Black Magic (23 page)

He was back at the mill. The plant was in its prime and so was he. Stainless steel hoppers sparkled like new. Sunlight streamed in through crystal-clear polished glass. White tile covered the floor in alabaster precision. The wall clock said six-thirty and the wage slaves were about to start trickling in.

Shane felt as good as the mill looked. Not a joint ached, nary a muscle twinged. He saw his reflection in the side of one of the vats and guessed he was in his late twenties. The prime of his life.

The door to the main packing floor garnered his attention. A blue light pulsed behind it, a slow strobe that rose and fell in a familiar rhythm. There were no blue lights in the packing room. Someone was screwing around on his shop floor and he wasn’t going to have it.

He marched over to the door. The pulsing light brightened. His ears throbbed. The familiar beat was in sync with his heart. He yanked open the door.

All the packaging equipment was gone. In the center of the room was that magician…Lyle someone. He stood inside a white star within a circle on the floor. The light behind him faded between light and dark blue. But there were no bulbs. Just the glow.

“How do you like it, Shane?” Lyle asked. His voice had a god-like reverb. “Are you enjoying my gifts?”

“Hell, yeah!” Shane gave his renewed arm muscles a flex. “You did this?”

Lyle reached out a hand and an aqua blue flame came to life above it. “Magic did it, Shane. Magic gives and also can take away.”

He flicked his fingers at Shane and the flame leapt out at the renewed old man. It spun around his midsection like a living belt. Suddenly the grinding torment of osteoarthritis returned to all his joints. His knuckles swelled with enflamed pain. He winced and cradled his hands to his chest.

The flame split into two and raced down the inseam of his legs. It vanished into the floor. Then it felt like his legs vanished. Shane lost all sensation below the waist, the same familiar feeling that confined him to his hated wheelchair. A bone snapped like dry bamboo. He bellowed and collapsed on the floor.

“No,” he shouted. His contorted face was rose-red with pain and rage. “I can’t go back to this again!”

Lyle bent down and pulled Shane’s face up to his. The magician’s eyes were like opals.

“This is the source,” Lyle said. “The Fountain of Youth flows right here. Get it while you can.”

Shane woke up with a start, bathed in sweat. He sat up and touched his legs. Still felt ’em. Hot shit. He gave them a few test kicks. Still good as new.

That little encounter was no dream. It was a damn clear message. The pissant little magician was worth something after all. Whatever he had down at the Apex, Shane wanted more of it. A lot more.
 

He needed to get to the mill now, but first things first. It always paid to carve out a little time for some retribution. It just wasn’t healthy to keep anger bottled up inside.

Time to get this party started.

Outside, Hurricane Rita raged. The emergency generator was all that kept Elysian Fields from being as dark as the rest of the neighborhood. Dispersed partial lighting lit the hallways.

Shane pushed the call button on the side of his bed. Just two quick beeps. Not enough to panic the reduced staff, but enough to get one to show up. He could imagine Dwayne the orderly leaving his hot coffee at the nurse’s station, grumbling about having to help an old man to the bathroom. Jackass. Shane despised the night staff even more than the day staff. Any finger they lifted was such an inconvenience to them. Well, their permanent vacation was about to begin.

Dwayne stood backlit in Shane’s doorway, white tunic a match for his pale complexion. The little pipsqueak had a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, a transgression Nurse Coldwell would probably fire him for.

“What can I do you for, Shane?”

Shane cringed at Dwayne’s familiar tone. Had some inversion of the world order suddenly made them equals?

“Give me a hand here,” Shane said. “I just need to swing around to get out of bed.”

“Sure thing.”

Dwayne approached and passed out of the doorway’s rectangle of light. Shane flipped back his covers. Dwayne grabbed Shane’s calves and noticed Shane had on pants.
 

“Hey. How did you–”

The question got no further. Shane whipped one leg up and over. His foot roundhoused Dwayne with a crack. Dwayne’s head snapped around and he dropped to the floor.

