Harmony Black (24 page)

FORTY-ONE

H
alima had warned us.
Edwin Kite’s house represents his own evil, animal hungers made manifest. When your beast awakens, smelling blood, do you think it will fight against him . . . or
for
him?

She’d warned us, but I’d thought she was wrong. I thought we could beat him. I thought Jessie had more control over her inner demons than that.

And here I was, charging through closet door after closet door, as she hunted me down.

I ran blind, my lungs burning as I threw doors shut in my wake and charged through the empty house. I heard her behind me, bellowing,
howling
. A slamming
crunch
echoed a few rooms back, the sound of Jessie putting her fist through a wall.

Edwin doesn’t even have to show up to the fight,
I thought.
It’s only a matter of time before she runs me down. Can’t keep up this pace.

Jessie had dropped her shotgun, though, and I still had mine, clutched tight to my chest as I barreled through another identical door.

One way into each room, one way out. No way to lose her or slip away. I’ll have to kill her. Just turn around, wait for her to show up in the doorway, and take my shot. Only way to survive.

Then I thought about Willie.

It’s proof,
he’d said, telling us Edwin’s sick philosophy.
Because when it’s you or them? No matter how good you think you are, no matter how brave you think you are . . . you’ll always choose yourself.

No.

No, I wasn’t doing this. I wasn’t going to play the object lesson for some madman’s amusement. I wasn’t going to kill Jessie, and I wasn’t going to let her kill me, either. There had to be a third way. A better way.

Where could I go, though? One door ahead, one door behind—

—and one window.

I ran for it at full speed, hugged the shotgun tight, and threw myself into the window shoulder first. I tucked my chin against my chest as I crashed through to the room on the other side in a rain of broken glass. I thumped to the floor, rolling, gritting my teeth against the sting of a half-dozen fresh cuts. As I pushed myself up on my knees, I did a quick inventory. My jacket was torn, and I could feel sticky wet lines blossoming along my arm, back, and legs, but nothing life threatening. I’d live with the pain.

My satchel had gone flying, spilling its contents across the hardwood floor. Nothing I could use anyway, except for one: I scooped up Angie’s teddy bear.

Now I had two doors to choose from, and if I was quick enough, shutting it behind me, Jessie would have a fifty-fifty chance of going the wrong way. Staking my life on a coin flip, but those were better odds than I’d had thirty seconds ago.

Which way, though? I’d still be a mouse in Edwin’s maze, lost in the endless chain of barren rooms. I lowered my shotgun and held up the teddy bear in the palm of my other hand, raising it like a lantern in the gloom.

Angie, if he’s made you a part of this place—if any part of you is still here, if you can remember who you are—reach out to me. Please. Show me how to find you.

The bear’s faded fur rippled in a breeze I couldn’t feel on my bleeding skin. Its head nodded, ever so slightly, toward the door on my right.

I ran, following its lead, shutting the door behind me. I could still hear Jessie rampaging in the distance, slamming walls and breaking glass, but I couldn’t tell if she was getting closer or farther away.

Another three rooms, and the bear stopped tugging toward the next door. Instead, it leaned back in my hand, pulling me toward the one I’d just closed behind me.

I’d already seen how the rooms overlapped and crisscrossed one another. Just like Halima warned us, the usual rules of space and physics didn’t apply here. Maybe the house was rearranging itself behind my back. On the other hand, if it wasn’t? I might run straight into Jessie’s path.

Trust,
I thought, and turned around.

A hallway waited on the other side of the door. Long, narrow, lit by gaslights in frosted-glass sconces. I stepped on through and shut the door behind me. I heard a faint crackling sound, and when I looked back, a bare wooden wall stood in the door’s place. Committed now, I walked ahead.

The whispering grew louder, sounds of loss and despair that weighed on me like iron chains.
You’re going to die here,
I thought.
You can’t beat him. You’ve already lost your partner, Edwin is controlling everything around you, and all you have is a probably useless gun and a goddamn teddy bear. What can you do?

“Try,” I said aloud, and trudged down the endless hall.

A light bloomed at the end of the corridor. Not gaslight. Fire. I stepped out into the heart of the house, Edwin’s temple.

Flames burned in great brass bowls all along the vast chamber, held on the shoulders of kneeling statues. The statues’ faces contorted in pain, sculpted as though their burdens pressed them low and seared their marble flesh.

The whispers turned to echoing wails. Faceless shades floated through the air all around me, faint echoes of life in the shape of humans. In the shape of children. Children like the two sleeping infants in the center of the temple, lying in cradles of hammered brass spears that curled inward all around them like cage bars. Three more empty cage cradles flanked them in a semicircle, waiting for their victims.

