier.

“I'm right here, Kane,” she responded automatically over the Commtact. “Be with you in a minute.”

“Any sign of Grant?” Kane asked, his voice piping straight into her ear as if he stood right next to her.

“Nothing yet,” Brigid replied as she took the first stair. As she did so, she heard a noise coming from the corridor and she halted, the metal pole in her hand resting against the next riser like a walking cane. She dipped her head, peering back down the corridor that led into the depths of the house. It was hard to see, the corridor was lost to shadow after just a dozen paces. But as she looked, she heard the noise again, a thumping as if of a heavy tread.

“Wait, I'm going to check something out,” Brigid whispered into the hidden Commtact pickup.

“Negative, Baptiste.” Kane's voice rasped over the Commtact. “We need to stick together.”

Brigid took a step back, peeking over her shoulder to make sure no one was sneaking up on her. “Pipe down, Kane,” she instructed in a harsh whisper. “I'll be one minute and I'll be sure to take care, I promise.”

Kane grunted an acknowledgment but Brigid chose to ignore it, tuning out the Commtact receiver.

Cautiously, the titian-haired warrior made her way into the corridor that ran along the staircase. Pictures lined the walls here, and Brigid's eyes flicked to them for just a moment. She was wary now, conscious that this house had many subtle traps that could snag the mind with the most casual of efforts. The pictures, she saw, were masked by velvet curtains, like tiny theatrical stages, as if each one contained a whole story just waiting to spring to life.

Brigid heard the noise again, more clearly this time—footsteps coming from the shadowy end of the corridor. She waited in place against the side of the stairs beside a door handle, silently peering into the darkness as the footsteps became slowly louder. Then she spied the figure in the shadows, recognized it as the wide form of housemistress Ellie.

“That you, brave soldier?” Ellie called as she strode toward Brigid.

Brigid saw that the woman was squinting, and she recalled how she had struggled to make out the moving figures beyond the house when her team had arrived. She was short-sighted, and that might just be the only thing that Brigid had on her side at that moment. It seemed that this woman could somehow hypnotize with a look. It wouldn't do to be caught by her, not without some kind of plan in place. Brigid was armed, but that was no use—for one thing, she did not have a blood-thirsty temperament, and killing this woman in cold blood did not appeal to her, despite the mind-trickery on display in this house.
For another, Brigid realized that killing someone with the power to instantly make one see whatever they wanted would be about as easy as catching dreams in a paper cup. Even Perseus had needed a trick to kill the gorgon, Brigid reminded herself.

With a swift decision, the beautiful Cerberus warrior reached for the door at her back and pulled it open. The door opened outward, and in a moment she had ducked her svelte form inside, pulling the door quietly shut behind her.

With the door closed, Brigid found herself in darkness. She stilled her breathing, listening to the heavy footsteps as Ellie's shadow flickered past the edges of the door where the light seeped in, and then moved along the corridor, muttering to herself about imagining things and about handsome gentleman callers.