Viper Moon Read online

I headed for the bedroom. I really didn’t want him to arrest me in a T-shirt and underwear. Arrest wasn’t what he had in mind, though, or he’d have locked the cuffs on me as soon as he stepped in the door. He muttered something unintelligible behind me.

  I went into the tiny, windowless bathroom with its depressing, anemic, industrial gray tile and turned on the shower. Five minutes later, a thin stream of warm water made its way up from the basement. I stripped off my shirt and panties, climbed in, and washed the lumps out of my hair. A couple of twigs, some leaves, and a few pieces of—That smell . . . was there a dog at the party? I washed my hair again, this time with a bar of citrusscented soap my mother had sent me.

  The situation was a first for me. I’d had only two beers last night—I think. I’d never been so drunk that I couldn’t remember what I did. Now I’d lost everything past nine p.m. Entirely my fault, though. I hadn’t followed orders.

  Dear Madam Abigail said no beer for at least a month. The medicine, the foul-tasting potions and slimy oils that magically brought relief to my seriously burned skin did not peacefully coexist with even minute amounts of alcohol.

  My laundry basket produced a reasonably clean pair of jeans and I found a tank top and panties in the drawer. My body is lean, muscular, and athletic. A few freckles dot my nose and cheeks, and my eyes are a dull brownish green, not the emerald so prized in redheads. I have great hair. I dried and brushed it to a copper sheen.

  Now to see what the sexy yet abrasive Detective Flynn wanted.

  Flynn sat at the table drinking coffee. My ancient appliance gurgled and gasped through its long cycle, but made a great brew. The nutty odor filling the room made my mouth water.

  He’d removed the jacket that covered his gun and the badge he’d clipped to his belt, and hung it on the back of the chair. Not that it mattered. He could wear a tux but savvy people watchers would mark him as a cop by the way he moved. Tough, confident, ready to face whatever came his way.

  I poured myself a cup and sat at the table across from him. He didn’t smile. Intense weariness settled in eyes as dark and deep as the liquid in the cups. How long since he’d slept?

  Flynn reached in the pocket of his jacket and tossed a picture, a four-by-six snapshot, on the table. He watched me with narrowed eyes. His grim mouth betrayed nothing.

  I glanced at the photo of a little boy. Five years old, brown hair, wide innocent eyes, with his mouth turned up in a gap-toothed smile.

  I shrugged. “Maxie Fountain. Picture in the Duivel Chronicle, maybe a month ago. Kidnapped. Snatched off his bicycle.”

  He produced another photo.

  I picked it up. “Abandoned store. Exeter Street, near the docks. Blew up and burned, oh, two weeks ago. Bastinados stashed arms and ammo. Or so the Chronicle said.”

  The Bastinado gangs—the Exeter Street Slashers, Pythons, Blood Beasts, Butcher Boys, and Slum Devils—had recently found a source of heavy weaponry, something that greatly concerned me, given my last spectacular encounter. It probably unsettled cops like Flynn, too. I laid the picture down on the table. It reminded me of the pain I’d endured because of that blast.

  Bitter frustration echoed in Flynn’s voice. “That building blew, and the next morning Maxie Fountain was back in Mommy’s loving arms.”

  “Good.” I grinned at him, but wondered if—and how—he’d made a connection between me and the boy. “Happy ending.”

  Flynn scooped the photos up and stuck them back in his jacket. “When we couldn’t find Maxie, Maxie’s mother started seeing psychics.”

  I stayed calm, sipped my coffee, and let caffeine race through my nervous system, hot on the trail of any lingering alcohol residue.

  “So what do you want?” I asked.

  “I want you to tell me what happened. Tell me about Maxie.”

  “Why don’t you ask his mother? Or Maxie.”

  “Mom says she found him on the doorstep, wrapped in a blanket, sound asleep. All Maxie remembers is falling off his bike.” Flynn leaned back in his chair and studied me. “The last psychic Maxie’s mother saw was your good friend Madam Abigail.”

  “Kidnappers are usually runaway parents or perverts, not psychics. Why were you watching the mother?”

