Vincent’s bedroom was easily the messiest room in the house, a tragedy of Baroque lacquered furniture and leopard-print velvet. Dirty laundry was strewn on the floor next to the bed—a silk robe, boxers, and a T-shirt with pizza stains down the front. I dropped it as soon as I picked it up, disgusted. My eyes flicked from the wallet bulging with money that had been left on the dresser, to the picture of a captured unicorn that dominated one wall of the bedroom, to the line of photos mounted on the wall beside it. The beam of the flashlight lit on one of them, an ornate silver frame holding a faded photo of a woman with the dark skin and proud aquiline face of a Sicilian. Even in sepia, her black eyes glittered, full of quiet power. One hand was resting palm-down on an arrangement of large cards on a tabletop, the other held out of sight. Her hair was covered, but what drew my attention were the details of her shawl. It was decorated in planetary symbols. I took the picture off the wall and carefully pried the back off the frame. As I suspected, the photo had writing on it, in Italian. I could discern a name, though, and the date. Drina Mercurio, 1942.
Inside the dresser, I found a vial of testosterone and needles sitting next to a deck of cards carefully wrapped in pink fabric. I knew what they were before I unwrapped them. The tarot deck was very old, the edges worn and waxy. The topmost card was La Torre, The Tower. Frowning, I turned it over. The back face of the deck was the same unicorn image Vincent had on his wall. It was the last panel of seven famous tapestries, The Hunt of the Unicorn. I’d seen this image many times in the course of my Occult study, as it was often featured in books on the Rosicrucian tradition. The tapestry was titled ‘The unicorn is in captivity and no longer dead’, and it showed the chained unicorn resting in a small corral. In the six previous panels, people had hunted it with dogs and spears, until it was caught by a virgin woman and then killed and eaten. In this seventh panel, it was alive again, but enslaved; a tree grew behind it, strung with yellow fruit. The unicorn wore a collar. Its expression was one of stoic grief.
From the dresser, I wandered to the bed. Amongst the cast-off socks and candy wrappers was a quarto notebook. The cover had handwriting on it in Sharpie. Sogno Diario. I wasn’t sure what the first word meant, but I cracked it open to the last used pages to see what I could make from it.
“La scorsa notte, ho sognato la bianco donna di nuovo. She was running away from the
I froze, careful not to bend the spine as I read the first line over and over again. I spoke minimal Italian but knew enough to get the gist of the sentence. Last night… something, the white woman.
“L’ho inseguito nella foresta di cristallo… and when we came to a stop, lei mi ha detto: Scegliere!” Vincent’s dream diary read. “Per favore, scegliere!”
“Choose… please, choose,” I muttered, frowning. I could only make out pieces here and there. Something about running after her, “like a dog.” I flipped the page, and on the back was a crudely drawn series of figures. One of them was a spiked ball, scribbled over with filaments and labeled “the fruit.” There was a tree—or at least, I thought it was a tree. It looked like a coral polyp with drooping willow branches and diamond-shaped leaves. Its branches were thrown around itself, as if it were recoiling in pain or terror.
Something banged downstairs. I dropped the book with a clatter and brought the knife up. My heart leaped; my body flushed hot, and I sniffed, snorting out the stale air as I cross-stepped to the doorway and looked around the jamb. I could see nothing, but as the moments passed, a rushing, deep-rooted sense of wrongness built in my chest. My pulse hammered in my throat as I strained to hear any and all sound in the house. As time crept and nothing happened, I eased down, breathing quickly, and turned back to look at the book I’d dropped on the floor.
And then, I heard it. Downstairs, the unmistakable sounds of yipping and snarling and claws clicking against tiles. Dogs. Someone was here, and they’d brought dogs. Large, quick dogs, which were already on my scent.
My next breath flared through tight nostrils. I pushed myself away from the doorway, temples throbbing, and toed the door closed. This was definitely time for a gun, so I drew the Wardbreaker as I backed away into the room, twisting the silencer onto it and holding it up in a teacup grip. Ghostly baying rang out from the downstairs kitchen, followed by the thunder of feet up the spiral stairs that cut off abruptly when the dogs hit the carpet.
I licked my teeth, steadying my breathing, and the tip of the barrel stopped trembling. Dogs. They were just dogs. Why was Vincent dreaming about dogs?
Something huge and heavy hit the door, scrambling at it. I dropped to a crouch, breathing deeply, and barely got my second hand on the grip to hold it steady when the door burst open and a flaming pinscher the size of a pony lunged for me with a mouth of huge, glowing basalt fangs.
I emptied half the clip on reflex as the massive weight surged towards my face. The dog’s momentum carried it screaming, bleeding, and then crashing into the end of the bed, riddled with gunshot. A second dog was hot on the heels of the first, moving with unnatural alacrity as I fired once, twice. I caught a glimpse of cracking black skin rippling over glowing molten rock before the wind tore from my chest and my world narrowed to a square foot of snapping jaws, blasted heat, and ear-shattering noise. Pain lanced through my forearm and filled my mouth with sulfur. Heat washed over me in a dizzying wave. I smashed the butt of the pistol into the animal’s ear, desperately trying to get away from the wall and throw it off. The heat grew—it was overwhelmingly, scaldingly hot. The dog’s eyes were blazing, filled with inhuman intelligence. They were the hot red-orange of a caldera.
The other dog was getting up, the bullet wounds sealing with small gouts of flame. My eyes widened in the skipped heartbeat before jaws clamped shut on my hand. I roared, jamming the gun in against its ribs, but as my finger depressed the trigger, the weapon was ripped away by invisible hands. Shock built on shock, and the dog, foaming with animal rage, threw me away from the wall with a twist of its neck. I careened and landed heavily, rolling and smashing into the foot of the dresser to roll, choking, onto my side.
The gun. Where was the Wardbreaker? I saw it near the corner of the bed.
Ears full of the sound of claws, I scrambled to my hands and feet, but before I could throw myself forward, my wrist was grasped, yanked, and twisted. I fell on my chest, only to be wrenched up to my knees like a puppet. I couldn’t see anyone. The same force contorted my fingers into knots, and my shout of anger turned to a choking cry of agony as white fire flashed through my mouth.
“Attaboy.” A thick Jersey accent penetrated the room from the doorway.
I heaved, staggering forward, and tried to turn around to look at whoever was behind me. No such luck. The invisible vice on my body tightened. Through watering eyes, I watched the huge dog limp past me, back to the doorway. The other one was struggling, but it was healing. The bullet wounds smoked and sputtered as they filled in… with magma.
The other man’s footfall was soft as he approached. Each step increased the pressure on my hand. I gagged, retching with pain. Caught in a tightening vice of nothingness, I could only jerk fractionally as a bag was pulled down over my head.
“Well, you ain’t no Rasputin.” The voice that filtered through the back of the bag was snide. “Guess they don’t always make wizards like the old days, huh?”