“Didn’t say you did,” Gravedigger answered, moving closer. She grabbed a wooden chair and set it in front of Dash. Straddling the chair so that she was leaning over the back, she asked, “Now… what did he say?”
“He just asked us to send word to him if we heard about any black magic stuff being sold in the city… and to keep tabs on the comings and goings of people like you. He said we could drop off the info at a bunch of different hotels, like the Clarion or the Nipper.”
“People like me?”
“Yeah, you know… the cloak and dagger crowd.”
“Anything else?”
“He just said that he’d pay us for the info… and then he said that he wasn’t out to make a bunch of cash for himself. He said he wanted to own people’s souls.”
“Did you believe him?”
“About what?”
“About not being interested in money.”
Dash looked at her like she was nuts. “Of course not! Everybody needs dough! The whole mystic bit is just a gimmick… same with the Horseman. He can’t be real.”
Gravedigger’s hand snatched out, grabbing a handful of Dash’s hair and yanking hard. Ignoring his cry of pain, she asked, “The Headless Horseman was there?”
“Yeah, there was a guy there who was pretending to be him! Even had some trick set up so it looked like he didn’t have any head at all… whatever effects he was using stank to high heaven, though!”
Gravedigger and Mitchell exchanged a meaningful look before she released Dash’s hair. Mitchell walked to the door and started to step out, pausing only long enough to ask, “Are you going to need me for any of the clean-up?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got this.” Gravedigger waited until he was gone and then she drew a long sword out of its scabbard. The highly polished blade gleamed in the candlelight.
“What are you doing to do?” Dash asked, a bead of sweat running down his forehead. Even as he voiced the question, he felt stupid… What else was she going to do with a sword? He suddenly thought about his mother, dead for nearly twenty years. He remembered the look of disappointment in her eyes when she’d first seen him questioned by the police.
“I thought about letting you go,” Gravedigger said. “I thought about recruiting you to be one of my agents, too. But over the course of my research into your background, I came across a young woman named Sarah Truesdale. Do you remember her?”
Dash did, though he didn’t say so.
Gravedigger continued, taking his silence as affirmation. “She was seventeen years old and two days away from leaving Sovereign so she could attend college. But you attacked her in her own bedroom, raping her for nearly three hours. Then you got worried that she’d be able to identify you… so you poured bleach into her eyes, blinding her.”
“I was just a kid. I was barely twenty, myself! I haven’t forced myself on another woman in all those years since then!” Dash felt himself beginning to cry. He wished he could run… he was always running, until now. “I’m nothing but a nickel-and-dime lowlife now! I ain’t a rapist!”
“Not anymore, you mean?”
“Right! I felt so bad about that girl that I haven’t done anything like it since!”
Gravedigger slowly brought her sword to Dash’s throat. “But you did it once and now she’s got to live with that for the rest of her life. How is it fair that you get to start over and she doesn’t?”
“If you cut my head off,” he pleaded, “You’re nothing but a murderer! And that’s worse than a rapist!”
“I’m not going to murder you,” Gravedigger said, causing Dash to swallow in relief.
“You’re not?”
“No. You killed yourself a long time ago. The second you poured bleach into that poor girl’s eyes. All I’m doing is shoveling the dirt on your grave.”
“No!” Dash screamed, but it was too late. The sword whipped through the air, causing a gust of wind that extinguished the candle.
The room was plunged into darkness.
Mitchell was waiting behind the wheel when Charity slid into the backseat of their car. She had changed out of her uniform in Dash’s apartment, stuffing her gear into an oversized duffel bag. “Where’s Li?” she asked.
“She decided to take a cab back to Chinatown. She has a date tonight.”
Charity ran a hand through her hair, pursing her lips. “Anybody I know?”
“She didn’t say.” Mitchell pulled out into traffic, glanced in the rearview mirror. “How do you feel?”
“Fine.” Charity glanced out the window and sighed. She could feel Mitchell’s gaze upon her. “I don’t mind the killing anymore. You get used to it.”
“You didn’t kill him,” Mitchell began but stopped when Charity held up a hand.
“I know. I said that to him, too.”
Mitchell nodded and turned his eyes back to the road. “He was trash.”
“I’m more concerned with the Horseman. No appearances or murders since that night at Hendry Hall… and now he pops up again, working as a guy’s enforcer? Seems strange.”
“That’s all he ever was — a killer who served others,” Mitchell pointed out. “Whether it was for the army or for the Sons or Daughters, he takes orders. It doesn’t surprise me that he’d eventually seek out somebody to call the shots.”
“At least we know that he’s using some of the skuzzier hotels for his pick-up points. I’ll have somebody watching the Clarion and the Nipper to see if we can catch one of his goons and then follow them.”
“Back to the house?” Mitchell asked, though he knew what the answer would be.
“Let’s go by the cemetery,” she said, so low that he almost couldn’t hear her.
“It’s morbid the way you visit your own grave.”
“Not as morbid as the fact that I have a grave.”
“Touché, luv.”
The man known as Charon hung his hooded robe in the closet and then moved over to a fully stocked bar. He was in one of the most expensive penthouses in the city, overlooking the heart of downtown. If the goons from the underworld meeting had seen him, not a one of them would have recognized him. Gone was the false beard that he wore in their midst and the removal of makeup gave his face a less gaunt appearance.
Born Randall Nipper, he had once been a minor success on the stage. Unfortunately, a tragic accident involving one of his comely costars had ended up getting him blacklisted. For nearly two years, he’d expended the last of his savings. Suddenly destitute, he’d ended up on Skid Row, where he probably would have died if not for a chance meeting that would change his life.
He had been sitting in an alleyway, a bottle of cheap whiskey clutched between his knees. It was well past three in the morning and a string of police cars had roared past, all headed towards the creepy old Hendry Hall. What had happened up there would never be fully revealed in the papers and it was no concern of Nipper’s, regardless.
With his head hanging down, he had heard the familiar clip-clop of hooves on wet pavement. Looking up, he’d seen a horseman and rider at the end of the alley. He’d thought himself hallucinating when his eyes had traveled up the length of the man and seen nothing but empty air where a head should have been.
The Horseman had dropped from the saddle and approached him. Nipper had softly risen to his feet, wondering if he had fallen asleep. Surely this was a nightmare, brought on by one too many fanciful stories told to him as a child.
Nipper had stared at the figure before him and before he knew what he was doing, the words had begun to spill from his lips: “All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in diverse shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was — a woman.”