Crashing Paradise Read online

“What’s to suspect?” Danny growled. “Our fucking friend tried to kill us.”

  Julia put her arm around her son. “It’s all right,” she tried to reassure him, careful not to let any of the loose ash from her cigarette fall on him.

  “Arthur isn’t convinced it was Clay,” Graves continued, concentrating on keeping his ghostly form as material as possible, so as not to draw attention from the people coming and going from the store. It helped that it was dark. He knew his body seemed more substantial in the shadows.

  “Then tell me who it was,” Danny said. “We saw him, Doc . . . you saw him. It was fucking Clay. Who else could it be changing into Animal Planet?”

  The boy grunted and stalked away from them. Dr. Graves could see that Danny was attempting to control his anger, to keep a tight rein on the violent, demonic nature that was his legacy.

  “All right, Danny,” Graves said. “Losing your temper won’t benefit anyone right now.”

  Julia reached out to Danny, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Leonard’s right, kid,” she reassured. “Deep breaths and all that.”

  The boy glared at his mother, his eyes glinting yellow from inside the shadows cast by the hood over his head.

  “Sure, I’m sorry,” he finally said, sighing. “I’m still a little worked up. I trusted the guy, y’know?”

  “We all did,” Julia said. “I’m still a little wound up myself.”

  “Can I have one of those?” Danny asked, gesturing with a clawed finger toward her cigarette. “It might help calm my nerves.”

  Julia seemed stunned by his request. “Certainly not,” she said, taking a final puff before dropping the remains to the ground and grinding it into the concrete.

  “Oh, but it’s okay for you to start again,” he chided her.

  “After what I’ve been through lately, smoking is the least damaging of the vices I have to choose from.”

  “What’s it going to do to me?” he asked, the tension back in his voice. “Do you actually think anything worse could happen to me now?”

  Graves placed himself between them. The nearness to him was chilling, and they each backed away, reacting to the sudden drop in temperature.

  “That’s enough of that,” the ghost told them. “If Conan Doyle doubts that it was really Clay who attacked us, let’s leave it a question mark until we learn more.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Danny said, folding his arms across his chest. “So what now? Is Doyle coming home or what?”

  Graves thought carefully about what he was going to say next.

  “I have instructions to join him and Ceridwen in Dubrovnik as quickly as possible.”

  Danny narrowed his eyes. “And what about us?”

  “Per Conan Doyle’s instructions, I’ll accompany you back to Louisburg Square to make sure the intruder is gone. Once we’ve secured the house, you’ll remain there to watch over the brownstone and your mother.”

  “What?” Danny shouted, baring his needle teeth. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me! Is he crazy?”

  “He was emphatic,” the ghost explained. “Squire will apparently be along soon to join you in keeping watch. Look, Danny, Conan Doyle doesn’t think you’re ready to rejoin the Menagerie in battle just yet. Frankly, I agree with him.”

  Fire sparked in the demon boy’s golden eyes. “If I’m going to be left on the fucking sidelines, why am I even hanging around?”

  Graves reached out, willing his hand solid, and gripped Danny’s arm. “Listen to me very closely. In recent months you’ve given all of us reason to doubt your self-control. I have faith that you’re going to learn to really control the darker side of your nature. But we’re in crisis, now, and we can’t gamble with our lives. Until we’re sure you’re ready, we won’t run that risk.”

  Danny snarled, pulling his arm away. “Yeah, I’m a roll of the fucking dice. But you’ve got faith, Doc. I’ll be ready any day now, right?” He stomped toward the car.

  Julia had stepped away, allowing them their exchange of words. She was smoking another cigarette as Graves glided toward her.

  “Are you comfortable staying at the brownstone with him?”

  She was silent for a moment, gazing at the car between puffs. “Sure, I’m fine,” she said, looking at Graves, a weak smile on her face. “Why wouldn’t I be? He’s my son.”

  Dr. Graves returned to the car with her, choosing to open the passenger-side door and close it after himself as if he were still of flesh and blood, just in case anyone was watching.

  Julia snuffed out her latest cigarette in the car’s ashtray and turned to him.

  “Could you do the honors again?” she asked, motioning toward the ignition.

  Dr. Graves complied, placing his hand within the steering column, using his ghostly substance to turn the engine over.

  Car running, she put the vehicle in drive, made a U-turn, and drove from the parking lot.

  “What if he’s right?” Danny asked, from the backseat of the Volvo.

  The ghost looked into the rearview mirror to see the boy’s luminescent eyes glowing in the darkness.

  “What if it wasn’t Clay . . . but shit, how can that be possible? You saw the same thing as me . . . you both did. There couldn’t be two like him . . . could there?”

  Dr. Graves pondered the question. If there was anything he had learned since becoming a part of Conan Doyle’s strange group—his Menagerie—it was that no concept or theory was too outrageous to be considered.

  When dealing with the ways of the weird, anything was possible.

  “I don’t know, Danny. But we’re going to find out.”

  UNNOTICED by the constables of Villefranche, the gray mouse skittered along the stone foundations, losing itself in the cool shadows of the medieval structures.

