Chapter Six – Luke

 

The first rule of getting in someplace is to seem like you belong there. The second rule is to get in and out before the gatekeepers have a chance to think about the tale you’re spinning and call up the ladder for confirmation of your story.

I’d been prepared to give the guy a line about how we were security for one of the clients, and to carry Molly through this whole thing while we searched for her friend. After all, I’d just met the woman, and wasn’t really expecting much from a civilian. Especially not someone as clearly innocent as she was, without a seemingly deceptive bone in her body.

Nothing could have prepared me for what came out of her mouth.

“Like, oh my God, I am so sorry!” Molly said, walking quickly up to him as she unleashed a tirade of speech, the syllables dropping so hard on the end that her vocals were practically deep-fried. “I totally didn’t know the number up here, and my boss said he was going to call for me to let you know I was coming up here with my guy to get some stuff I left behind last night. Well, not exactly my guy, but, like, my driver, here. I don’t have a boyfriend. He said he thought it would be totally cool, though, if I came up and popped in here before you guys got going tonight, and I would have waited to hear back from him, but I’ve got another date tonight that I can’t get out of, so I really need to make this fast, okay?”

She paused to take a breath, and the organizer with the clipboard and the earpiece opened his mouth to continue, but Molly was back at it less than a beat later, already moving forward and past him.

“And, like, I met this guy last night, and he was this really rich older dude, and we went into one of the back private rooms, and I think I left something behind, and I just wanted to get in here before you guys did any of the housecleaning for tonight, you know, so can I get back there?”

She and I both walked fast, taking the longest strides we could as we headed right for the front door, her bare legs flashing beneath the hem of her skirt right beside mine clad in linen slacks.

“Miss?” the man said to our backs, still clearly in shock over Molly’s verbal onslaught as he stumbled after her, “Sir? If you could just tell me which room and what it is—”

“Like, one of the back ones, that looks out over the mountains.” She paused again and stopped, putting both fists on her hips as she turned to him, her face screwed up in mock disgust. “And oh my God, no! You little pervert, you totally can’t get them for me! They’re like my luckiest pair, and you’re not even paying to sniff them. And we’ll totally be right back!”

“Get what for you?” he asked, looking back and forth at us in confusion. The door was just feet away. “I don’t understand, miss, what is it you’re missing?”

“Her lucky underwear, dipshit,” I growled, leaning forward just enough to make him think I might possibly harm him if we were stopped. I was security for a call girl, after all.

“Lucky?” he asked, swallowing with wide eyes as he frantically looked back and forth.

“She says they’re lucky, so I think they’re fucking lucky.”

“Can’t find Mr. Right without them!” Molly said as I pulled open the door for her. She breezed in with a giggle, the sound of industrial steam cleaners and vacuums coming from deeper inside.

“But, miss! Sir! You can’t—”

I knew that, eventually, this guy was going to get so frustrated that he was going to get security, and we were going to get tossed. The only question was how long it would take. So, I made the best of the limited time we had, cataloging everything as we went.

“Be right back, okay?” Molly told, more than asked, him as we headed through the entry hall, with its heavy adobe walls and plenty of natural lighting coming in through windows and skylights above.

This place was amazing. And I didn’t say things like that lightly.

The interior had that Southwestern style, taken from Mexico and the Navajos, with beautiful stained wood and intricately painted tiles of soft blues and yellows and reds. The front entry was easily twenty feet wide and thirty feet long, and I could have fit nearly my whole apartment in it. In front of us, two sets of curving staircases wrapped around and led to a large mezzanine. Between them was an arched doorway, leading deeper into the house, and what looked like maybe a ballroom. The cleaners were in there, working away at making this place spotless and presentable for later tonight.

Subtly, I sniffed, trying to get a feel for the area. For the scent that might be in the air. Supernatural creatures all had their own kind of fragrance. This place, though? Lusty musk, sandalwood, a little bit of Old Spice from the coordinator, and the scent of industrial shampoo from the next room.

And, under it all, some kind of sickly sweet smell of rotten fruit, a hint of fermentation running beneath it. The kind your kitchen gets when you leave for a long business trip and forget peaches in the countertop fruit basket.

The kind of smell I’d have from the apples I’d left out, when I got back to my lonely apartment.

“You don’t understand,” the poor little guy said, still trying to keep pace as Molly and I strode through the archway beneath the stairs, and into a wide meeting area with giant bay windows across the back.

Couches, chairs, and chaise lounges, all rich purples, greens, and reds, were placed around the room in small groups, all with cleaners shampooing and vacuuming their upholstery. If the room before this could have fit my entire apartment, the one we were standing in right now could have almost housed the whole floor of my building.

I didn’t even want to think about how much naked skin they’d touched. Not that it was wrong, or anything, just not my cup of tea.

“We really can’t have you wandering around in here, though,” the man said, his voice high and frantic by now as he tried to be heard over the cleaning crew all around us.