“Yes,” Edwin Kite said, “Willie’s offerings still live, for now. I don’t feast until I have a full plate. But . . . you aren’t Willie.”

Edwin had been human, once, but the giant that reclined upon a basalt throne barely qualified for the name. Twelve feet tall at the shoulder and clad in moldering robes of silver and gold, his skin was the texture of bark from a diseased tree. Faceted black eyes, like an insect’s, studied me from across the room while he idly rapped curling claws upon his armrest.

Jessie paced wildly to one side of his throne, lost in her madness, muttering under her breath as she threw punches at the air. On the other side, the Bogeyman glared at me from behind its featureless mask. The wounds from Jessie’s shotgun had already healed over, leaving its rags clotted with blood.

“No,” I said, approaching the throne. “Willie is dead. My name is Special Agent Harmony Black of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And you’re under arrest.”

Edwin’s howl of laughter shook the temple walls.

“You have no power here, woman. Behold my glory.”

“You mean,” I said, “behold Adramelech’s glory.”

“Speak not that name!” Edwin thundered, pointing a claw at me. “He is not my master! No.
No.
I have taken his power and made it my own. I have fashioned this perfect form, this perfect kingdom, with my own will and magic.”

“You mean, with the lives you’ve stolen. How many children have you murdered, Kite? How many lives have you destroyed, just to prop up this little prison of yours?”

“Murdered?” His gnarled lip curled in amusement. “Ah, you think this place is haunted by ghosts. By memories of distant agony. But I don’t take their lives, woman. I take their
souls
.”

He leaned forward in his throne. As my stomach clenched and my heart dropped, he seemed to savor every second of my pain.

“Every soul I’ve ever claimed suffers to feed my power. To sustain my life and my strength. And they suffer still. You call this place a prison? No. I learned well, from my old teacher.
I built a new hell.
I am its keeper, and its master, and its
god
.”

“Why?” The word tore out of my throat, half question and half anguished plea. “Why
children
?”

Edwin leaned back and waved his claws idly, almost casually.

“Because of what I learned as a boy in my father’s house. The same lesson I passed down to my own sons before I left the world of mortals. Children are unruly, savage beasts. They need to be taught. Disciplined. But if you raise them right—if you teach them to respect you, to
fear
you, as they should—they become something so much better.
Obedient.
”

The shotgun felt like a lead weight in my cold, clammy grip. More than anything in the world, I wanted to put Edwin’s head in my sights and pull the trigger.
It won’t work,
I thought. No, he wouldn’t have let me get near him with a weapon in the first place, if he was afraid of what I might do with it.

“Why the long wait?” I asked him. “You take a handful of victims every few decades. Why?”

“The potency of a soul fades over the years. I feed best when they’re new. When their anguish is most keen, and they haven’t forgotten what it feels like to hope. Even an infant knows hope. Or a little girl. Oh, yes, I know you, Harmony. You were the first to give my ambassador a name.”

He gestured toward the creature on his left. Still standing motionless, glaring at me, unblinking.

“You called it the Bogeyman. I like that. But I’m afraid I have to disappoint you. If you came here seeking revenge against the creature that murdered your father, you’re far too late.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “It’s standing right there.”

“No. This is
a
Bogeyman. You see, the process of creation requires me to invest them with a spark of my own power. They burn out rather quickly, forcing me to replace them now and again. The Bogeyman who killed your father? Long faded into oblivion. It exists only in your nightmares now.”

Edwin rolled his head to one side, favoring the creature with a leering, toothy smile.

“I pick one child from each batch of new offerings. The one with the brightest spark. Then . . . I crush that spark. It requires a great deal of, shall we say,
special
attention. But they learn to obey me. And they serve my will in the mortal world, without question.”

I suddenly thought back to what Fontaine told us at the diner.

“Bogeymen aren’t born. They’re made.”

“Made, how?”

“Same way they always have been, miss. Same way as ever.”

Both times I’d seen the Bogeyman—in my sister’s nursery, and on Helen Gunderson’s camera—they were crying as they took their victims.

Now I understood why.

“I changed my mind,” I told him.

“Oh? About what?”

I squared my footing, standing before his throne. The whispers of despair washed over me, but they broke like an ocean wave against a wall of stone.

“I’m not arresting you anymore,” I said. “I’m going to kill you instead.”

Edwin chortled, jerking his claws toward Jessie and the Bogeyman.

“My little friends here might have something to say about that. And I must say, I’m disappointed. I thought you’d be happier right now.”

“
Happy?
About what?”

Edwin’s cracked lips curled back in a grin of pure malice.

“The reunion, of course!” He gestured to the Bogeyman. “Come, now. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize your own sister.”

