This Eternity of Masks and Shadows Page 11
In the rotunda at the top of the stairs, he made an unsettling discovery: two more bodies, face-down in the water. They were still smoking faintly and their flesh had blackened with char. At first, he feared that Raijin had electrocuted hostages, until he noted the victim’s black tactical gear. One of them still gripped an assault rifle, his fingers fused to the trigger in death.
Raijin had killed his own crew.
Nook could hear a storm brewing from the gallery ahead. When he reached the entryway, he paused with his back to the wall and called through the opening, “Raijin, it’s Detective Bedard. I’d like your permission to enter the gallery and talk to you.”
There was a long pause, during which he could only hear the patter of rain against the floor. Then a deep, hoarse voice replied, “Fine. But if you so much as glance at your sidearm I will fry everyone in this room—including you.”
Nook took a deep breath, holstered his gun, and stepped into the gallery with his hands raised.
Montoya hadn’t been exaggerating about the situation. The arched roof that had previously existed thirty feet above had been ripped completely off. A brooding cloud hovered in its place, dumping rain down on the priceless Old Master paintings that adorned the red wallpaper. Seven hostages lay hogtied in an inch of standing water on the marble floor.
Raijin stood in the middle of it all, surrounded by rubble. Instead of his trademark black turtleneck, the Japanese god wore a flowing white robe the same color as his clouded eyes. The rain had matted his raven black hair to his forehead.
His first words to Nook came as a surprise:
“I didn’t do this.”
Hands still raised, Nook strafed the shattered remains of a fallen chandelier as he moved deeper into the room. He nodded to the wooden bench next to Raijin, where the sapphire scarab glimmered in the dim light. “I want to believe you, buddy, but you have to admit the evidence is stacked against you right now.” He cleared his throat. “But I can help you. Let’s start by letting all these hostages walk out of here. I will take their place until we can work out a—”
“You’re not listening to me!” Raijin snarled. Thunder rumbled overhead. “I did not do this.”
“Okay, okay.” Nook glanced nervously up at the electrical blue glow of the pulsating cloud. “Why don’t you tell me what happened.”
“I … can’t remember.” Ordinarily, Raijin’s demeanor remained unnervingly calm, even after the first time Nook had busted him. Now he had the disoriented look of someone coming down off a bad trip. “I was in my flat, going through my pre-sleep ritual. I’d just brewed myself a cup of green tea. After that …” He roughly massaged his temples. “I had the strangest dream, and next thing I knew, I was standing in here. People screaming, a body on the floor, two armed degenerates patrolling the rotunda. I panicked, Nook. You have to believe me! You know I never work with a crew.” He plucked at the shroud he was wearing. “Hell, I don’t even own this goddamn robe! I don’t know how or why, but I’m being set up.”
Nook studied the thief’s face, his desperation, his pleading gaze. It was all so farfetched, but Nook’s intuition told him that nothing here added up.
Suddenly, Raijin stiffened. His eyes wildly roamed the cloud above. “Do you hear that?” he hissed. “She’s here.”
Nook squinted. “Who’s here?”
Raijin spread his hands. Sparks crackled between his fingers and blossomed into orbs of electricity. All the while, his eyes never left the storm cloud as he prepared to do battle within an unseen foe.
“Raijin, no!” Nook shouted. One misplaced electrical bolt and it was game over for every hostage in the room. Nook drew his Beretta and aimed at the jewel thief. “Stand down!”
Unbeknownst to Raijin, the air behind him stirred, bending the light around it. Nook watched as dark tendrils of smoke coalesced into a human form—a woman in crimson armor wearing a war helmet that obscured all but her mouth.
Raijin’s eyes widened in alarm as he heard the rain pelting against the armor behind him, but he was too late. The goddess drew her blade, and in one fluid arc, sliced it across Raijin’s throat.
“No!” Nook shouted.
