I was accustomed to liars, bold-faced or wide-eyed, silver tongued or pleading, often with the barrel of my gun directed at them as they babbled their last prayers to an indifferent god, squirted their last tears into the indifferent earth. A man will utter any falsehood, commit any debasement, sell his own children down the river, to avoid that final sweet goodnight.
Paxton wasn’t a liar, though. I studied him and his sallow, indolent affectation of plantation suzerainty, the dark power in his gaze, and beheld with clarity he was a being who had no need for deception, that all was delivered to him on a platter. He wasn’t afraid, either. I couldn’t decide whether that lack of fear depended upon his access to the Blackwood Boys, his supreme and overweening sense of superiority, an utter lack of self-preservation instincts, or something else as yet to make its presence felt. Something dread and terrible in the wings was my guess, based upon the pit that opened in my gut as we talked while the sun sank into the mountains and the shadows of the gibbering and jabbering gentry spread grotesquely across the grass.
“You said Augustus groomed Muybridge.”
“Yes. Groomed him to spread darkness with his art. And Father did, though not to the degree or with the potency Helios Augustus desired. The sorcerer and his allies believed Eadweard was tantalizingly close to unlocking something vast and inimical to human existence.”
The guests stirred and the band ascended the dais, each member lavishly dressed in a black suit, hair slicked with oil and banded in gold or silver, each cradling an oboe, a violin, a horn, a double bass, and of course, of fucking course, Dan Blackwood at the fore with his majestic flute, decked in a classical white suit and black tie, his buttered down hair shining like an angel’s satin wing. They nodded to one another and began to play soft and sweet chamber music from some German symphony that was popular when lederhosen reigned at court. Music to calm a bellicose Holy Roman Emperor. Music beautiful enough to bring a tear to a killer’s eye.
I realized Dick and Bly had disappeared. I stood, free hand pressed to my side to keep the bandage from coming unstuck. “Your hospitality is right kingly, Mr. Paxton, sir—”
“Indeed? You haven’t touched your brandy. I’m guessing that’s a difficult bit of self restraint for an Irishman. It’s not poisoned. Heavens, man, I couldn’t harm you if that were my fiercest desire.”
“Mr. Paxton, I’d like to take you at your word. Problem is, Curtis Bane had a card with your name written on it in his pocket. That’s how I got wind of you.”
“Extraordinarily convenient. And world famous magician Phil Wary, oh dear, my mistake—Helios Augustus—showed you some films my father made and told you I’d set the dogs on your trail. Am I correct?”
“Yeah, that’s right.” The pit in my belly kept crumbling away. It would be an abyss pretty soon. It wasn’t that the pale aristocrat had put the puzzle together that made me sick with nerves, it was his boredom and malicious glee at revealing the obvious to a baboon. My distress was honey to him.
“And let me ponder this… Unnecessary. Helios put you in contact with those women in Luster. The crones, as some rudely call them.”
“I think the ladies prefer it, actually.”
“The crones were coy, that’s their game. As you were permitted to depart their presence with your hide, I’ll wager they confirmed the magician’s slander of my character. Wily monsters, the Corning women. Man-haters, man-eaters. Men are pawns or provender, often both. Word to the wise—never go back there.”
Just like that the sun snuffed as a burning wick under a thumb and darkness was all around, held at bay by a few lanterns in the yard, a trickle of light from the open doors on the porch and a handful of windows. The guests milled and drank and laughed above the beautiful music, and several couples assayed a waltz before the dais. I squinted, becoming desperate to catch a glimpse of my comrades, and still couldn’t pick them out of the moiling crowd. I swayed as the blood rushed from my head and there were two, no, three, Conrad Paxton’s seated in the gathering gloom, faces obscured except for the glinting eyes narrowed in curiosity, the curve of a sardonic smile. “Why would they lie?” I said. “What’s in it for them?”
Paxton rose and made as if to take my elbow to steady me, although if I crashed to earth, there wasn’t much chance the bony bastard would be able to do more than slow my fall. Much as Blackwood had done, he hesitated and then edged away toward the threshold of the French doors that let into a study, abruptly loath to touch me. “You are unwell. Come inside away from the heat and the noise.”
“Hands off. I asked a question.”
“My destruction is their motivation and ultimate goal. Each for his or her personal reason. The sorcerer desires the secrets within my vault: the cases of photographic plates, the reels, a life’s work. Father’s store of esoteric theory. Helios Augustus can practically taste the wickedness that broods there, black as a tanner’s chimney. Eadweard’s macabre films caused quite a stir in certain circles. They suggest great depths of depravity, of a dehumanizing element inherent in photography. A property of anti-life.”
“You’re pulling my leg. That’s—”
“Preposterous? Absurd? Any loonier than swearing your life upon a book that preaches of virgin births and wandering Jews risen from the grave to spare the world from blood and thunder and annihilation?”
“I’ve lapsed,” I said.
“The magician once speculated to me that he had a plan to create moving images that would wipe minds clean and imprint upon them all manner of base, un-sublimated desires. The desire to bow and scrape, to lick the boots of an overlord. It was madness, yet appealing. How his face animated when he mused on the spectacle of thousands of common folk streaming from theatres, faces slack with lust and carnal hunger. For the magician, Eadweard’s lost work is paramount. My enemies want the specimens as yet hidden from the academic community, the plates and reels whispered of in darkened council chambers.”
“That what the crones want too? To see a black pope in the debauched Vatican, and Old Scratch on the throne?”
“No, no, those lovelies have simpler tastes. They wish to devour the souls my father supposedly trapped in his pictures. So delightfully primitive to entertain the notion that film can steal our animating force. Not much more sophisticated than the tribals who believe you mustn’t point at another person, else they’ll die. Eadweard was many, many things, and many of them repugnant. He was not, however, a soul taker. Soul taking is a myth with a single exception. There is but One and that worthy needs no aperture, no lens, no box.
“Look here, John: thaumaturgy, geomancy, black magic, all that is stuff and nonsense, hooey, claptrap, if you will. Certainly, I serve the master and attend Black Mass. Not a thing to do with the supernatural, I’m not barmy. It’s a matter of philosophy, of acclimating oneself to the natural forces of the world and the universe. Right thinking, as it were. Ask me if Satan exists, I’ll say yes and slice a virgin’s throat in the Dark Lord’s honor. Ask me if I believe He manipulates and rewards, again yes. Directly? Does He imbue his acolytes with the power of miracles as Helios Augustus surely believes, as the crones believe their old gods do? I will laugh in your face. Satan no more interferes in any meaningful way than God does. Which is to say, by no discernable measure.”