“Oh, what the…” he muttered as he touched the side of his face in shock.

Shane jumped out of the bed and whipped his oak cane out from under the covers. Dwayne raised his head into the open doorway’s shaft of illumination. Shane smiled and gripped the tip of his cane like a baseball bat. Dwayne’s head rose into the strike zone. Lyle swung for the fences.

The cane’s heavy bronze hilt hit Dwayne’s head with a muffled thwack. Teeth skittered across the floor. Dwayne’s neck jerked to an abnormal, inverted angle. He hung there for a moment, then collapsed like an imploded building. Blood ran from his mouth and ear into a dark puddle. Pink brain seeped from a split in his skull. His chest didn’t move.

Shane pulled the pack of cigarettes and a lighter from the departed orderly’s tunic. He tapped one out of the pack and ran the white stick under his nose. Ah, that sweet smell of tobacco. How long had it been? He put the stick to his lips and lit it. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs. Ah, one of man’s simple pleasures, denied by the do-gooder medical profession. He bent down and blew smoke into Dwayne’s lifeless face.

“In the future,” he said, “you will address me as Mr. Hudson.”

He plucked a ring of keys from Dwayne’s belt. He rested his cane on his shoulder and sauntered out into the hallway.

Shayla, the night nurse, looked up in surprise as Shane stepped behind the station counter.

“Mr. Hudson, what are you doing up?”

Shane brought the head of his cane down on her nose. Blood splattered all over her white uniform. She yelped and fell back in her chair. Shane flipped the cane around and plunged the tip through her heart and out through her back. She gurgled and gripped the cane’s shaft. Blood darkened the front of her uniform in an expanding stain. Shane gave the cane an extra thrust. The nurse jerked like a hooked fish. Her hands fell to her sides and her head slumped forward.

Shane planted a foot against her chest and yanked his cane free. The bottom foot of the cane dripped the nurse’s blood. He flicked a speck of brain off the head.

He dumped the nurse’s pocket book on the counter and picked out her car keys. He was ready to make his escape from this prison. But until then…

He ran his finger along the switches at the nurse’s station and stopped at the red one marked
LOCKDOWN
. He pressed it. A series of metallic clicks echoed from all around the building as the exterior doors sealed shut. The system was designed to keep any threat from entering, but Shane saw it as a way to keep any victim from leaving.

He pulled open the vestibule behind the station. He put on one of the long white lab coats within. The embroidered name on the chest said
Dr. Hal Griffin.
Shane grabbed a pen from the counter and overwrote the words to read
Dr. Death
.

He stood in the center of the hallway and twirled his cane like a drum major’s baton.

“Elysian residents!” he announced. “The doctor has arrived.”
 

Dr. Shane Hudson decided to start with some house calls. He had prescriptions to deliver. He unlocked the medicine locker and rummaged around to find something useful. He came across some amphetamines and popped one in his mouth. White Lightning they used to call it back when he ran the sugar plant and fourteen-hour shifts were the norm at high season. He put the rest in his pocket. Some for now, some for later. Wasn’t that the slogan for some candy way back when?

He pawed through a box of pre-loaded syringes. Adrenaline. Hot shit. He wasn’t going to mainline any of that himself. But he knew a few people who could really use the jolt.
 

Louis Webb woke up with fingers wrapped around his throat.

He choked and grabbed at his assailant. His feeble hands were no match for the powerful pair that threatened to close his windpipe. The ALS disease had taken too much of a toll.

In the dim light of his room, he tried to make out the face that hovered over his. Without his glasses it wasn’t much more than a blur. He sputtered as he tried to choke out a question.

“Webb, you asshole,” his attacker hissed.

There was no mistaking that voice. Shane Hudson. But he was standing over him. And strong as hell. That twisted bastard had been wheelchair bound for years.

“Shane?” he croaked.