“But we’re totally not wandering,” Molly said. “I’m just trying to find something I left here, and I know exactly where I left them. They were in that guy’s mouth, and—”

“No, no,” the man said. “That’s quite enough, I don’t need—”

She abruptly pointed to the far side of the enormous room, to a hallway branching off and leading along the back of the house. “I think he dragged me back down that way, Lukie-pooh!”

I raised an eyebrow as I glanced at her. Lukie-pooh? Really?

She covered her mouth to hide a giggle. “Sorry! I’d had a little bit too much champagne before he got hold of me. Oops!”

“Miss, sir, you really can’t go down that way!” But Molly and I were still moving, leaving him to scramble and yip behind us like a Chihuahua.

The hallway had room after room, all with heavy, closed doors with deadbolts blocking our way. On our right, a wall of windows looked out on the nature range behind us, at the string of mountains rising into the sky, all covered in low scrub and prickled cacti. Ahead, the hallway opened up into another large room, which looked to have two sides made entirely of large, slightly tinted windows that looked out onto a stone porch that wrapped around.

“Ma’am!”

“Keep him occupied,” I whispered to Molly out of the side of my mouth. “I’m going to take a look around by myself.”

“Got it,” she replied, all the ditz evaporated from her voice. She turned back to the guy as she stopped in front of one of the rooms, eyes wide, tone vacant. “It was totally this one, here!”

“This one?” he asked, clearly exasperated and ready to get through with this thing. He reached into his pockets and began to fish out his keys.

“Yep!”

“Hey,” I said to the guy. “I’m gonna hit the head, all right? You make sure she finds her lucky bits, yeah?”

“Definitely this one!”

Red-faced and keys in hand, he shook his head as he blustered. “Sir, you can’t just—”

But I was already gone, leaving him behind to unlock the door for her, a little whine of frustration in his throat.

I didn’t like torturing the guy this way. After all, this was probably just a job to him, and I wasn’t getting any supernatural feel or smell from him. Just that bad cologne of his.

“Sir!” he called again as I rounded the corner ahead. He hadn’t even opened the door for Molly yet.

“You know what?” Molly asked. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this room at all. Maybe the next one? And, can you, you know, help me out and look at this picture for me? Another girl I was working with just totally dropped off the face of the earth, and she’s got my favorite fucking lipstick!”

Another growl, but I was already in the next room, the smell of fresh shampoo again filling my nose, with a strange undercurrent of something else. Something mineral-like this time. Not like soil, exactly, but close. My nose wrinkled a little as I looked around the room, trying to find the source of it.

I stopped, my feet settling into the thick, patterned carpet, my heels digging in more deeply. I gazed around the room, at all the luxurious couches, until my eyes traveled out the window to the porch.

My gaze stopped on the guardrail outside, a polished wooden plank that had been intricately carved in scrollwork and treated with some kind of lacquer to protect it against the sun and rain.

Three giant gouges had been torn into it, like some kind of ritual scarring of the wood. Enormous marks marring the surface. Those three marks didn’t belong here any more than I did.

A heavy door was set into the wall leading out to the porch, and, without even a glance behind me, I headed right out onto the porch and came to a stop in front of it. I pushed up my sunglasses till they were resting on top of my head as I inspected the damage, the mineral smell pushed from my mind as something told me this was more important. Much more important.

The marks were fresh, with bits of splinters that hadn’t been worn down by the weather yet around the edges. Nearly two inches wide, and an inch deep, the grooves were the kinds of marks you’d see from some sort of wood chisel, or an industrial drill that had gone off its mark and stripped the intricate piece of lumber down to its bones.

But it reminded me of something else, too. The kind of territorial marking Carter Grant, a bear shifter I worked with at Full Moon Security, would sometimes leave in the bark of the trees surrounding his cabin outside St. Louis.

Claw marks. These were definitely claw marks. And whatever they came from, it was enormous.

I spread my hand a little, trying to consider the size of the thing that must have left these by sticking my fingers down into the depths of the grooves and just eyeballing them. Even with my digits spread as wide as they could go, I still couldn’t touch both of the outer ones at the same time.

I swallowed hard.

Whatever this thing was, it was big, and it was powerful. And it was eating women’s hearts.

I sniffed the tip of my finger, but only got the fragrance of the fresh wood oils still seeping out. Another hint there, too. This time of dog. A bloodhound, maybe?

Odd. Never heard of a dog that got that big. Except maybe a Cerberus, but they wouldn’t have been able to coordinate all three heads into not just tearing their victims apart.

Originally, I’d been thinking cult. But this? This was something else entirely.

“Sir?” called the coordinator from the door behind me, his voice angry and slightly shrill. “Sir, you’re not supposed to be out here!”

The shock of finding the marks, and the implications of how big the creature must have been, had kept me too focused. I needed to think fast.

Two sets of footsteps coming up on the porch behind me. “Sir!”

I rested my sunglasses back on my nose, put my hands down in front of my crotch, and hunched my shoulders forward and shook my body twice in the universal male gesture of shaking off and zipping up.

When he spoke, his voice was shocked. “Were you just—?”