The electrical orbs in Raijin’s hands instantly flickered out as he grabbed at his neck. Blood spurted through his fingers, staining his white robe. He dropped to his knees, and with a final hoarse gasp, he fell facedown into the water. A puddle of red spread around him.
Nook trained his gun on Columbia. While he’d never seen the vigilante in person, he was familiar with her recent work. Blurry photos and footage of her had headlined the papers and nightly news for the last month, every time she resurfaced to stop another crime. Boston was quickly coming to see her as a superhero, the city’s watchful gargoyle.
Nook didn’t feel the same way. “Drop the sword!” he ordered her.
The vigilante didn’t comply. “I am not the enemy, Detective Bedard. We’re on the same side. I simply was doing what needed to be done to deescalate the situation.”
“Deescalate?” Nook repeated. “You have no authority to—”
“—To stop an unhinged lightning god who was about to send a few million volts through seven innocent bystanders?” She leveled her sword blade at Nook. “You’re threatened by me because I contained the situation that you created when you offered a plea deal to a coldblooded murderer, freeing him to do this.”
The vigilante was working the audience, he realized. Preying on their fears in the wake of a near-death experience, casting herself as the sole reason they’d get to return to their cozy, safe existence at the end of the night. And it was working. Nook saw the way several of the hostages gazed up at Columbia from the floor with relief.
Gratitude.
Adoration.
They didn’t see her as an outlaw.
They saw her as their savior.
Nook heard a commotion behind him. True to Captain Isaac’s word, he’d waited exactly ten minutes to send in the cavalry, and not a second longer. The SWAT team splashed up the rotunda steps.
That was the only distraction Columbia needed. By the time Nook turned his attention back to her, the vigilante had already dematerialized, inky black particles scattering into the sky. As she drifted away, her voice whispered in Nook’s ear, “Keep fighting the good fight, detective.”
Unusual Suspects
When Cairn returned to Themis’s mansion the next morning, her first order of business was to locate Vulcan, the doctor’s assistant and righthand technical genius.
He was also the Roman god of metallurgy.
She found him inside an open-aired shed that housed his forge. It had been set far back from the main house, close to the ocean cliffs—probably to minimize the chance that a stray ember might ignite the mansion.
He wore a leather apron over a tight black t-shirt. With his sinewy arms, he hammered away at what looked like a series of wrought-iron knots. A hearty clang resounded through the garage with each strike.
“You’re like a one-man renaissance fair,” Cairn called loud enough to be heard over the racket. “Exactly what kind of medieval torture device are you making today?”
“Chandelier.” Without protective gloves, Vulcan held up his creation for her to see. The metal glowed a molten orange beneath his fireproof skin. He dropped it into a water basin, and with a hiss, a curtain of steam billowed up. “It’s one of my side hustles. You’d be surprised what rich families will pay for custom lighting fixtures.”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t.” Cairn held out the faded photograph that had been taped inside the journal. “I need a favor, and I gather that you’re the man for the job. I want to know everything you can find on the people in this photograph—both the living and the deceased. Mortal aliases. Current locations. What scares them.”
Vulcan wiped his sooty hands on his jeans and examined the photo. “How analog. I suppose you can’t just click on the image and see who’s tagged in it, can you?”
Cairn mock-pouted. “Too bad ther
e’s no social network for reincarnated deities. Maybe ‘Godbook’ should be your next hustle.”
Vulcan stripped off his leather apron and tossed it into the corner. “Fortunately for you, we have the next best thing.”
He led Cairn across the yard to the windmill. The Arboretum’s digital trees flickered to life as they entered. “I built this to your mom’s specifications, you know,” he explained. “Totally searchable using voice recognition, to make it more user-friendly for Themis. Just mention the digital companion’s wake word—Venus—to ask her anything.”
Cairn cleared her throat. “Venus, who was the god of tacos?”
“No results found,” the computer replied in an unreasonably seductive voice.
“Bummer,” Vulcan said, patting his stomach. “Let’s try another: Venus, who is the sexiest of all the gods in all the pantheons?”