FORTY-TWO

E
dwin howled with glee as the world collapsed around me.

If she recognized me, the masked creature didn’t show it. She stared at me with a look of pure, seething malice in her bloodshot eyes. Still, I knew. I knew he was telling the truth.

“That little toy of yours,” he said, gesturing to my shotgun, “holds no terror for me. Against your sister and your partner, though, it might save your life. I consider this an opportunity for enlightenment. Here you are, a crusader in your own mind. A self-styled upholder of justice and the right.”

He clicked his claws. The Bogeyman—no,
Angie
, my
sister
—crouched low and let out a feral growl.

“You know this girl—your own flesh and blood, no less—is innocent. She doesn’t deserve to die now, does she? But I promise you: you
will
slay her. You’ll do it to save your own life.”

Willie, all over again. Edwin had built his prison, his hell, as a mirror of his own twisted mind. An endless cycle of abuse, of punishment and fear, that he could feed upon and feel justified by. Like Halima said, this place was an extension of Kite’s very soul. He
needed
to be proven right. Shaking his confidence would be like shaking the house’s very foundation.

“My order against your chaos,” I whispered.

He leaned forward on his throne. “Hmm? What was that?”

I threw the shotgun to the ground. It clattered on the stone at my feet.

“No.”

Edwin’s eyes narrowed to black slits. “Pick that up.”

I ignored him and turned to face Angie. I held up the teddy bear.

“I don’t know if you remember,” I said to her, “but this used to be yours. And I came a long way to give it back to you.”

I took a step closer to her. She growled and did the same.

“Pick up your weapon,” Edwin snapped. “Don’t be a fool.”

“It used to be mine,” I told her, “but the day Mom and Dad brought you home from the hospital, I put it in your crib. See, I thought it could chase away nightmares. And you were littler than me, so you needed it more than I did. That’s how the world is supposed to work. We’re—we’re all—supposed to protect the little ones.”

Edwin slammed his fist on his armrest, the sound booming like a peal of thunder.

“Who do you even think you’re talking to? There’s nothing of your sister
left
in there! Are you looking for mercy? Compassion? Love? I ripped it out of her!”

“That’s not true,” I said. To her, not to him. “That’s not true. I bet he told you a lot of things that weren’t true. Did he say you were alone, Angie? Did he tell you nobody cared about you? We never stopped looking for you. Never once.”

We stood five feet apart now. Angie pushed her shoulders back, hissing like a cornered cat. A feral animal, trapped and confused.

“She’ll kill you,” Edwin said. “You’re throwing your life away.”

I shook my head. I held the bear out to her, cupped in my palms, and stepped closer.

“I’m so sorry that it took me so long to find you. But it’s over now. You don’t have to listen to him anymore.”

I barely saw the claws coming. Just a blur of motion, then white-hot pain as my arm ripped open from my elbow to my wrist. The bear fell to the ground at my feet. I gripped my wound, blood trickling between my fingers while Angie let out a rattling hiss.

I bent down and picked the bear back up.

“Even after everything he did to you,” I said, “even after all the lies he fed you, I
know
you’re still in there. And I know you’re scared. But I’m here now. And no one is ever going to hurt you again.”

I took one more step toward her. Angie’s arm shot up, claws tensed, a killing blow ready to fall. She could tear my throat out in a heartbeat, as easily as shredding a piece of paper. I could die just like my father. I took a deep breath, trying to ignore the blood dripping from my shredded sleeve.

“You think you destroyed everything human in her,” I told Edwin. “But you don’t have that power. Nobody does. All you did was hurt her. She’ll heal.”

Edwin squeezed the armrest of his throne, veins bulging under the gnarled skin of his face. He looked to Angie and waved a furious hand.

“Enough of this. Kill her!”

Angie’s claws trembled, held high and frozen. Behind her mask, her eyes flicked wildly between us.

“Your name is Angie Black,” I told her. “You’re my sister. And I love you. And I’m here to take you home.”

She let out a slow, strangled yowl, a confused and anguished whine as her raised hand shook.

I looked over at Edwin. With my life on the line, a heartbeat from the end, I couldn’t help but smile.

“My order against your chaos.”

“You keep
saying
that, but what does it—”

Two quick steps, and I pulled Angie into my arms.

She spit and hissed, and her claws dug into me. Cutting through my jacket and blouse, gouging bloody furrows in my back, but I only held on tighter.

“I’m not letting go,” I hissed into her ear, “I’m
not letting go
.”

She stopped clawing at me.

Her shoulders heaved, and her animal fury broke down into broken-throated sobs. Leaning against me, weeping.