I turned around to find the coordinator and another guy, this one in an all-black suit. His broad shoulders, towering build, and no-bullshit look on his face told me he was security. “Couldn’t find the can, man. Need some signs up here if you’re gonna be open to the public.”

“But we’re not open to the public, sir!” the little guy said.

“You get my lady taken care of?” I asked as I offered my hand to the granite-faced security guard, who just glanced down at it in disgust. I shrugged. “Don’t wanna shake, chief? Suit yourself.”

“Yes,” the coordinator said. “I allowed her into the room to find them. She did.”

“She got ’em, then?” I asked as I squeezed between the two of them and headed back to the porch door.

“She apparently didn’t wear any here, so she was quite happy to finally have some.” He shuddered a little. “She even offered to show them to me,” he said as I pulled the door open, disgust evident in his voice.

I glanced back over my shoulder, a big grin on my face. “You seen that friend of hers? The one who stole her favorite eye shadow or whatever?”

“As I told the lady,” the coordinator replied as our little trio marched down the hall, “I last saw the young lady leaving with a gentleman, and that’s it.”

Just inside the door, Molly was waiting for me, her eyes big and round, her lips slightly parted as she looked past me out at the porch.

“Afraid of heights?” I asked as I came up to her, grabbed her by the elbow, and started to move.

“I’m sorry, what?” She shook her head as my words, and my hand, shook her out of whatever stupor she’d been in.

“You were looking outside like you were scared,” I said, my strides long and fast. We needed to get out of here before they brought in even more security, maybe started to ask some real questions.

She waved me off. “What was that out there?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Were those claw marks?”

“Probably just a mountain lion or something,” I lied, my voice just as soft as hers. “Bear, maybe.”

She gave me a look like my pants had just become the Hindenburg.

“Find your lucky bits, then?” I asked, moving on as fast as I could, trying to distract her from the marks on the guardrail.

“Sherman here was kind enough to let me in to look for them in private. Of course, I offered to let him see them.” She paused to grin back over her shoulder at the little coordinator following in our wake. “But he said he was fine.”

“Good,” I said, turning us both into the big meeting area, and heading through to the entry hall. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

I kept my pace quick, determined, and with a destination in mind. I knew they were already wondering what our deal was by coming in here, but I didn’t want them prying too much.

In my experience, people at the bottom of evil organizations are really just people. They want to feed their families, the same as everyone else. They’ve got a dog at home, or a cat, or a daughter or son, and they imagine that they’re just doing their jobs. And that, because it’s just them doing their jobs, it’s completely okay. That this is the price of living in the modern world, and we’ve all gotta sometimes do what we don’t like.

And, to an extent, they’re right.

But not entirely.

Bottom line, though, I didn’t want to get into an altercation here when it came down from on high that we needed to be physically removed from the premises. And it wasn’t because I was worried about my safety in particular.

Two security guards were already at the front door, their arms crossed across their broad chests. I could even see the telltale line of a shoulder holster on one of them, a big guy with a closely cropped full beard, who seemed particularly interested in me.

I grinned as we walked by, nodding to the one most clearly armed. “Sorry for troubling you guys—we’ll be on our way.”

The two guards swooped out behind us, trailing behind by a good ten or so feet. “Don’t look back,” I muttered to Molly.

“Do I look stupid to you?” she asked, still smiling as we strode down the flagstone path.

“Not particularly, no. Good job in there, by the way. Almost had me believing you were a ditsy call girl.”

“Well, you almost had me believing you were actually peeing off the side of the porch.”

From the sound of her voice, it was clear she hadn’t believed my explanation about the claws marks on the guardrail. For the second time in less than an hour, I was seriously beginning to wonder how much I could actually keep her in the dark.

Moments later, we were back in the car, and she was pulling away. I pulled out my phone as we began to cruise down the private drive, found Tabitha’s contact info, and began to tap out a text: “Another girl missing already. Got inside Illuminati House and looked around. Smell of fermented plums, claw marks from something bigger than Carter, smelled canine on the scratches. Let me know what you find out. Clock ticking.”

“What’s that?”

“Texting my boss. Just letting her know what I’ve found out so far, and seeing if she has any more leads on her end.”

She nodded. “Okay. Where to next, then?” she asked as she guided the car down the private drive. “You hungry?”

My stomach grumbled in response, and she grinned a little.

“There’s a cafe I passed by on the edge of town,” she said with that cute little smile of hers. “How about I drop you off at your car, and we meet there?”

Immediately, Col. Harrington, Tabitha, and Kris Cole all began to shout at me within the halls of my mind.

No. Absolutely not. Getting her more deeply entangled with all of this was the exact opposite of what I needed to be doing. I had to report my findings, had to research this Heidi girl more, and see what more Tabitha could discover on her end about the owners of the mansion we’d just left. And Molly had almost zero to do with that after I got any of the other details about Heidi out of her.

Under no circumstances whatsoever should I continue to engage her in any non-professional manner whatsoever.

Period.

But then my nose seemed to reawaken to that smell of soap and citrus, silencing the colonel, the witch, and the dragon.

“You know what?” I replied. “Breakfast sounds great.”