I still wasn’t sure what to think about this guy, so I held a telekinetic burst ready. At the first sign of mischief, I’d blast him into the nearest headstone.
The three of us approached the grave. “Agnes MacLaughlin, 1788 – 1844,” Megan read. “Wife, Mother, and Daughter.” A full moon and stars had been engraved on the stone. “That name mean anything to you?” Both Herb and I shook our heads. Megan took a photo of the headstone with her phone. I knelt down and poked at the disturbed earth with my switchblade. A hole about six inches in diameter had been bored into the ground. It looked wet. I scraped a sample of it into a plastic bag and tucked it into my jacket pocket. This was just like the other two gravesite vandalisms we’d dealt with. “We’ll have someone on our team analyze this,” I said. “Maybe that’ll turn something up.”
Herb nodded. “So I’m guessing you guys are Caulborn,” he said. I arched an eyebrow at him and he shrugged. “Anybody else would’ve run screaming from this place.” He fished in his pocket and produced a slightly bent card. “I have a vested interest in this case; my job is to help the dead find peace. If there’s anything I can do to help, please just ask.” He held the card out to Megan. She took it, and their fingers touched for just a moment too long.
Megan produced her own card. “Call me,” she said. Her voice was dreamy again. “I mean, you know, about the case.”
Herb’s voice was dopey, too. “Yeah, of course. Maybe we could talk about it over dinner sometime?”
“I’d like that.”
This was getting awkward. “Um, Meg, we really should report back to HQ.”
Megan gave me a startled look, like she’d forgotten I was there. “Oh, right. Of course. Thank you again, Herb. It was nice meeting you.” They stammered out awkward goodbyes for another minute, and I was concerned I might have to actually drag Megan back to the car. Finally we parted company and made our way back to her Tercel.
Megan started the car and cranked the heat. “Goodness, I didn’t even realize I wasn’t wearing both of my gloves,” she said as she blew on her fingers. “That was careless.”
“You were kinda distracted.”
“Yes. This case is intense. I hate fighting undead.”
“I wasn’t talking about the skeletons. I meant you were distracted by Mr. Herbert Wallenby, Benevolent Necromancer.”
Megan frowned at me. “Don’t scoff, Vincent. He is a sincere individual. I didn’t make snide remarks about you when you told me you work as a Caulborn operative because you want to protect people, even though you’re literally a god who’s worshipped by psychic fae.”
I looked at my hands. “You’ve got me there. Sorry, Meg. But you have to admit, we meet a lot of whackjobs in this line of work.”
“That’s true,” she said as we drove down the dark Boston streets. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t ever trust people. There are just as many allies out there as there are enemies. I’ll do some digging on Herb, just to be safe, but I think he might be able to help us.” She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock. Twenty past eleven. “Boy, it’s late. I’ve gotta get some sleep. You want me to drive you home?”
“No, drop me back at the office.” I held up the bag of soil I’d taken from the grave. “I’ll give this to Mrs. Rita for analysis. Maybe she and Doc Ryan can learn something from it.” Megan nodded and ten minutes later dropped me at the curb in front of the office. It’s an unassuming three-story brick building from the 1800s. The main door is a thick metal job that’s built to withstand any manner of assault, physical or magical. I ran my ID badge in front of a small plate next to the door, which then swung open into a small anteroom. As the door swung shut behind me, I swiped my badge again in front of a second scanner, and stepped into the building’s lobby.
Jake, the ever-present security guard, nodded at me from behind the desk. Jake’s arms are as thick around as most men’s legs, and his gray eyes never miss anything. In the entire time I’ve worked here, I’ve only heard Jake speak about two-dozen words. I nodded back and headed down the hall into Medical, where I found Mrs. Rita pinning up a crayon drawing over her desk. “We love you, Gramma Rita” was written in shaky pink letters. The picture showed three small stick figures gathered around a larger one and a rainbow arching over them.
“Nice artwork,” I said with a grin.
Mrs. Rita’s eyes twinkled with pride. “My Tasha is quite the artist, isn’t she? Wait and see, Vincent, she’ll have paintings in all the fancy galleries someday.” Even after all these years, Mrs. Rita’s Cajun accent still seems out of place with her Korean features. She looked at the clock and clucked her tongue. “It’s never good when you come here late at night, Vincent. What’s wrong?” I relayed the night’s events to her and handed over the soil sample. “I’ll start the analysis on this straight away and compare it to the other samples you’ve brought in. Maybe we’ll know something by the time you come back in the morning. Now go rest, you look tired.” She shooed me out of Medical, and I caught a cab home.
