The Amber Lee Boxed Set Page 5

  It was the eyes.

  She had Natalie’s deep brown pools.

  These truths weren’t immediately apparent with his five senses, though. The woman looked nothing like Natalie, and yet somehow Damien felt a little bit of the witch in her. Much like in dreams where one person doesn’t look, talk, or act like the person they remind you of. You just know.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “One please,” Damien said.

  “Where ya’ headed?”

  “I… uh…”

  “Alcatraz is nice this time of year.”

  “Alcatraz?”

  The old woman cocked an eyebrow, picked a cigarette from an ash tray Damien hadn’t seen until now, and took a long, hard drag. “Yes, Alcatraz. That place there.”

  Damien looked, and there it was. The island prison looked somehow bigger than it was in real life. Or maybe he was just closer to it on this side of the bay. Or maybe the island had moved since the last time he had looked at it. Anything was possible here, he was starting to learn. Anything and everything.

  Everything is symbols and metaphors, Lily had told him.

  Then it dawned on him.

  Alcatraz is a prison. Something, or someone, is stopping Natalie from waking up. But that something or someone may need a metaphorical place to keep Natalie’s consciousness locked up, wouldn’t it? Magick had laws it had to follow, entities had conditions that governed their abilities, and this place had rules too. He didn’t know what they were, but they were there all the same.

  So if an entity was keeping Natalie’s consciousness locked up inside her own mind, what better place than Alcatraz? A place she had grown up within line of sight of. Fuck, of course! Of course!

  “Fasho,” he said, “One ticket to Alcatraz.”

  There was that word again; the same word Natalie had said to the waitress at the Bistro. It was another way of saying yes in the San Francisco bay. The surprise wasn’t that he remembered it, but that he said it like it came naturally to him.

  “Good looks,” the woman said, and she grabbed a ticket and slid it through the window hole.

  “How much?” Damien asked.

  “Nothing for you, sweetheart. You’ve earned this one.”

  His eyes narrowed, suspiciously. What if this was another trick? “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m just a friend of the West.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The West can hear you even from in here, Damien,” she said. “You have friends, child.”

  With a nod she gestured over Damien’s shoulder. He spun around and saw the Captain of the fishing boat, smiling and waving him over. On the wind he could smell the brine and the salt and the fish, could hear the steady lapping of waves on wood and rock, the gulls calling from above, could see the magnificence of the ocean stretching out across the bay, beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and into forever.

  All around him was the very presence of the Guardian of the West. It was there now, had always been there, and would always be there. A friend of the West; a friend of Damien’s. This is why I’ve ended up here, he thought. In a place as alien as the inside of Natalie’s mind he was safest close to the ocean, close to his element, and to his guardian. Magick wasn’t only a conscious art; the Currents were eternally pushing and pulling against each other. When a Witch reached into them to do Magick he could change them at his will, but when he wasn’t using Magick they would guide him along.

  And Magick is what had brought him here.

  He thanked the woman in the booth and made tracks across the dock toward the waiting boat. The Captain greeted him, helped him aboard, and escorted him to the prow of the ship.

  “This is where you’ll be getting the best view,” he said, “The bay is a beautiful place.”

  Damien nodded. “Thanks,” he said, “Really.”

  “It’s no bother. I was heading there anyway.”

  “You were?”

  “Aye. I catch some of the best crabs around those rocks.”

  He didn’t know if that was true or not, but he wasn’t about to argue with a dream-fisherman. Whether he truly was a piece of an almost Godlike being stuffed into a skin Damien’s mind could comprehend, or simply the figment of an unconscious woman’s mind—or both—it didn’t much matter. Damien was moving again, and moving was better than sitting on a rock and waiting. How much time had passed outside? An hour? Two? A day? Was the headache an indicator of how his body was doing without sustenance?

  The Captain called for the dockhands to remove the ship’s moorings. All at once, three men approached the side of the fishing boat and untied huge, heavy ropes, freeing the ship from the dock. The engine grumbled to life, choking and gargling for a few moments before steadying into a whirr that started to gently propel the boat along the bay.

