Dealers of Light (10 page)

“I understand, M
aster. There will be no more mistakes. I’ll see to it.”

“Excellent,” Desmond
whispered. “You may have a little Light.”

Carlton
gasped and his hand trembled when he raised it toward Desmond’s outstretched wrist. Desmond suppressed a chuckle at Carlton’s wide-eyed desperation. The younger man’s fingers clamped on the underside of Desmond’s wrist. The connection sucked tight, and Carlton moaned. He sank to his knees, mouth open and eyes closed in ecstasy. Desmond’s upper lip quivered and he unleashed the torment of his past to allow the ultimate tortured Light to flow into his slave. A rare treat, for no one had suffered more than Desmond.

Chapter Eight

“Cara, honey, I just had to call. You’re never going to believe what happened.” Amber’s voice was fast and high pitched, far removed from her normal southern drawl.

“Calm down. What’s going on?” Cara
shifted the cell phone to her other hand to keep her right on the steering wheel, dread curling its fingers around her heart in a stony grip. Dusty barked from the back seat.

“My friend Jenny just came by the store
. You know she has a health food store over at Hilltop?”

“I remember her.”
She stopped at a red light and waved a hand into the back seat, snapping her fingers to stop Dusty’s barking. Damn it, he was drowning out Amber.

“
She’d called earlier and asked if she could buy some crystals from me. When she got here to pick them up she said some man came in and bought every crystal she had. Over five hundred dollars worth. Hold on a sec.”

In the background, a customer asked Amber something about tofu and Cara’s mind wandered for a second
, hoping this wasn’t about finding another body.

“Okay, I’m back. Sorry. Anyway,
I had this funny feeling, so I asked her what he looked like. She described him wearing all black and having black hair. It has to be Rolf.”

“
Holy crap! You’re right. It means he came to your store and left when he found we were Light-dealers.” Cara tapped her wheel with her fingertips. Why had discovering Light-dealers disturbed him so much?

“I know, I know, and I can’t imagine what he want
s with all those crystals.”

“You’re the expert in
that area. I use a stethoscope, remember? Can you think of any particular use?” She steered the car into the parking deck at ODU and found a nice shady spot where she could safely leave Dusty.

“Gosh, we must be talking about eighty to a hundred in this case.”

“Maybe he makes jewelry out of them.”

Amber
laughed. “That’s an awfully big necklace, honey.”

“Well, make sure you tell Tor.
I’m at ODU right now on my way to see Alistair. I hope he’s found some good information.”

After ending the call, she patted
Dusty’s head and rolled the windows down a crack. It was nice and cool today, so he’d be fine there, taking a nap while she visited the professor.

The door to Alistair’s office stood open, the smell of stale coffee wafting from the small room.
Alistair stood behind his desk, his jacket hanging halfway on the back of his chair and his shirt unbuttoned at the throat. His normally neat gray hair was disheveled, and the shadow of a beard frosted his jaw line. Several books lay open among a mass of scattered files with Styrofoam cups half full of coffee perched precariously nearby. Papers littered the floor like fall leaves. He leaned over one volume, a finger following the text.

“Alistair?” She stepped in
to the room.

He
raised his head, eyes glazed with creases along their sides. He blinked twice and gave her a brief smile. “Ah, Cara. I’m glad you’re here. I’ve found a few items of interest.” He motioned her to a chair beside his desk.

“About the BD’s?”
She moved a stack of leather-bound books off the chair to the floor, their musty smell tickling her nostrils. The old wooden frame of the chair creaked as she sat.

“BD’s?”
The smile slid from his face as his brows went up.

“Bad Dealers
. Shana came up with it, remember?”

“
Ah, yes. Shana. Quite right. Well, what I wanted to show you is this.” He scooted a large, leather-bound book across his desk and opened the worn, yellowed pages to a place he’d marked with a sheet of paper. “This drawing is the artist’s rendition of a painting in a cave near some Incan ruins. Quite interesting.”

A
simple pen and ink sketch occupied the right hand page. In it, a tall man with fierce eyes in a feathered headdress and white tunic stood behind a stone altar with a body draped across it. He had one hand on the prone man’s chest and the other hand raised high in the air. Two men in decorative loincloths held the arms and feet of the figure on the altar. The victim’s face contorted in fear, fingers spread wide on hands raised to the heavens, and legs twisted at odd angles.

A surge of
stinging bile rose in Cara’s chest. Her heart hammered. This was the slaughter of an unwilling, terrified victim. She glanced at Alistair. “It’s a sacrifice.” 

“Yes, I found
this while genning up on Incan history sometime in the past. It didn’t mean anything at the time, just another generic picture of sacrifice. But, last night, I studied it again and I noticed something missing.”

“What do you mean?” She
leaned forward for a better view.

“Take a closer
look, my dear. What’s conspicuously missing, given the theme is sacrifice?”

She studied the man with the raised hand and the victim.
Her heartbeat paused. “There’s no weapon.”

“Exactly.
In similar pictures of sacrifices throughout history there is always a weapon. If this man is about to be killed, the man in the headdress should have something in the hand raised in the air. But, I believe, the real weapon is elsewhere.” He pointed to the hand on the victim’s chest.

The killing hand, fingers spread wide,
pressed in the center of the chest. Little jagged lines, like a child would draw lightening, radiated out from the hand. A shiver of fear puckered her skin into gooseflesh.

“It’s Light. Those lines are indicating a transfer of Light.”