I entered my apartment and found Petra seated at the kitchen table, surrounded by open cookbooks. She had a pad of paper in front of her and was jotting down the page numbers for recipes. Her curly brown hair was pulled up on top of her head, and she was wearing a pair of pink sweatpants and a black T-shirt that read “Come to the Dark Side, we have cookies.” The scent of cooking oil was strong in the air, and our deep fryer was out on the counter, a bunch of crumpled Twinkie wrappers on the counter beside it. I swallowed. Deep-fried Twinkies were Petra’s ultimate comfort food, and there was only one time when she ate them.
“Hey, love,” I said. “When’s your mother coming over?”
“Saturday lunch,” she replied without looking up. To herself, she said, “Lamb, lamb, lamb, ah here we go.” She thumbed to a page in the book and nodded. “I think this recipe would be good.” I sighed. Petra’s mother is none other than Aphrodite herself. Most theater majors and mythology students know the story of Pygmalion; guy sculpts a beautiful statue, Aphrodite animates it, names it Galatia, and Pygmalion and Galatia live happily ever after. The part that didn’t make it into the myths is that Galatia was destroyed in a stampede. Pygmalion, wracked with grief, sculpted another statue, Petra. Aphrodite animated Petra, but Petra could never live up to her deceased sister’s reputation, despite being stronger, faster, and smarter.
I ran a hand through my hair. “Petra, don’t do this to yourself. Let’s just order takeout or something. No matter what you do, she’s just going to nitpick you. Remember that time you made escargot? She went on for an hour about how Galatia would’ve caught the snails by singing to them, and how you’d done the best you could, but sung snails tasted so much better.”
Petra still didn’t look up. “I’m certain this time will be better, Vincent. I asked Hephaestus about this, and Galatia never cooked lamb. There won’t be anything about this meal that will give her a chance to compare me to Galatia.”
“Petra, you know she’ll just make something up.” I shrugged out of my bloody, chewed-up coat and tossed it into the trash. I hadn’t liked the color anyway. My good old leather bomber would have to do for the time being.
Petra turned the page in her book. “Did you talk to Megan?”
The abrupt change in subject caught me flat-footed. “Ah. No,” I said as I rubbed my face.
She looked up for the first time then. Her brown eyes locked with mine. “Vincent, you have to deal with that.”
“I know, I know,” I said, putting up my hands. “Look, this isn’t exactly the easiest topic to broach. What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey Meg, remember back when you got attacked by that flower laced with industrial-strength botanical magic and I promised you’d be fine? Well, Orcus, he’s the god of oaths, see, and he’s got a very strict interpretation of that particular promise. He’s saying I have to keep you fine forever or else I’ll suffer eternal damnation in a forgotten corner of Tartarus.’”
Petra looked at me flatly. “This is serious, Vincent. I waited too long for you to lose you to a silly slip of the tongue. You need to get her to release you from that promise.”
I looked down at my Reeboks. “It feels like I’m failing if I do that. Like I’m not living up to something.”
Petra rose and gave me a hug. Despite the fact that she’s living stone, she feels like flesh and blood. “I know,” she said. “But the only alternative is to find a way to keep her fine forever, and that’s not possible, not even for you.”
“I’ll take care of it, Petra. Trust me.” I stifled a yawn. “I’m turning in. You coming to bed soon?”
She shook her head and turned her attention back to the cookbooks. “I need to work on this for a bit.” I kissed her on the head and went to the bedroom. The last time I saw the clock, it was two in the morning and Petra still hadn’t come into bed yet. The day’s events drifted through my mind. Skeletons, necromancers, and now an impending visit from Aphrodite. I suppose I should’ve seen the nightmares coming.
Chapter 2
There is an inherent danger in those paranormals who can conjure gateways through other dimensions. This stems beyond the obvious risks in opening a gateway to a hostile location. The true danger lies in the predators that exist in that space between dimensions, where the gateways are created. Should one of them sense an Opener, and then attach itself to that individual, then any opening created by that individual would risk allowing the predator through. Such predators would be unlike anything we have encountered before, and it is highly likely that many paranormal and human lives would be lost in the time it took us to craft a suitable defense.