  “Because parents are always the first suspects. Maxie’s mother is a hotel maid. The day he came home, she went to the bank and withdrew all her savings. A total of three thousand nine hundred and twelve dollars. She went straight to Madam Abigail, stayed ten minutes, then went back to the bank and redeposited all but four hundred dollars.”

  Of course she did. Poor woman had suffered enough without me and Abby taking her last dime.

  He stood, went to the coffeepot, and poured himself another cup. He held the pot out for me, but I shook my head. He returned to his chair.

  “And what did Madam Abigail say?”

  “Not a damned thing. In fact, we sent two detectives to talk to her. They don’t remember anything after going inside her house.”

  Many people sensed Abby’s strength, and while they couldn’t define its source, they walked a wide path around her. Abby’s loving care and magic medicines had saved me many times before my most recent injury.

  I sighed. “Are you going to believe me if I say I don’t know anything?”

  “No.” Flynn stared at me with those dark, searching eyes, as if his unwavering resolve alone would draw a confession of evil acts from me. Criminals, beware!

  He laid another photo on the table, this one of an adolescent girl.

  “This is my sister, Selene.”

  Okay, now I knew why he’d come.

  “How old is she?” The girl had Flynn’s dark hair and eyes.

  “Thirteen next month.”

  “Runaway?” Experience taught me the most likely scenario.

  “Some of her clothes were gone. She left a note. It’s not her handwriting, though.” He handed me a piece of paper, a photocopy of a handwritten note. It said she was grown up enough to make her own decisions and she wanted a different life. A twelve-year-old preteen didn’t write those words. I’d read many genuine farewell notes. Desperate parents searching for a child would shove them in my face, begging me to tell them what I couldn’t. Was their child safe? What did they do wrong? The young authors usually spilled out their souls in cries for help or howls of rage.

  “How long has she been gone?” I asked.

  “Three weeks.” He spoke with the uncompromising voice of a man holding his emotions under strict control. He believed she was dead. “She went to the mall and didn’t come home. Someone stole the security videos before we got them.”

  “You filed a report?”

  Flynn nodded. “She’s one of ours. Half the force is working on the case.”

  “So why come to me?” I knew the answer to the question, but wanted to know what he knew. I had a reputation for finding kids, usually runaways. That I sometimes used methods beyond the law was supposed to be a secret.

  “I’m told you’re the person who finds kids lost in the Barrows. I went to the Barrows. I heard wild stories, most pure bullshit. Crazy even. But they have one common thread. You. And the kids.”

  “What makes you think Selene is in the Barrows?”

  He handed me a small business-card-sized admission pass to the Goblin Den, a nightclub near the river. No place in Duivel could be worse for a young girl.

  “I took her bedroom apart an inch at a time,” he said.

  “She’d taped the card to the bottom of one of her jewelry box drawers.”

  I laid the card down. “Problem is, if she is in the Barrows, and if she went of her own free will—” I held up my hand to stifle his protest. “Laws that say she’s a child don’t mean shit down there. I find her, she doesn’t want to come with me, I probably can’t force her. I usually rescue by stealth. At twelve, almost thirteen, if I take her by force, she’ll go back.”

  “So you won’t . . . ” He had both hands on the table, clenched into fists.

  “I did
n’t say that. I’ll try. I can’t make promises.”

  “If you screw this up, I’ll—”

  “And I don’t operate on threats. Just leave me the photo.”

  His mouth softened and his shoulders relaxed. Relief that I’d accepted the task. Curious, since he so obviously disliked me.

  “I’m a little mystified as to why you’re here. Your faith in my ability to find your sister is touching, but I detect an undercurrent of antagonism.”

  Flynn gritted his teeth. “My mother went to your precious Madam Abigail. My mother told me if I didn’t come to you, she’d leave and I would never see her again. It’s idiotic, but I don’t want to lose her, too.”

  I’ve had mothers come to me and offer me their lives and everything they owned if I would bring their child back. I judged him—and his mother—to be that desperate. Flynn carried the substantial burden of being the cop, helpless in the face of a crime against himself and those he loved.

  “I’ll find her, Flynn. If she’s there, I’ll find her.” I had to prepare him. “Or at least find out what happened to her.”

