Stones Unturned (32 page)

"What did they say?" Julia asked as they waited.

"Pardon?"

"The other places . . . the other worlds, what did they say that the Vatican didn't like?"

"What one would expect from the infernal realms," Conan Doyle explained. "That the Catholic god was but one of many, that its power was waning, and there would come a day in the not-too-distant future that their faith would be forgotten."

"I can see how they'd be uneasy with that," Julia said, looking a tad uncomfortable. "Is it . . . is it true?"

"What is truth?" Conan Doyle asked, hearing a sharp click as the door was unlocked from within. "All things were created, and logic dictates there must be a Creator. The Roman interpretation of that Creator is one among many. The truth is always difficult to hear."

The door slowly opened, and a grandfatherly old gentleman peered out curiously through the glass of the storm door.

"Benjamin," Conan Doyle said, raising his voice slightly to be heard through the glass. "This is Julia Ferrick. There's been a breach. Her son is involved, and we need your help."

Ochoa continued to stare, and for a moment Conan Doyle thought that he was going to close the door in their faces, but then he reached out, unlocking the storm door. A draft of warm air flowed from inside as he pushed open the door.

"Come in, come in" he said, his voice a soft rasp. "The phone lines to the Vatican will certainly be on fire tonight." He paused to gaze up and down the street at they passed into the foyer.

"It's been a while, Benjamin," Conan Doyle said, as the old man closed the door and locked it.

He shuffled past them, his slippered feet sliding across the threadbare hallway carpet. "I was just putting on a pot of coffee," he said. "Would you care to join me?"

"Certainly," Conan Doyle replied, and he and Julia followed Ochoa into a room off the front hall.

Newspapers covered just about every surface, and beneath them were stacks of ancient texts and scrolls.

"Please excuse the mess," he fretted, moving the things from the surface of a loveseat to the floor. "I have the most difficult time keeping a cleaning service. A few visits and they no longer want to come. It's quite perplexing."

Conan Doyle and Julia sat upon the loveseat as Ochoa continued to fuss about. The mage sensed an aura emanating from the room — from the very house — and could understand why the cleaning crews feared it. Glancing toward Danny's mother, he could see that it was having an effect on her as well. The unnatural, the sick evil, had permeated the walls, floor, and the very furniture upon which they sat.

"There," Ochoa said, straightening up with a grunt and wiping dust from his hands. In the corner of the room was an antique liquor cabinet, and he went to it, opening the creaking wooden doors and removing a bottle of Wild Turkey and a glass.

"I was about to have a cocktail," he explained, abandoning the pretense of coffee. "But if
you two
would like coffee, I'd be more than —"

"That's fine," Conan Doyle interrupted him. "No need to bother, I'd like to get right down to business if you don't mind."

Ochoa chuckled, unscrewing the cap from the bottle and filling half the glass. "Something tells me I'll need a stiff one after this. Better start early and fortify myself."

He screwed the cap back onto the bottle, picked up his glass, and returned to his seat. "What can I do for you, Arthur?" he asked as he lowered himself into the embrace of an overstuffed chair.

Conan Doyle felt as though the loveseat beneath him was squirming with life, but he knew that it was only the residue of visitations past. He would have much preferred to stand, but did not wish to insult his host. He forced himself to concentrate on the matter at hand.

"A demon of the highest order recently stepped through to the city. So far it's responsible for at least seven deaths that we are aware of."

Ochoa downed the drink as if it were water, already squirming from the recliner to return to the cabinet. "A demon of the highest order," he repeated as he retrieved the bottle and refilled his glass.

"A collector," Conan Doyle specified.

The old man's drink stopped midway to his mouth. "Really?" He turned his watery gaze to Julia.

The woman sat quietly, looking as though she were ready to jump from her skin —
small wonder with this level of preternatural residue
, Doyle thought.

"It is actually Julia's son that is our reason for being here. The boy is a changeling, and the demon that has crossed over threatens his humanity."

"Boy?" Ochoa scoffed. He returned to his chair, this time sitting on the edge of the navy blue recliner, just in case he needed to get back to the cabinet quicker, Doyle imagined. "This isn't a boy we're talking about here."