—From an internal Caulborn memo dated 1938, authored by Jack Santo
I was on a boat. There were shirtless and barefoot men running all around the deck, tying down sails and battening down hatches and anything else that a sailor would do when his ship was about to enter a storm. I put my hands in my pockets and withdrew one, now holding a gold coin. The crew suddenly went silent. As one, they said, “Let no man steal from the captain.” They drew pistols and knives and descended on me. I flailed about as they knocked me down and began kicking and beating me. One sat on my stomach and drove a knife straight through my chest.
I woke up with a jolt. The clock said it was just after six. I reached for Petra. Her side of the bed had been neatly made, and a note left on the pillow. Early morning shoot. See you tonight. Love you.
Petra’s job as a lingerie model has hours that are worse than mine. If she were human, I’d worry that she’d burn herself out, but technically, she doesn’t need to eat or sleep. My gut told me she had pulled an all-nighter, and even though I knew I shouldn’t be worried about her, I was. The time leading up to and immediately following a visit from Aphrodite was always tense and hectic. I sighed, swung my legs over the side of the bed, stretched, and padded toward the kitchen.
“Good morning, Vincent.” I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of the voice coming from behind me.
My Commander Courageous action figure strode across the top of the dresser and planted his plastic fists on his hips. Clad in a scarlet body suit and green gloves and mask, my childhood hero posed proudly in his “I’m a hero, dammit,” stance. Aside from being an ultra rare collectible, this action figure served as a vessel for an adviser my father had sent me years ago, just before I received worshippers. My father, Janus, the Roman god of doors, had to stay away from my mom and me to ensure we stayed safe from his enemies, and Commander Courageous was one of the guardians he left behind. I’ve never learned who the being is behind the mask, but he always gives insightful advice. “You’re going to have company today, Vincent.” Courageous said with a smile. “I’ve arranged a new instructor for you.”
“An instructor? For what? I know how to control my powers, and I’m caring for my followers. What more is there?” Courageous was silent, having reverted back to a normal action figure. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to say anymore, I headed to the kitchen.
Where a gateway to Hell had opened.
The scents of sulfur and brimstone choked me, and a greasy smoke filled the kitchen. On the other side of the gateway, a hellhound sniffed the air. The thing was as big as a Harley and probably weighed twice that. Luminescent yellow eyes regarded me, and I shivered at the intelligence that glimmered there. The hellhound’s thick red and black fur bristled as it walked forward, stepping through to my kitchen. “Sorry,” I said to the hound, “but my apartment has a strict no pets policy.” I telekinetically threw it backward. My initial guess was wrong; the hellhound easily weighed three or four times what a Harley did.
It got back to its feet and snarled, belching out a cone of flame. I put up a telekinetic shield and deflected the fire back through the gateway and countered with a pyrokinetic blast. The hound made a sound like laughter. Dumbass. It’s a HELL-hound. You can’t hurt it with fire. I telekinetically hurled it again, hoping it would lose interest.
“Stop playing with it, Corinthos,” a voice from my left said. “Just seal the gateway.” I stole a glance at the speaker. Forculus, another Roman god of doors, had his sneakered feet up on my kitchen table, a chocolate-frosted donut in his hand. He regarded me with gray eyes as he bit into his donut and then cocked his head toward the gateway in a “get on with it” gesture. My gaze returned to the hellhound, which had regained its feet and was shaking its head. It looked up at me with pure hatred blazing in its yellow eyes. Shit.
“How?” I asked.
“Concentrate on the gateway,” Forculus said. “Feel the energies that make it up, and then tie them together.” I hastily reached out for the gateway with my mind, trying to sense whatever made it work. As I did, the hellhound charged. I abandoned my probing and threw out a telekinetic barrier. A second later, the hellhound slammed into the barrier full force. I strained to hold it in place as the creature pressed against it. But, the hellhound snarled and punched through. Pain exploded in my head as the barrier shattered. I was disoriented and couldn’t concentrate enough to bring it back. The hound charged forward again and leapt for the gateway, jaws open wide. The spittle on its teeth and tongue shimmered as it hurtled through the air. I put my arms up over my face, knowing the gesture wasn’t going to afford me any protection. Forculus snapped his fingers and the smells of brimstone and sulfur vanished.