Ragman, page 12
Should any demon come for him at night, he would now be protected by the dual forces of light and righteousness.
Try to betray me now, Henry Gordon. We shall see who ends up roasting in Sekhmet’s fires.
When Tom’s phone went off, he experienced a momentary disorientation. The nightstand was on his right, not his left. The pillows were too soft and smelled of flowers. Then he noticed Stacy sleeping next to him and he smiled as he remembered how their study session had taken an unexpected detour.
He fumbled with the pile of clothes on the floor until he found his pants and took the phone from his pocket. The sight of Joanna’s number brought him wide awake.
“Hello?”
“Tom? Sorry to call so early. But I have some news about those mummy wrappings and I want you and Dan to hear them before I turn in my report. How fast can you get to the lab?”
“Ummm….” Tom checked the time on his phone’s display. Just past three-thirty. The lab was a good thirty minutes from Stacy’s apartment, even with the streets empty. And he needed to get dressed, walk the two blocks to his car…faster to just Uber. “I can be there in less than an hour.”
“Hurry.” She hung up before he could ask what was so important.
“Who was that?” Stacy rolled over, a shadow against the white sheets. The musky odors of their lovemaking teased him. He fought the urge to just toss the phone away and pick up where they’d left off a few hours earlier, after finishing a bottle of wine while reading through Stacy’s textbooks. The police had closed the case, Dan didn’t want to have anything to do with him, and he probably wouldn’t even be allowed in the lab. Why bother going when something much better was right in front of him?
No. He’d made a promise to himself to see the case through, and his gram had always said a real man keeps his promises, even those he makes in silence. Besides, for Joanna to call in the middle of the night it had to be something seriously important.
“Joanna. Something about our mummy. The real one. Gotta go.” He picked up his clothes and started to dress.
“Come back when you’re done and we’ll finish what we started.” She gave him a wink that indicated she meant more than research.
“Deal.” He buttoned his shirt, located his shoes by the dresser, and stopped just long enough to give her a long kiss that tasted of sex and wine. “I’ll call you later.”
He got to the lab in forty minutes and, to his surprise, was buzzed through without a problem. Thanking the stars no one had thought to cancel his privileges, he hurried down the hall to Joanna’s station, where he found Dan already there, reading something over her shoulder. Both of them looked as exhausted as Tom felt.
“Tom, good.” Joanna flashed him a distracted smile. “I was just telling Dan we got the preliminary results of the cloth from the mummy in Ibrahaim’s apartment. Around two hundred years old at the most. And the chemical composition of the preserving fluids is completely different from what I found on the samples from the crime scenes, including the ones you gave me. It’s all right there.” She tapped the papers.
“So, we’re dealing with two different mummies?”
“Yes. One from modern times, and one at least three thousand years old.”
“Shit.” Tom’s gut twisted in a way he didn’t like. Facts from Stacy’s books rose up, riding a wave of cold dread. “You’re talking about First Dynasty.”
Joanna and Dan both frowned at him.
“I’ve been doing some research. With Stacy.” Joanna’s left eyebrow rose but he ignored it and kept talking. “About Egypt. And mummies. And the symbol on the bodies.”
He filled them in on the cult of Sokar, ushabtis, and the mark of Seba being a way to sacrifice a soul to Sokar.
“The cult of Sokar was an offshoot of the sects that worshipped Osiris, back in the First Dynasty. Which happened to be about four thousand years ago, give or take.”
“And you think that the murders were committed by a centuries-old mummy? What is this, the goddamn horror channel? Do you expect me to go to Green with this horseshit?” Dan stepped away from the desk, his face reddening and his eyes narrowed as looked from Tom to Joanna. “Are you two in on this together?”
“Dan—” Joanna stood, but Dan shook his head.
“No. I don’t want to hear it. No more mummies, no more cults, no more bullshit! Don’t you get it? None of it matters. The case is closed. Over. You want to bring estimated fabric dates and theories about Egyptian cults to the captain? Be my friggin’ guest. Just keep me out of it.”
He pushed past Tom and stormed out of the lab. Joanna went to follow but Tom stopped her with a touch to the arm.
“Let me. We need to finish this one way or another.” Tom shrugged. “Even if it means a couple of black eyes.”
He expected to find Dan outside, cooling off in the morning chill, or maybe in his car. Instead, he caught a glimpse of him at the end of the block, illuminated by a streetlight before turning the corner. Cursing under his breath, Tom started after him. When he got halfway down the next block, he paused. The entrance to a small park lay on his right, but up the street were a couple of bars with their lights still on.
Which option would an angry Dan have gone for? Booze or a quiet place to cool off?
In the old days, they’d have gone to a bar together. But alone…?
The park.
A heavy stillness settled over everything as he stepped through the opening in the wrought-iron fence separating the public space from the street. Only a block long and wide, the park was a mix of flat grassy areas and thickets of mixed trees. A few scattered streetlights illuminated random areas of the paths. Near the entrance, a row of wooden benches provided seating for mothers and nannies during the day.
Dan sat on one of them, his face buried in his hands. Tom stopped a few feet away.
“What all happened to you?”