The woman's ire was immediately rankled. "No, it isn't
a boy
, he's my son."

Conan Doyle reached out and placed a calming hand upon her arm, willing her his support. "We've come. . ." he began, but Ochoa interrupted.

"Have you told her the truth, Doyle?" He gulped at his refreshment, as if dying of thirst. "Have you told her that her child isn't human, that he is only the most clever of predators?"

The woman's agitation was growing, intensified by the evil miasma that radiated from their surroundings.

"Her child . . . Danny, is a special case. I've been assisting with his training, and —"

"Training," Ochoa spat, resting his empty glass on his knee. He started to shake his head from side to side. "You can't train evil, Doyle," he said, his voice beginning to slur. "You might think you can — teaching it to do tricks as it walks among you, pretending to be what you all so desperately want it to be."

Conan Doyle stood. "I believe that's enough, Benjamin," he said, fixing the man in his icy blue stare.

"I'm surprised at you," the former priest said. He rose slowly and lurched toward the liquor cabinet.

"Don't you think you've had enough?" Julia snapped.

The old man turned his full gaze upon them, his deep brown eyes pulsing with intensity. "It's never enough. Once you open that door, and see what's on the other side . . . waiting . . ."

He couldn't get the cabinet open fast enough, grabbing hold of the bottle in trembling hands. He filled the glass to the brim, spilling its contents as he brought it to his mouth, the golden brown liquid dribbling down the front of his running suit jacket. Ochoa drank more than half of the glass, then leaned against the bar, gasping for breath.

"I suppose you want to speak to a Sentinel?"

"Yes," Conan Doyle answered sharply.

The old man seemed to resign himself, gulping down the remainder of his drink. "We'll do it in the cellar." And he lurched from the room.

"The cellar it is then," Conan Doyle said, turning toward Julia, who still sat upon the loveseat.

He wondered if she wished she had stayed at home.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

They stood in the center of an elaborate pentagram drawn in salt. Whatever was happening around them sucked the air from Julia's lungs.

Ochoa had brought them down the wooden staircase into the basement. Her mind was already on fire as she tried to make sense of what the two men had said about her son.

She was so worried that she wanted to scream, but was beginning to suspect that her troubles may have just begun. She was tempted to leave the house and wait in the car until Mr. Doyle was finished, but an insane curiosity had kept her here.

She'd kept her mouth shut, biting her tongue as they'd stepped into the basement room. It looked as though it might have once been a playroom, but now it was empty and dark, the one window painted black, and a single bare bulb providing the only illumination.

Ochoa hadn't wasted any time getting started. He'd taken two jars of salt from a wooden box in the corner and set to work drawing an elaborate star in the center of the room. When he was finished, he'd commanded Julia and Doyle to stand within it, while he connected each of the star's points with a line drawn in thick white chalk.

Then he'd joined them in the center of the circle and shed his sweat suit. Julia had gasped aloud at the sight of his pale, naked body covered with a multitude of scars, and he had turned around, being sure to give her a full view of his withered genitalia.

Still leering, Ochoa had held out a dagger to her. The knife was very old, its metal almost black from the passage of time. He had turned it ever so gently as to make sure that she could see the dried, crusting blood on the blade. Then, seemingly satisfied, the old man had dropped to his boney knees and brought the knife to his chest. She found herself moving closer to Doyle, tempted to hide her face behind his shoulder. Instead, she had watched as Ochoa cut himself with the dagger, the dirty blade digging into the pale, hairy flesh just below his left nipple. He'd cut himself again and again, blood dripping from each new wound, and she'd understood the scars that adorned his body.

Ochoa had spread his arms, turning his face up to the ceiling and begun to sing a strange song that sounded more like somebody choking on a piece of food than any tune Julia had ever heard.

At first she had blamed the dimming lights on her own eyes, but the light was indeed receding. Then she'd noticed the blood, lifting from Ochoa's pale flesh, snaking in the air like the tendrils on some strange underwater life-form. The tendrils of blood entwined together to form a single, snake-like mass that left the confines of the star to swim within the increasing darkness outside.