  “You think she’s . . . ?”

  “I don’t think anything. Is she a fighter?”

  Flynn nodded. The faintest touch of pride appeared on his face. “Oh, yes. She’ll fight.”

  “Fighters last longer in the Barrows.” I could give him that assurance.

  He stood to go. The weariness in his eyes spread to his body and I could see how slow he moved. Maybe he wouldn’t meet a bad guy on the way home.

  “How did you know that was my car at Zeke’s?” I asked.

  “Easy. There’s a photo in your file. Which, by the way, is three inches thick. Hell, I don’t know how you stay out of jail.”

  “Lies. All lies. Do you have anything of Selene’s? Some unwashed clothing? Or has Mom done all the laundry?”

  He frowned. “There’s a stuffed rabbit she slept with.” “Put it in a plastic bag. Try not to touch it.”

  “What? You’re going to use a bloodhound or something?”

  “Or something.”

  Flynn nodded. “Ms. Archer—”

  “Just Cass.”

  “Cass.” His face relaxed, smoothing the creases. “That blast in the Barrows two weeks ago took out the entire membership of the Exeter Street Slashers.”

  “Bastinados?” I laid a hand over my heart. “How dreadful. To whom should I address the sympathy card?”

  Flynn’s mouth twitched in a faint smile. “Don’t know. So far, all we’ve found is three arms and two feet.”

  Fresh meat wouldn’t lie around long that deep in the Barrows.

  “What blew?” I asked. “No gas down there.”

  “Guns, ammo, maybe some plastic. A lot of plastic.”

  “I heard that. Where’d it come from?”

  He sighed. “We don’t know. Yet. Do you . . . ?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t deal in that. I find lost kids.” He offered me a business card. “Call the cell anytime.”

  Flynn stopped at the door. He gazed at me and his eyes softened. “You clean up pretty good. Like the hair.”

  He left and I sat back to enjoy the rest of my coffee.

  So he liked my hair. Attractive man, Flynn, even if he did classify me and Abby as frauds. Not that there could be anything between Flynn and me. I had enough problems on the rare occasions I had a regular boyfriend. A cop? No way.

  The hinge on the wall heating grate creaked and popped open and Horus leaped into the room. Horus is a cat who graciously consents to hang out with me. He’s rather disreputable-looking with his scarred, chewed ears and half tail. His hair is short, marbled gray and black, and he has the longest, sharpest claws I’ve ever seen on a cat. Horus uses the now defunct central heating and air ducts as a superhighway around the apartment house. He carried two twitching mice in his mouth. “Look, ladies,” I said. “Breakfast has arrived.”

  Nefertiti lay quiet in the sizable glass aquarium that covered the coffee table in front of the lumpy secondhand couch. I’d draped the couch with a sheet to cover the worn upholstery. She coiled her slender, four-footlong beige-and-brown-mottled body into a tight ball. Her forked tongue flicked in and out, scenting the world around her.

  In a smaller aquarium, perched on a bookshelf made of old boards stacked on concrete blocks, eighteen-inch red-and-black-striped Nirah stretched out on her favorite rock. Both snakes could crawl out anytime they wanted, but the glass defined their personal space.

  Horus dropped the mice on the floor. I picked them up by the tails and deposited one in each aquarium, then went to the kitchen and opened a can of expensive cat food from the gourmet section of Athena’s Prestigious Pet Emporium. The kitchen filled with the pungent aroma of prime tuna, laced with a bit of aromatic liver.

  It’s a good deal, I guess. I buy tuna and Horus feeds the girls. I suspect that the arrangement has more to do with his love of tracking and killing things than with altruism or his connoisseur tastes.

  I’m an independent soul, and I approach life with graceless enthusiasm. The nine-to-five thing isn’t for me, so I’m often impoverished, especially since I had to give up official private investigator work. I lost that thanks to one of Flynn’s fellow officers, a religious zealot who declared war on psychics and what he called their minions. A minion, that’s me.

  When the Earth Mother called me to her service, she gave me special gifts. Unfortunately, money wasn’t among them. Abby says she’s never received material aid, either; hence her psychic business. Abby offers me money and I always refuse. My parents raised me with the idea that I had to take care of myself. I do have a few hundred dollars a month from my grandfather’s trust fund, but I often have to choose between rent and other necessities—like bronze bullets.