“In the flesh,” Shane answered. “Dropped by to repay a favor.”

Louis’ septuagenarian heart slipped a cog. He reached for the nurse call button and mashed it with his thumb. Shane laughed in response. He must have done something to the system. Or worse, to the nurses.

“So, Mr. 1
^st
Federal Bank manager,” Shane said. “Remember when the plant closed and your bank held my mortgage?”

Oh, God, no,
Louis thought.
Not after so long.

“I asked for a little mercy until I could get a new job,” Shane said. His hand tightened as he spoke, as if the rising rage contracted his muscles. “Do you remember what you said?”

Louis gargled a few syllables. Shane shook Louis’ head by the neck like a rag doll.

“You said, ‘What goes around comes around.’ Do you remember that?”

Of course he did. The whole town was happy to see the mighty Shane Hudson laid low.

“I thought you were a heartless bastard,” Shane said. “Now I’m going to see if I was right. If I was, this won’t hurt a bit.”

Shane pulled a syringe from the lab coat pocket with his free hand. He bit the cover off the needle and spit it out. He twirled the syringe in his hand and drove it into Louis’ bony chest.

A shaft of white pain ripped so deep into him that Louis was certain the needle had gone through to his back. Shane’s iron grip on his throat stifled his scream. But his pain thus far would prove to be nothing.
 

Shane flipped his thumb over the needle’s plunger and flashed a nefarious grin.

“Fire in the hole!” He laughed.

Shane squeezed the plunger. Louis’ heart felt like it leapt out of his chest as adrenaline supercharged his tired muscles. The world went blank as his blood pressure spiked. His neurons went into mindless overdrive and spasms shot through his arms. A thousand memories flooded his mind, a rapid review before a fast-approaching final exam.

“Well, shit, I’m wrong,” Shane said in a mock apology. He pinned Louis’ neck harder into the mattress to keep his jerking body in the bed. “Looks like that adrenaline found a heart after all.”

Shane kept Louis pinned to the bed for a good minute after his body stopped twitching, partly because he wanted to make sure he was dead, but mostly because it just felt good. Was there anything more satisfying than revenge?

Well, maybe one thing. And apparently after a several-decade hiatus, he was ready for that as well. The harder he choked Webb, the harder he’d gotten south of the beltline, and right now he was sporting a woodie to end all woodies. After years of disuse, he wasn’t going to let that go to waste.

So now he had a serious to-do list. He had scores to settle with a lot of these inmates, first and foremost that world-class bitch Dolly Patterson followed by that big dumb Indian friend of hers, Chief Bear-Shit-In-The-Woods. He was going to need some help.

Lucky for him, he knew the two men for the job.
 

Shane kicked Denny Dean’s bed hard enough that it slammed against the wall. Denny startled awake.

“Get up,” Shane growled. “There’s work to do.”

Denny forced his eyes open. “Shane? You’re standing.” He saw Chester at Shane’s side. “Chester. What time is it?”

Shane shoved two pills into Denny’s hand. “Take these and get dressed.”

“They’re good shit,” Chester said. His swollen pupils looked like black full moons. “Serious uppers straight from the nursing home stash.”

This was like the old days. Shane used to hand out stimulants like candy when Apex ran overtime shifts. Denny popped them in his mouth and swallowed.

“Shane, how can you stand?”

“A miracle cure due to living a chaste life,” Shane deadpanned. “C’mon. We’re going to straighten a few things out.”

Chapter Fifty-Four

Rain beat against the window and the wind made the cracks at the edge whistle when it gusted. But Hurricane Rita’s upgrade to Category 2 wasn’t what awakened Walking Bear from his light sleep.
 

He’d been dreaming of the wildlife around the home. Gators and wild pigs. They walked single file in step, like a giant animal conga line. Leg irons made of snakes bound each to another. Their eyes glowed blue like last night’s hog visitor. They trudged toward a towering black building in the distance, where Walking Bear was certain they all would die.