James Swain - Dark Magic

Liza let out a shriek, and covered her face.

Snoop let out a war whoop.

The demon in Peter said nothing.

Peter became himself again a few moments later. It was like snapping out of a daydream, and he gazed at the dead man lying on the floor. He’d killed Zack, as hard as it was for him to believe. He went to where Liza was standing, and put his arms around her protectively.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he said.

“Oh, my God, Peter, this is so awful,” she cried.

“Wow, Zack was going to kill us,” Snoop said. “To think I roomed with the guy.”

Zack had known everything about the Friday night psychics there was to know. More than likely, he’d stored the information on his computer. Peter needed to call the police. But first, he needed to find that information, and erase it from the computer’s hard drive.

“Herbie is parked down front. Have him drive you to my place,” Peter said.

“What about the police?” Snoop asked.

“I’ll deal with them.”

“You sure you don’t want us to stay, and give them statements?” Snoop said.

“Just go. It’s for your own good.”

Snoop grabbed Liza and started out the door. His girlfriend came back inside the loft, and stood directly in front of him.

“Look at me,” she said.

Peter looked into her beautiful face.

“Tell me how you feel,” she said.

“Like I might get sick.”

“You didn’t want to kill Zack, did you?”

He shook his head. The demon had wanted to kill Zack, but he hadn’t.

“Say it,” she said.

“I didn’t want to kill Zack, despite everything he’d done.”

His answer seemed to satisfy her. She turned around and walked out of the loft. He shut the door with his head spinning. The shock of what he’d done had started to set in. He found a chair and sat in it. For several minutes he did nothing but stare at the floor.

Once he started to feel better, Peter went searching for Zack’s laptop. There weren’t that many places in the loft to look, and he tried Zack’s bedroom first. Zack had been a minimalist, and the room had little in the way of furnishings save for a mattress on the floor, and a weight-lifting bench with barbells and dumbbells lying around it. A laptop lay on the floor beside the bed, an ultrathin Dell Latitude. Peter tried to see what was on it, only to discover he needed a password. He called Snoop, and his assistant’s cheerful voice answered on the first ring.

“You don’t know the password to Zack’s computer, do you?” Peter asked.

“I know the passwords to everyone’s computers,” Snoop said proudly.

“You don’t know mine.”

“It’s Houdini, spelled backwards.”

“That’s actually a little bit scary.”

“I’m just that good. Zack’s is BULLYBOY, in caps. Was Zack really an assassin for the Order of Astrum?”

The less Snoop knew about what was going on, the better. But at the same time, Peter couldn’t keep his assistant in the dark forever. Trust ran both ways. “I’m afraid so. He would have killed us if I hadn’t stopped him.”

“But why? What does the Order of Astrum want?”

It was the same question Peter had been asking himself from the beginning.

“I wish I knew. I’ve got to go,” Peter said.

“Call me if you need me. Liza says she loves you.”

“Tell her that I love her. Talk to you later.”

Peter returned to the main room of the loft, where he sat at the dining table with the laptop in front of him. Zack lay on the floor a few yards away. His assistant had died with his eyes wide open, staring lifelessly into space. Peter’s stomach started to do strange things, and he looked away. He had come here with the intention of making Zack tell him the Order of Astrum’s secrets, and knocking him around a little bit. He had never expected it would end like this.

He focused on the laptop. Its hard drive contained fifteen files, each named after a major city. He opened them, and scanned their contents. Zack had been gathering information on psychics in other cities, including Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., and preparing hit lists. Strangely, there was no file devoted to the Friday night group, and he supposed Zack had erased the file from his computer after sending the information to his bosses.

He had to find that file. It would explain why Wolfe was trying to kill them, and what the Order of Astrum’s reason was for sending Wolfe to New York. He knew enough about computers to know that nothing was ever permanently erased from a computer’s memory. The New York file was still on the laptop, and needed to be retrieved, and studied.

It was time to bring Garrison into the loop. As he pulled up Garrison’s number, something on the floor caught his eye.

He gasped.

Zack’s neck was glowing like he’d turned radioactive. Peter had never seen anything like it before. He placed his cell phone onto the table, and went to have a look.

He stopped a few feet from the body. Zack looked dead. Just to be safe, he nudged him with his toe. His assistant didn’t move.

He knelt down, and studied the glowing skin. It was the size of a half-dollar, and was shimmering. The Order of Astrum’s symbol had been tattooed into Zack’s neck, and covered with a piece of flesh through plastic surgery. Zack was dead, yet the Order’s symbol lived on. Garrison needed to see this.

He went to the table and retrieved his cell phone. A voice was coming out of it. Had he put the call through without realizing it?

“Hello?” he said into the phone.

“Peter-is that you?” Garrison asked.

“It’s me. You need to get over here, and see this.”

“See what? What’s going on?”

“I just killed one of my assistants.”

“You did what ?”

“His name was Zack, and he was an assassin and spy for the Order of Astrum. He’s lying dead on the floor, only the side of his neck is glowing. I think the Order is somehow keeping tabs on him. It’s freaking me out.”

“Why did you kill him?” Garrison asked.

“He attacked me with a sword.”

“Did you shoot him?”

“No, I used a screwdriver.”

“A screwdriver ?”

“It’s a long story. I also found his laptop.”

“Tell me where you are, and I’ll be right over,” Garrison said.

Peter looked back at Zack. The side of his assistant’s neck looked like it was on fire. Zack had traded his soul to be a member of the Order, and was now burning from within.

He gave Garrison the address.

Wolfe sat in the corner of a West Side bar called The Gin Mill, tending to the dog bites that covered his arms and legs. None of the bites were particularly severe, yet they still managed to sting like the devil each time his clothing rubbed against them. Dipping a paper napkin into a glass of vodka, he cleaned the wounds to avoid infection.

Music played out of a jukebox. The Rolling Stones’s Some Girls. Above the bar was the prerequisite flat screen TV; across the room, a foosball game. Wolfe found himself longing for a simple pub with a dartboard and a snoring dog. He’d had enough of bloody New York, and was ready to go home again.

He placed down his empty glass. His waitress hit the table like a shark. She’d told him her name while taking his order, but he’d promptly forgotten.

“Ready for another Stoli?” she asked.

“Yes. And a beer chaser,” Wolfe said.

“You got it, cowboy.”

He snorted contemptuously. He hardly felt like a cowboy. What he felt like was a battered and beaten soldier. Every job came with a price, he’d learned that long ago. Each time he took a life, a tiny piece of his soul was taken away, until he had no soul at all. He could live with that aspect of his work. What he couldn’t live with was getting eaten alive by a pack of lunatic dogs. He was going to walk away, the elders be damned. He’d never done that before, and he supposed there was a first time for everything.