“Yes, and we don’t need to guess to know which way the flow is going, given the expression of the sacrificial victim.” Alistair flipped to another page. “Here’s a brief account of a group who existed at the periphery of the Incan nation in the area near these ruins. The leader was called the
Huaca,
which means quite literally s
tone
but also meant
sacred
or
holy
in some parts. There’s not a lot of information about them. I did find some vague implications this
Huaca
figure was immortal, but he needed sacrifices to survive. So, his followers would kidnap people from the Incan nation and bring them to him.”

“He would take Light from them and they died?”

“Precisely. A bloody energy vampire.”

She
grabbed the book and flipped back to the picture. The
Huaca’s
features were harsh with high cheekbones. Dark hair strung with beads and feathers hung past his shoulders. An elaborate feather headdress sat on his head with a large carved setting holding a fist-sized stone in the center. Rays of light, depicted as squiggly lines, ran out from it. Black, merciless eyes nestled under dark, angled brows. She imagined facing such a creature, stretched out on an altar, knowing her end was near. A shudder of horror ran through her.

“
Huaca
,” she whispered his name. “Do you think this is what’s going on here in Norfolk?”

Alistair
plucked off his glasses and tossed them on the stack of disheveled papers littering his desk, rubbing his eyes. He picked up one of the Styrofoam cups, sniffed it then tossed the cup in the trash, nose wrinkled. “Either this evil still exists and has come here, or someone is copying the tradition. In any case, it’s bloody bad.”

“What can we do to stop it?”

“I haven’t found any specific details yet. Just have a care, Cara, and tell the others, too.” He placed a hand on her arm. “If this is true, we’re all in danger.”

She patted his hand. “I will. Take care of yourself…and get some sleep.”

He gave her a wave and immediately buried his nose in a book again.

She emerged from the building into the afternoon sunshine
, and heard the beep of her cell, signaling a text. Stopping under the shade of a tree so she could see the screen, she checked her messages. A new one popped up from Tor, and her breath caught in her chest. What now?

Tor texted:
Clue! Common tattoo found on three victims. A gang sign.
A picture was attached. She clicked on it and bit her lip waiting for it to download. When it popped up, she gasped and nearly dropped the phone. A snake curled around the hilt of a dagger—Nicki’s tattoo!

Chapter Nine 

Cara sucked in a deep breath and grimaced when her GPS indicated they had arrived. The mechanical voice almost seemed to announce their destination with a groan. Nicki’s contact information had led her to this dilapidated project apartment building. Screens hung lopsided in some windows and the yard around the brick building was more dirt than grass. She steered the car to a curb and stopped.

“Great, just
super, fantastic, great.” Her chest tightened at the prospect of entering the building, but Dusty didn’t show any concern they were about to go into a questionable area.
Some guard dog
.

D
usk approached, sending tall shadows of telephone poles across the street. Dear God, she had to find Nicki before it was completely dark. To be on the safe side, she texted Tor that she was going to warn a girl who had one of the gang tattoos and sent him Nicki’s info. At least someone would know where she was.

“All right, buddy. We have to do this
.” She released Dusty from the back seat and wrapped his leash around her hand twice. They walked up the cracked sidewalk to the three-story brick building. The air echoed with cries from babies, TV noise, stereos and yelling. A skinny boy in low-rise jeans, arms covered in tattoos, strutted by and gave her a hard stare. A wave of his cheap cologne slammed into her.

A group of young men loitered on the steps just inside the double door entrance, smoking and laughing.
Several squatted on the floor rolling dice. The door closed loudly behind her and all eight people in the group turned their gaze in her direction. Silence descended as they gave her the once-over, scowling. One stepped forward, tall and muscular. A two inch scar puckered the left side of his pale face. His eyes might once have been brown but the left one had a blue haze to it. 

“Hey, rich bitch. What you
doin’? Slummin’?” He swaggered toward her and she wrapped Dusty’s leash around her hand a third time, thankful he wasn’t growling or barking.

“I’m trying to find
Nicki Petroski.” Sweat trickled down her back under her jacket and into the waist of her jeans.

The leader glanced at one of the others and pushed his hands into the pockets of his hooded sweatshirt. “She’s our
homie. You lookin’ to cause trouble for her?”

“No, I’m a friend. I want to help her.”

His brow wrinkled. “I don’t think she needs your kind of help.”

“Someone may be trying to hurt her.” She gave the group a sweeping glance. “In fact
, this danger affects all of you.”

“Danger?”
He crossed his arms and laughed. “Yeah, well, bring it, sister. We love danger. We eat danger.” He snapped his teeth at her, and the others laughed.

She fisted her hands. “Look, someone is targeting people in gangs and killing them.”

The group shuffled and mumbled. The leader spread his feet in a wide stance. One man flipped a knife over and over in his hand.

“I just want to help
Nicki.” Cara stared at the weapon and her knees trembled.

The leader hitched up his low hanging pants and the others exchanged glances.

“My name’s Mambo, bitch. I take care of my own, see? We don’t need no rich slummin’ bitch lookin’ down her nose at us.” He leaned forward and pointed a finger in Cara’s face. “Be smart and walk away.”

She swallowed and stepped back. Dusty growled, and she tugged on his leash. The three kneeling men came to their feet
, and the entire gang glared. Boy, were they experts at glaring. Scared the hell out of her. She continued to retreat until she reached the outside.

Damn it. How was she going to get up to
Nicki’s place with those hoodlums guarding the entrance?

She led Dusty away and head
ed down the sidewalk. Looking up at the plain rectangular brick building, she figured there must be a stairway on each side of the place, so she continued down the sidewalk to the far end. She paused at the corner and snuck along the edge of the building to a metal door with dark blue paint peeling off it.