  I don’t know the Earth Mother’s true nature. I don’t know the true nature of most of the world around me. If I had to use words to describe the Mother, I’d call her a demigod. Not the God, the all-powerful Master of the Universe, but a powerful being like the Darkness, who dwells in the Barrows.

  Nirah had ignored her breakfast offering and crawled out of her aquarium to play a game of cat and mouse with Horus, though she whipped her slender body along faster than any rodent. They’d race across the floor, over and under furniture, and Nirah would let Horus catch her every now and then to keep him interested. Nefertiti came out, too. Her mouse made a small lump four inches behind her head. She went to the windowsill and stretched out in the sun. She liked to save her energy for a swift, deadly strike.

  I went to the window, where I had a good view of the Barrows. My apartment house sits on a hill, and the land dipped lower to the south, toward river and marsh.

  Duivel, Missouri, sits on the banks of the Sullen River, a deepwater channel that eventually empties into the mighty Mississippi. Local legend among the area’s original Dutch settlers said that the devil pushed the land up out of hell. They named the city for him, the Father of Lies. Duivel—literally, the devil.

  A hundred thousand people live in and around Duivel, a city surrounded on three sides by a wet marshlike area called the Bog. The Bog is the fountain, the headwaters of the Sullen River. The ruins of the Barrows sit on a ten-square-mile hard-rock area across the river and between the Bog and uptown.

  When Detective Flynn and others refer to the Barrows, they are referring to the line of viable, if somewhat dubious, businesses that line River Street. While a few legitimate businesses struggle along the street, the tawdry, eclectic collection of flashy bars, pawnshops, cheaprent apartment buildings, and dark stinking alleys hides all manner of evil. Behind that line on the south, two to three blocks in, begins the true Barrows. The abandoned buildings and storm sewers make a perfect home for human criminals and other monsters. More important, the deeper Barrows stand as a prison for the malicious specter called the Darkness, whose will controls so many within its domain. It’s a prison with invisible bars, a prison of powerful magic.

  See but don’t see:
The cloak of the invisible, one of the oldest spells in the world, holds the deeper reaches of the Barrows in a viselike grip. It’s a strange and erratic thing, that particular spell. Those who live in the greater part of the city know the Barrows exists, but they ignore it. Those who live along River Street don’t ignore the place, but neither do they speak of it, even to each other. They don’t go into the ruins, either. I know a lot about the Barrows. What I don’t know could fill an encyclopedia. Did it appear suddenly or was it created when the earth was formed? Every time I go there, I see and learn something new. Things that should be fixed in time and place often change. People change. The Barrows epitomizes the bizarre.

  According to Abby, there is a place in the Barrows where the distance between worlds is thin. It is a doorway to the universe. A doorway to multiple worlds. I see science programs on TV speculating about the existence of other worlds, other universes. Abby says they need to keep on speculating. The Barrows is a seething cauldron of forces that do not belong in this world. All it takes is the right time, the right place, and something or someone can walk through into our world. In the Barrows, I’m usually the one who gets to deal with those walkers.

  The worst thing about the Barrows is the windows where dark power seeps in. Windows where intelligent evil creatures can watch and influence this world. It is from one of these windows that the Darkness spreads his influence, and has been spreading for some time. The Earth Mother holds her ring of power around the Barrows, a ring upon which he constantly pushes. That ring is the only protection we have against those who do not belong here. Abby says See but don’t see is the Mother’s doing. She wants to keep people away as much as possible. Once inside, they make an easy transition into the service of evil.

  Unlike the sewer monsters, who are nothing more than animals, the Darkness has no physical form in the Barrows, at least none that I know of. There are a lot of things I don’t know. I keep myself honed in on the moment and on my job—on what I can change. I try to leave the big questions to those with bigger brains. I do know that the Darkness’s power is real. It’s like being in an empty room, but knowing in your gut you aren’t alone. Sometimes it’s watchful; sometimes it’s filled with rage. It terrifies me. But I don’t let it control me.