  The mournful wail of an ambulance siren filled the earlymorning gloom as the tiny creature paused, looking back momentarily toward the murder scene. Frenzied law officers were attempting to cope with the brutality of what had transpired in their normally tranquil city.

  Knowing that there was nothing more it could do, the mouse continued on, moving along the cobblestoned streets, searching for a place away from prying eyes.

  In a deep patch of shadow, Clay assumed his human guise—the delicate rodent form abandoned for his mask of humanity. The shapeshifter emerged from the shadows, cautious eyes scanning for any sign that he had been noticed.

  Finding none, he continued on.

  Every instinct told him that he should be searching for Eve, but intuition assured him it would be a fruitless task.

  Wherever she had been spirited off to, it would not be nearby.

  A nagging voice inside his head told him that what had transpired here was no simple vengeance upon her. Had they wanted only to take revenge, they would have slain Eve, not taken her away. This had to be bigger than that.

  His mind’s eye was seared with the image of Eve held between the angel and the demon as though they were children fighting over some prize won at carnival game. Clay felt an apprehension the likes of which he had never known before.

  He picked up his pace, striding quickly down the cobblestoned street toward the lodging that he and Eve had acquired for their stay in Villefranche. His cell phone had been destroyed in combat with the vampire swarm, but he knew he had to contact Doyle immediately to let him know what had transpired and that Eve had been taken.

  Clay altered the structure of his eyes to improve his vision, and the gloom of the early-morning hours appeared to him like full daylight. He searched the shadows for any potential threat, but the city streets were as quiet as the grave.

  The Grand Hôtel Du Lion D’Or was nestled in a nearly hidden corner of a residential street. It resembled a medieval castle, its stone walls concealed in a verdant covering of ivy.

  The concierge at the front desk had instructed them when they’d checked in that the doors of the hotel would be locked promptly at midnight and that their room keys would grant them access
to the building. Clay searched his pockets, found his key, and let himself inside. The structure was eerily silent except for the gurgling of a watercooler from the darkened office behind the vacant front desk. Not wanting to wait for the antique elevator, he climbed the stairs to their adjoining rooms on the third floor. He glanced at the door to Eve’s room and again turned over the riddle of the night’s chaos.

  Heaven and Hell, acting in unison.

  Such a thing was momentous. Their purpose must have been as well.

  Clay entered the room, not bothering to switch on the light, his eyes still augmented to see in the darkness. As he approached the phone resting on the nightstand, he heard a noise.

  From Eve’s room.

  He approached the locked connecting door, and as he had done with his eyes, he did to his ears. Gripping the cold metal knob, Clay tilted his head toward the door and listened.

  There were two voices, creatures speaking in excited whispers as they went through Eve’s belongings. Even though they had planned only to be away for two days, Eve had still insisted on bringing two full suitcases, as well as a carry-on bag.

  I need my stuff, she’d told him, and he’d shaken his head in dismay.

  The memory acted as a kind of spark. Crushing the metal doorknob, Clay broke the lock, charging into the other room.

  What he saw inside enraged him all the more.

  A pair of vampires—one male and one female—stood among the refuse of Eve’s emptied suitcases. The female was holding one of Eve’s silk blouses against her body, a startled expression on her gaunt, undead face as Clay barged in.

  She hissed at him, long slavering fangs bared as he came at her.

  “That does not belong to you,” Clay growled as he shed his human guise, resuming the towering, earthen shape that was his true form. He wrapped his hand around the female leech’s throat, choking away the hiss of ferocity, squeezing so tightly that the pathetic creature’s head popped from her body before she exploded in a shower of ash.

  Eve’s blouse fluttered to the floor.

  The male knew that it was futile to fight him.

  “You were supposed to have been killed,” the vampire shrieked, scrabbling across the room floor on all fours, making his way toward the drawn, velvet drapes that covered the windows.

  But Clay was faster. He dived, grabbing the vampire’s ankle in a grip that pulverized the bones beneath the pale, undead flesh.

  The vampire shrieked, rolling over onto its back, slashing at him with razor talons. Clay reached down and picked the squirming predator off the ground by his leather vest.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, your friends failed,” Clay said, giving him a savage shake.

  The leech threw himself forward, burying his fangs in the shapeshifter’s cheek.

  “Stop that!” Clay roared, pulling the creature off, the vampire coming away with a large mouthful of the dark soil that was his true flesh. The clay.

  The night-thing thrashed in his grasp, choking and coughing as large chunks of mud dropped from his open mouth.

  Clay tore off the vampire’s arm. The leech’s scream was earsplitting.

  Clay tossed the arm aside.

  “You son of a bitch!” the vampire cried in fury and agony.

  Clay responded the best way he knew how—by ripping the other arm from its socket. Over the vampire’s screams, he tossed that one on the floor as well.

  “Have we established who holds the upper hand?” the shapeshifter asked.

  The vampire squirmed in pain, moaning loudly as thick gouts of stolen blood spewed from the ragged stumps where his arms had been.

  “I have some questions I’d like to ask you,” Clay said, holding the vampire close to his face.

  “I don’t know a thing,” the vampire hissed, his crimson eyes wild.

  “Too bad,” Clay said.