“It’s all right,” I whispered. “It’s all over now. I’m taking you home.”

I held her as long as she needed me to. It felt like forever. When she finally pulled away, slowly, drained of tears, I reached up and gently took off her mask.

“No more hiding. Masks are for monsters.”

I didn’t flinch at the scarred, ravaged face beneath. She was still beautiful to me. I dropped the mask to the stone at our feet, the porcelain shattering.

I looked to the side. At some point, Jessie had stopped her mad pacing and raving. Her eyes still blazed, but she just stood there, watching us.

“And I’m not afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, either,” I told her. “So get your shit together, Agent. We’ve got work to do.”

Jessie grinned, showing me her teeth.

“Insolence!” Edwin roared, rising from his throne. The giant glared down at us, curling his mammoth hands into fists. “I’ll kill you both myself. And then, oh, what I’ll do with your souls. I will feast on you for—”

Jessie charged. She hit him from behind like a linebacker, driving her shoulder into the back of his leg. He went down, kneecap cracking on cold stone, and howled as he lashed out at her. She caught his wrist, twisted it behind his back, and snapped two of his fingers like brittle twigs. Then she went to work on the others.

As Edwin kicked and howled, the walls of his temple shook. The brazier flames spit and guttered, responding to his pain. Then I realized something else was happening.

He was shrinking.

He wasn’t twelve feet tall anymore. No, now, as Jessie hurled him against his own mighty throne, he was the same size as us. His claws faded to yellowed fingernails, his armored skin to pallid, liver-spotted flesh.

The Edwin whom Jessie dragged before us was just a man. Just an old, feeble man with bottomless hate in his eyes. She forced him to his knees.

“Idiots,” he spat. “You
can’t
defeat me. This is still my fortress, my kingdom, and its magic still protects me. I can’t be slain here, no matter what you do to this body, and I can’t be removed unless I will it. So what can you do? What can you possibly do?”

“This,” I said, and pressed my hand to his forehead.

As a tingling rush shot down my arm, I had a fleeting thought—
thank you kindly, darlin’
—and the sensation of a kiss on my cheek.

Edwin blinked. “What . . . what did you just do?”

“There weren’t two of us, invading your kingdom. There were three. Edwin, meet Fontaine. Fontaine, Edwin. Fontaine was curled up quietly in the back of my brain, but I think
your
body will suit him better.”

Jessie let go of him. Edwin rose on shaky feet, his eyes going wide.

“What is—what’s
happening
to me?”

“You said it yourself,” I told him. “You can only leave under your own free will. Only problem is, now your will kinda belongs to
him
.”

“Just long enough to walk you right out of here,” said the syrupy drawl from Edwin’s lips, a voice no longer his. He glanced back at Jessie. “And did you have to beat him up that bad, sweetheart? This
hurts
.”

Jessie folded her arms and smiled.

“Yeah,” she said, “I really did.”

I touched my sister’s arm. “Angie? Can you open a portal and get us all back to the house?”

She frowned, lips moving slowly, trying to find her voice.

“Yes,” she said.

Jessie and I ran to the crib cages and scooped out the stolen infants. Somehow, they were still asleep. Drugged or enchanted, I imagined, but they were still breathing, and that’s what mattered. I cradled one in my good arm, wincing at my cuts.

Angie stood before a hovering miasma of violet light, concentrating as she held her claws wide, forcing the portal open. On the far side, I could almost make out the hazy impression of the upstairs closet we’d arrived through.

“You can’t do this,” Edwin begged in his own voice as his legs carried him one shaky step at a time toward the light. “Please!”

“We’re not doing anything,” Jessie said. “You’re the one walking out of here. Sheesh, just stop if you don’t want to.”

He was screaming when Fontaine forced him through, back to the real world. Jessie jumped in after him.

“Come on,” I said to Angie, holding out my hand. But she shook her head.

“Need . . . to stay,” she said, fumbling for words.

I touched her face, tracing the curve of her scarred cheek. “No. No, Angie, you don’t. You don’t belong here; you never did. Come on. We have . . . we have people, out there. People who can help you.”

“Help,” she said, nodding. She gestured to the temple. Shades floated in the gathering dark, the temple fires dying one by one, and the whispers of despair swirled all around us. “Children still here. I have some of his . . . ” She shook her head, missing the word she wanted. “I help. Fix this place. Set them free.”

“When it’s done, will you—”

The violet light flickered. Angie shook her head, cutting me off.

“Door hard to keep open.
Go.
I fix this place.”

“Angie,” I said, “I love you. Mom loves you. Never forget that.”

She smiled. Maybe for the first time. Then she took hold of my shoulder . . . and shoved me into the light.