"Whatever you see, whatever you hear, whatever you do," Mr. Doyle had calmly instructed her. "Do not leave the center of the star."

Soon there was nothing but the darkness and Ochoa's insane chanting, and Julia thought that she just might suffocate. It was as if the gloom, having fed on the light, had moved on to the air inside her lungs.

She brought a hand to her chest, gasping aloud, feeling Mr. Doyle's hand upon her back, silently coaxing her lungs to function again. And just as she thought she might lose consciousness, tiny explosions of color appearing before her eyes, they did indeed start to work again, and huge draughts of oxygen filled her lungs. By then the stench that permeated the air made her wish that she had indeed passed out.

Something moved in the darkness.

Instinctively she grabbed Doyle's arm. "What's happening?" she gasped, watching as her breath billowed from her mouth. The temperature had dropped precipitously. It was freezing cold down there.

Ochoa continued his song as the terror built within her.

"He's established our connection," Doyle explained, softly. "Think of him and his blood as a kind of key. That key has been inserted in the lock and —"

"It's been opened," Julia finished, her eyes riveted to a particular section of darkness where something seemed to be moving, ready to emerge.

A child bounded from the shadows, a high-pitched scream upon his lips, and Julia recoiled, almost falling out of the pentagram.

"Careful," Mr. Doyle said, firmly gripping her elbow and helping her to regain her balance.

Her eyes were riveted to the filthy child. He looked to be about ten years of age, naked and covered in a thick layer of filth. He was gnawing on the body of a dove, its white feathers stained red with its own blood. There was a thick, leather collar around the child's scrawny neck, and the chain attached to it led back into the ocean of darkness behind him.

"Come forward, Hellion," Doyle commanded, his voice booming in the room. "Matters of importance limit my time."

Julia heard a wet, dragging sound, like a heavy bag of laundry being pulled over loose stone, and she watched the boy's chain grow slack. A voice came from the darkness, so thick and rasping with mucous that she nearly retched, even as it made her want to run and hide.

"Is that Conan Doyle, I hear?" it asked.

Doyle must have sensed her urge to flee, and he turned to her again. "Do not leave the star," he said, forcefully.

"Who is with you, Arthur?" the horrible voice asked, closer now, just about to peek from the all-encompassing shadow. "Someone new — someone not familiar with the ways of parley?"

The speaker emerged then, and the small child threw back his bloody face and howled like a dog.
Thing
was the only way her brain could describe it. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. It had no real shape, its massive bulk composed of limbs and other parts of what appeared to be living things. Looped around its neck was a thick muscular tentacle, its undersurface covered in hundreds of red suckers, each filled with tiny, razor-sharp teeth. Below that it wore a delicate gold chain, and at the end of the chain dangled a little girl's head.

The thing spoke again, and Julia was repulsed to see that the voice came from the head of the girl-child, its dead eyes opening, the tiny mouth moving.

"She looks as though she just might run," it gurgled. "Wouldn't that be fun?"

The thing seemed to grow taller, as if showing off its body composed of all things dead. Julia wanted to be sick, but held it together, believing that all this would help get her son back.

The little boy had finished consuming the white bird, feathers sticking to the drying blood that smeared his feral features. The child saw that she was looking at him, and he lunged with a growl. The chain snapped tight, held in the grip of a hand and arm that had been stripped of all flesh by hundreds of maggots writhing upon the deep red surface.

"With whom am I speaking?" Conan Doyle's voice boomed again.

The demonic entity undulated. "You wound me, Arthur," the little girl's head said. "Have I changed so much since last we spoke?"

"Yidhara-Thoth," Mr. Doyle said, and the creature bowed, or at least, that's what Julia believed it did.

"You do recognize me," it said excitedly.

The beastly boy strained upon his leash, trying to pull himself to the star, but the monster, this Yidhara-Thoth, kept it back.

"Not at first," Mr. Doyle responded. "Pit-spawn tend to blend together in my mind."