The display in front of them scrambled through a series of faces until a single grinning headshot of Vulcan emerged. “You are, big papa,” Venus purred.
Cairn rolled her eyes. “How long did it take you to write an algorithm for wish-fulfillment?”
With the help of Venus, Cairn and Vulcan assembled a digital file on the five gods from the photograph. Some swift internet research also yielded information on Leopold Sibelius, the mortal scientist who had funded the expedition to Sable Noir. When they finished, Cairn scanned the dossier.
* * *
Sedna, Inuit goddess of marine life and the underworld
Mortal name: Ahna Delacroix
Age: 40 (deceased)
Rebirthplace: Hopedale, Labrador
Occupation: Marine biologist
* * *
Tane, Māori forest spirit
Mortal name: Tane Makoa
Age: 41 (deceased)
Rebirthplace: Rotorua, New Zealand
Occupation: District attorney of Suffolk County
* * *
Ra, Egyptian god of the sun
Mortal name: Ramsay Al Dosari
Age: 40
Rebirthplace: Alexandria, Egypt
Occupation: U.S. Senator from Massachusetts
* * *
Njörun, Norse goddess of dreams
Mortal name: Ingrid Rasmusson
Age: 40
Rebirthplace: Trondheim, Norway
Occupation: Crisis manager
* * *
Nagual, Aztec lord of jaguars
Mortal name: Alonso Cordova
Age: 41
Rebirthplace: Cozumel, Mexico
Occupation: Owner of the Coconut Grove nightclub
* * *
Leopold Sibelius
Age: 65
Birthplace: Basel, Switzerland
Occupation: Chief science officer of Vesuvius Labs
* * *
Cairn did a double-take when she read the entry about Nagual. How could the owner of the Coconut Grove, whom she’d met just nights earlier, be an Aztec jaguar god and an old friend of her mother’s? Cairn hadn’t recognized him in the photo, but that had been twenty years and thirty pounds ago. Had Nagual known who she really was when he’d approached her at the club?
And if the jaguar king was on their suspect list, did that mean Delphine—his employee—could be in danger?
At least she knew where to find Nagual when it was time to question him.
Vulcan cleared his throat. “Perhaps now is a good time to tell you that I helped your mother strategize a lot of her ops. I’m happy to advise you in a similar capacity if you so choose.”
“Thank you—I plan to take you up on that.” Cairn felt like she’d waded in over her head as it was. And while her first day shadowing Nook had been eye-opening, the detective obviously still thought of her as a burden. She couldn’t count on him for help if she decided to do some investigating of her own.
“So that leaves one question.” Vulcan gestured to the suspect list. “Where do you want to begin?”
Cairn considered this, then tapped on the senator’s image. “Let’s start at the top of the pyramid. The man who has the most is also the man with the most to lose.”
“There’s something you should know about Ra,” Vulcan said. “The night before your mom died, she ran an operation to rescue his fifteen-year-old daughter. The girl had been kidnapped by Mercury, a Roman messenger god who moonlights as a human trafficker.”
“You’re kidding me.” Cairn remembered Dima Ra’s disappearance making national news. She had been too distracted by her mother’s death to follow the story to its resolution. “But I vaguely remember the reports saying that the police had been the ones to find her.”
“That’s the weirdest part: Sedna didn’t want Ra to know that she was the one who rescued his daughter. In fact, she was adamant about it.”
“So many secrets, so many lies,” Cairn whispered. She gazed at the digital rendering of the senator. How far would a man of such ambition go to protect his own meteoric rise from the sins of his past?
“I imagine I can’t just barge onto Capitol Hill and demand to see him,” Cairn mused. “I need to catch him out in the open. Someplace public where he’ll have a hard time dodging me with the world’s eyes upon him. Can you work your geek magic and hack into his appointment book or something?”