  Digging his fingers deep into the flesh and muscle, he tore off one of the creature’s legs. The limbs came away with no more difficulty than the arms. Clay grinned.

  “I’m going to ask you anyway.”

  Clay tossed the vampire’s mangled body up against the wall. The creature was completely crippled, flopping around in its own fluids, begging for Clay to kill it.

  “Not until after we talk, and after I’ve made a phone call. See, your pals took someone I care very much about. Every second that goes by, I worry more about what might happen to her. And for every one of those seconds, I’m going to hurt you unless you tell me what I need to know.”

  He sat on Eve’s bed, the springs creaking noisily. He reached for the phone and, reading the instructions printed in six languages on a plastic information card, dialed Conan Doyle’s cell phone number. It rang only once before he heard Conan Doyle’s unmistakable voice.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Clay,” he said, and started to recount the story of the evening’s ambush. When he’d finished, the silence on the other end of the line went on far too long.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked.

  “You’re only the latest of us to be attacked,” Conan Doyle said.

  “Is everyone all right?”

  “They’re fine. However . . .”

  “What is it?” Clay prodded, troubled by the mage’s hesitation.

  “If I’m to believe what Dr. Graves has told me, it was you who attacked the brownstone in Louisburg Square, almost killing Danny and his mother.”

  Clay blinked and shook his head as though he’d been slapped.

  “Me?” he asked, standing up from the bed. “Arthur, I’m here in France.”

  “Yes, you are,” Conan Doyle replied, and Clay could practically hear the grinding of gears inside the man’s head as he attempted to unravel this riddle.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I’m not certain. But at a guess, I’d say it has something to do with Eve and her abduction.”

  “We have to find her,” Clay said. He and Conan Doyle shared a rich history with the woman who was the mother of mankind and vampires alike.

  “Of course we do. And when we have done so, our mystery will be solved.”

  Clay stared at the vampire squirming upon the floor in agony. The stumps of his missing limbs had stopped bleeding and had actually begun to regenerate.

  “Stay where you are, Clay. Ceridwen will come to collect you and we’ll gather here in Dubrovnik.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” he said.

  He hung up the phone and stared at the leech writhing on the floor in agony.

  “You’re going to tell me everything that you know. If it’s helpful, I’ll end your life and your pain right now, quickly and with mercy.”

  The vampire sneered, eyeing him defiantly. “Why would I tell you anything?”

  Clay reached down, pulled the vampire’s tattered remains up from the floor, and directed him toward the curtained windows.

  Although the room was still dark, it was evident that the morning sun had risen in the sky and that it was a gloriously bright day outside. Beams of yellow light could be seen along the hems of the heavy curtains.

  “Because slowly and without mercy is your other option, and something tells me that you’re not quite up for that.”

  The vampire stared in horror at the strip of sunlight radiating out from beneath the velvet window treatments, then looked back to Clay with fear-filled eyes.

  “Am I right?” he asked.

  The vampire began to speak.

  7

  CLAY showed the vampire the mercy he had promised, tearing out its heart with a single, swift blow, and crushing it in his hands. The foul creature didn’t even have a chance to scream.

  Long ago, Clay had learned the art of swift, efficient killing. He had mastered those skills through the long years of his existence, but those abilities had been honed to peak efficiency during a time when he had not been himself, when he had been captured by covert organizations within the U.S. government and his mind altered. His memories had been twisted a
nd erased over and over, and reprogrammed. His history had been glorious, but they had turned him into little more than a weapon.

  They had made him a monster and, when necessary, he could still let the monster out.

  Clay walked into the bathroom, turning on the faucet to wash his hands clean of the residual remains of the vampire he’d just slain. He caught his reflection in the mirror and found himself staring at his ancient, clay features, at the cracks that lined his earthen face.

  A monster no more, he thought, touching his dampened hands to his orange flesh. He could recall so clearly the day that the fog had been lifted from his mind, the day that the techniques of his oppressors had been overridden and he had remembered who—and what—he really was.

  She had been responsible.

  Eve.

  Clay left the bathroom. He sat down upon the bed, waiting for Ceridwen to arrive, and his thoughts drifted back to the time when he had been sent to murder Conan Doyle.

  And she had set him free.

  THE PLAZA HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY, 1988.

  CLAY had entered the old hotel as a fly.

  Flying up through the elevator shaft, he had found the floor, then the room, gaining access by assuming the shape of a dust mite and crawling through the thick jungle of carpet beneath the locked door and into the suite on the other side.

  His debriefing had been extensive; his handlers stressing how dangerous this individual—this Arthur Conan Doyle—could be. He was a sorcerer, one of the world’s most powerful, and he needed to be eliminated. Which was why they had sent Clay. That was his purpose—to kill quickly and efficiently.

  Doyle didn’t stand a chance.

  But the intelligence he’d received had been incorrect.

  Instead of one subject in the room, there were two: the target and a female.

  It did not matter to him. Two could be killed just as easily as one.

  He would catch them unawares, assuming the shape of something swift and savage. First he would take out the target—ripping out his throat before he could even react—then he would deal with the female witness. He couldn’t imagine it taking any more than two minutes . . . three at the most.