Dan looked up at the question, his eyes filled with fury and his fists clenched.
“Why the hell can’t you just leave us alone?”
“Hey, Joanna called me,” Tom said. “About the case. Our case.”
“There is no case and there is no ‘our’. We’re done. Over. I don’t want to see you or hear your name again.”
“Fine.” Tom sat down at the other end of the bench. “But I wanna say something first.”
“Of course you do.” Dan rolled his eyes.
Tom cleared his throat.
“I’m sorry, man. For everything. Me and Stacy messed up that night. We were drunk and misread the signals. A big mistake. I own that. But, damn, why all the hatred? We fucked up. You were pissed. Maybe jealous. It ain’t like we had an affair. I’ll take responsibility for screwing up our friendship. But if there’s something more going on, at least let me know. ’Cause otherwise, you’re really overreacting. Or maybe you’re just so insecure about your own marriage you’re taking it out on me.”
Tom leaned back. He hadn’t meant to say that last sentence. He was afraid he might’ve gone too far. But the pain inside him was so big…he’d loved Dan like a brother, would’ve taken a bullet for him. And for the past year, it was like a part of himself had died.
Dan was silent for a moment, and then shook his head and sighed.
“There’s nothing else. No, I take that back. There’s nothing else you did, except what any normal person would do in the same situation.” He stared at his feet as he spoke. “You deserve an explanation. So does Joanna. I’ve tried with her. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten it right, ’cause I keep getting so angry. We’re in therapy for it. That night…I freaked out. Everything was going so great, and then all of a sudden Stacy and I are alone, and she’s naked and in my lap, and damned if I wasn’t enjoying it. But I got scared. ‘Where’s Joanna,’ I asked, ’cause if she came out and found me like that, I knew she’d leave me. Stacy had both her hands around me and she looked up and smiled. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Tom is taking good care of her.’ That’s when I freaked. I’d always been a little jealous of you two, the way you hit it off so well. You talked to her about all sorts of things I didn’t. Sometimes I thought she had a little crush on you. So when I heard that, and then I ran in and saw you with her…well, you know what happened.”
“Yeah, I remember.” Dan had gotten so loud throwing them out that the neighbors shouted at them to be quiet. “But after, when things calmed down, why couldn’t you talk to me about it?”
“’Cause I was angry, and embarrassed, and scared. Embarrassed not just for turning into a crazy asshole, but because of what I’d done with Stacy, and that I liked it. Scared that Joanna wanted to be with you. We almost broke up because of it. Because of me. I couldn’t stop thinking that maybe she was sorry she didn’t get to finish what got started. She was furious with the way I acted, and even more furious when I refused to accept your apologies. Kept saying our friendship was too good to ruin over a mistake. And that made me even more jealous, because she was taking your side.”
“And I was right.”
Tom and Dan both looked up at Joanna’s voice. She stood just inside the park gate, arms crossed, glaring at the two of them.
“I should’ve figured you’d follow me,” Tom said.
“I wanted to make sure you two didn’t get arrested for brawling in public.”
“So now what?” Tom looked at Dan. He shrugged.
“You want to keep investigating, go ahead. I’ll even pass along any information I get. But I’m not risking my career going behind the captain’s back. Just do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Keep Joanna out of it.”
Joanna started to protest and Dan held up his hand. “You’re on the list for promotion. I don’t want you getting in trouble. Or worse, getting a reputation for being a nutcase with all this crazy mummy talk. You can pass results to me and I can give them to Tom. Off the record. Deal?”
“It’s not crazy. I know what I saw. That thing had me in its hands. I looked into its eyes, but they weren’t eyes, they were like….” Tom shook his head, his expression haunted. “Never mind. I get it. I’ll keep everything on the down low and—”
A sudden gust of wind blew leaves and dust around, causing him to shield his face. He stood, thinking it was the perfect sign that he should leave, head back to Stacy and her warm bed.
The breeze grew stronger, and the temperature rose. A gray cloud appeared in front of the bench. A flapping sound, like someone shaking a blanket, disturbed the silence. The gray mist coalesced into a miniature cyclone of whirling rags.
The shape grew larger. More defined. Arms formed, and legs.
The creature solidified with a distinct pop! and Tom sucked in a sharp breath. It stood a good seven feet tall, with broad shoulders and chest, and muscular arms. Cloth wrappings covered it completely except for the eyes and mouth, which were black holes, as if the monster were hollow inside. Yet somehow they emanated a malevolent intelligence.
The mummy! Tom’s heart raced as it stared at him with those empty sockets, which seemed to reflect the stars and lamps despite their emptiness. His head swam and for a moment he thought he would pass out.
“Tom Reardon.” Its voice was gravel and sand, bass notes and whispers. Dread gripped Tom with icy fingers, filled him with a fear worse than anything he’d ever experienced while on the job. The memory of its superhuman strength froze him in place.
Joanna screamed and his paralysis broke. He leaped away just as the mummy lunged at him. At the same time, Dan drew his gun and fired. The monster turned and swung a massive backhand that struck Dan on the shoulder and sent him tumbling over the bench. It came after Tom again, covering the space between them in one long stride. Tom got his gun out and was about to shoot when Joanna darted between them, a large branch in her hands. She jabbed it into the creature’s mid-section like it was a sword.