Vulcan smirked. “No need.” With a few quick keystrokes, he pulled up the page for an event happening that very night—a black-tie party on Outer Brewster Island, ten miles off the coast of Boston. Apparently, the senator’s most recent trophy wife was celebrating the launch of her new line of mead, and he planned to make an appearance.
“What the hell is mead?” Cairn asked.
“Wine made from honey,” Vulcan explained. “The nectar of the gods, some call it. Anyway, the launch party is by invitation only, a privilege only offered to”—he thumbed up his nose—“the wealthy elite.”
“Leave that to me,” she said as she started for the door. “I made a career of crashing parties in high school.”
On her way out of the mansion, Cairn stopped by Themis’s office and poked her head in the door. The muse of justice was meditating on a yoga mat, but when she looked toward Cairn, she wore an unmistakably repentant grimace. The two hadn’t seen each other since Themis had given her the journal, and the doctor seemed to anticipate another tongue-lashing.
But Cairn wasn’t here for that kind of battle. “Teach me to fight,” she said. “Starting today.”
After a moment of consideration, the doctor nodded once. “Meet me in the dojo at noon.”
As Cairn started to leave, Themis cleared her throat. “By the way … Your mother kept a spare room here, up on the second floor. There’s a closet full of extra clothes, including workout gear for our sparring session. As I remember, there’s a stunning blue cocktail dress in there as well if you need one for tonight.”
Cairn opened her mouth to say thanks, then squinted at the doctor. “Wait, how did you already know I was going to that party?”
Themis smiled mischievously as she settled back into her meditation stance. “It’s hard not to overhear things in a mansion this small.”
Ambrosia
Cairn sailed south in the Lemon Shark. The boat had been docked in a marina for the last two months, untouched since the day her mother died, and it felt unsettling to be back behind the wheel. If she was going to figure out what happened that day, it meant facing the past head-on.
No matter what.
On the horizon before her lay the Boston Harbor Islands, an archipelago of more than thirty uninhabited isles that stretched out into Massachusetts Bay. Long before the Mayflower first landed in the New World, the Wampanoag tribe had used the islands for tool manufacturing and fished their coasts for bass and flounder. Over the next four hundred years, the Harbor Islands witnessed some of the state’s seediest history. Pirates had been hung in the gallows, their bones left on the rocks to warn off other marauders. The Union had built a pentagon-shaped fortress on George’s Island, where they imprisoned Confederate soldiers. S
mallpox quarantines, illegal gambling dens and brothels, fighting rings—the islands had provided secluded locations to engage in all sorts of seedy activities.
Cairn’s destination was Outer Brewster Island, a twenty-acre lump of bedrock with imposing cliffs on one side that rose dramatically out of the water. Masons had quarried it for granite in the 19th century, and in World War II, the American military had established artillery on the island to defend the coast from German invasion.
After decades without habitation, Ambrosia Nectars had recently built a magnificent greenhouse there.
Cairn’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect: as she approached, a sleek yacht unloaded its passengers onto the island’s only dock. The party guests, all dressed to the nines, had boarded at Boston’s Long Wharf, presenting embossed invitations that had been sent to only the wealthiest contributors to the senator’s campaign.
As Cairn lacked an invitation—and the bank account to merit one—she’d opted for a stealthier entrance. On the opposite side of the island, she anchored the Lemon Shark in the darkness offshore. Then, with a quick prayer that a rip current wouldn’t send her floating off into the Atlantic, she zipped up her wetsuit and dove into the bay.
The water was colder than she could have imagined, and the forty meters to shore felt more like a mile in the darkness. In the end, she emerged onto the rocky beach, cold but alive, and offered her mother a silent thank-you for forcing her to take swim lessons all those years.
In the shadow of a bluff, Cairn stripped off her wetsuit, then shimmied into the cobalt dress and flats she’d towed behind her in a Ziplock bag. Miraculously, her tight updo had remained mostly dry beneath her swimmer’s cap.
She was tugging her hemline down when a couple rounded the corner. They both gawked at her, cigarettes halfway raised to their lips.