The branch passed through it as if it were a ghost.
The mummy picked Joanna up, its enormous form dwarfing hers.
“Joanna!” Tom shouted. Somewhere behind him, Dan echoed her name.
Tom watched as it threw her over the bench and into some bushes. A fury rose up inside him, something he’d never felt, not even when his or Dan’s lives were in danger. With a wordless roar, he ran straight at the mummy, firing shot after shot. Ignoring the bullets, it grabbed him by the shoulders and lifted him into the air. He shoved the pistol under its chin and fired until the gun clicked empty. Something pressed against his chest and sudden fire radiated through his body.
For an endless moment, time stood still and the pain doubled, then tripled. Behind the mummy, the first touch of dawn was turning the clouds pink and orange over the tops of the trees and Tom knew it was the last thing he’d ever see, that this was—
The mummy exploded with a sound like a large balloon popping.
Tom fell to the hard path, dust and bits of cloth raining down on him. Despite the lingering pain in his chest, he got up and staggered to where Dan knelt next to an unmoving Joanna.
“She’s alive,” Dan said. Tom nodded and pulled out his phone to call nine-one-one, even as the first wail of police sirens shattered the night, growing louder with each heaving breath he took. His legs buckled and he fell down next to Dan.
“Still think I’m crazy?”
Chapter Thirteen
For Ahmes the Second, the morning news only added to the feeling of dread that lingered from his dream-omen. The good fortune of having Elton Banks meet his fate aboard an airplane provided small comfort and in no way eased the gnawing teeth of the fear-crocodile living inside his belly. The crash meant the police wouldn’t be able to link Banks’s death to the others, which would reinforce the idea that the police had found their murderer.
But the timing of it…. Banks had perished after sundown, as he should have. Except it appeared he wasn’t the only one, according to the reporter on the television.
“The gruesome murder of Dennis Benton still has residents of the swanky Upper East Side frightened and concerned. While police continue to search the Ramble area of Central Park, where Benton’s dismembered body was found, for clues, his family and friends are calling for increased police patrols and swift action.”
Dismembered. The word immediately set Ahmes’s hackles up. A quote from the jogger who’d found the body only reinforced it.
“Looked like someone hacked him to pieces. Arms, legs, head, all chopped off. Who’d do such a thing?”
Not who, what. The ushabti. Even without mention of a mark branded in the boy’s chest, he instinctively knew this had to be the work of the inhuman creature.
The story brought back the images from his nightmare, and with them the continuing sense that something was wrong. Invisible fingers plucked at the lines of magic connecting him to the Duat, leaving him on edge. He found himself looking over his shoulders even in the relative safety of his hotel room, watching the shadows for movement.
The power of dark magics at work couldn’t be denied; its presence lay over the city like a blanket of rough wool across bare skin, itching and irritating. As the reporter continued speaking, a surety rose in Ahmes’s heart.
This. This is the cause of my nightmare. Something has gone awry and my Ka felt it, was trying to warn me. The only question is, what does this boy have to do with Henry Gordon, and for what reason would Gordon want him dead?
He needed to find out. He pulled over his laptop and opened a search page.
Dennis Benton.
“I can’t just sit here doing nothing all day.”
“You can, and you will.” A weird mixture of fear and relief filled Dan as he sat down on the edge of the couch. Joanna lay with a blanket wrapped over her legs, her face still far too pale, which only emphasized the dark circles under her eyes. The doctor at the emergency room had let her go home after tests showed she only had a mild concussion and no lurking hematomas on the brain. Rest, acetaminophen, and orders to call her doctor if her headache got worse or she experienced any other symptoms, such as blurred vision or nausea.
“You should be fine in forty-eight hours, but no work, no physical activity until then,” the too-young looking ER resident had added.
Dan had called her office with the same story they’d given the police and hospital, a mugging in the park. Because of his status as a detective, he and Tom were allowed to go home, but would have to return to the station later to give statements. Except Dan didn’t want to leave Joanna alone.
“What if it comes back?” he asked for the tenth time.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “You said Tom shot it and blew it up. So it’s dead, right? Or at least hurt real bad.”
“A lot of other people shot it, too. Look what happened to them.”
“I put four rounds right into its skull,” Tom said. He’d stayed with them the entire time. “Maybe that’s the difference.”
“Or there’s another reason,” Stacy said, coming in from the kitchen. She’d met them at the hospital after Tom called her. He and Dan had agreed that it was safer for all of them to be together. “Tom, didn’t you say it looked up at the sky? Was the sun coming up?”
“I was too busy trying to stay alive to notice,” he answered, with a wry twist of his lips. “But it’s sure possible. I know it was getting light out by the time the cops got there.”
“That could be the answer. Sokar is a disciple of Osiris, who rules in darkness. Ra, the Sun God, is his opposite. Maybe the ushabti can’t handle sunlight.”
“All the murders were at night.” Dan chewed at his lower lip, struggling with his indecision.