  In moments, the ship was cutting across the water like a speedboat.

  A strong gust, pregnant with the smell of the sea, was rushing by, tugging at Damien’s scarf and his coat and causing the American flag on the ship’s stern to snap wildly.

  “I didn’t know this ship could go that fast!” he yelled at the captain.

  From behind the main window to the cabin the Captain smiled a crooked smile. “I’m giving her all she’s got,” he said, “Just for you, lad. To get you where you need to go before the fire comes.”

  The smile on Damien’s face faded away as if the sun had just slid behind a cloud. “Fire?” he asked. “What fire?”

  The Captain started to speak, but Damien was having trouble hearing him over the gushing wind. He stepped away from the prow, crossed the deck, and went around the square cabin to find the door only to realize that there was none.

  “Hey,” he said, rapping his knuckles against the window and screaming into the glass. “Don’t you have a door?”

  The Captain shook his head. “Nope. Don’t need one.”

  “What? How is that even possible?”

  The old fisherman craned his neck around, smiled, and said “Because I am the ship, boy.”

  His warm, old face didn’t seem threatening, but a strange dread was coming all the same; prowling toward him like a dark shadow just below the surface of the water. He spun around, searching for signs of a fire that could damage the ship he was on, but found none. And even if a fire had broken out on the deck of the ship, the fire-extinguisher clamped to the side of the cabin would have made short work of it.

  He tapped on the window again and asked, for a second time, “What fire?”

  “The demon’s breath, Damien,” said the old Captain, pointing, “The dark fire.”

  When he turned around, he saw what the Captain was pointing at.

  Chapter Seven

  It was a beast. To have given it another name wouldn’t have done justice to the thing approaching—no, advancing like an implacable tide—from across the other side of the bay. It hadn’t been there a moment ago, or maybe it had been there all along. There was no way to know in this dream world. But it was there now, mighty and terrifying.

  Damien stared, wide-eyed and frozen, as the hulking mass of rolling black smoke tumbled over the Golden Gate Bridge and swallowed it whole. From within the cloud flashes of green could be seen, pulsing violently and erratically and making strange and terrifying shapes behind the cloud. A deep, grumbling roar followed its advance accompanied by the crackling of lightning whipping wildly in green arcs all about, striking the water and everything in its path like an angry child in the midst of a tantrum.

  You couldn’t call it a force of nature. Nature doesn’t think, doesn’t feel, and it doesn’t want. But this thing wanted, felt, and thought. Damien had seen it before; he had watched his own mother and father participate in its conjuring, witnessed the High Magus bring it forth into the world, and heard the cries of fear and pain from those it touched.

  Some called it the demon’s breath, others insisted it was a demon made manifest, but most simply called it the Dark Fire; claiming that it was not the e
ssence of one demon, but hundreds and thousands. He thought he would never have to see it again, never subject his mind to the maddening sight of it, and yet here it was; advancing like some terrible titan of myth.

  And it was gaining on them.

  “We need to go faster!” Damien said.

  “This is as fast as she’ll go, boy,” said the Captain. “Unless you want to throw yourself overboard and give her a little less weight to pull, ey?” He cackled and went back to steering the ship as it flew toward Alcatraz.

  Alcatraz.

  There he would be safe. Those walls were designed to keep people in, but if he could only get there he was sure they would be able to keep it out. And Natalie would be there, he knew. Once he got to her he could wake her up and take her out. The Dark Fire wouldn’t be able to touch either of them once they were awake.

  Damien rushed to the front of the ship and watched the world fly by. The storm was gaining. Fast. It had already consumed the bridge and half of San Francisco along with it by the time he looked back. Skyscrapers were starting to disappear now as fingers of smoke, black as pitch, wormed their way through the gaps and pulled them in to the cloud. When he turned to face the tiny island prison again he found it sitting where it had been a moment ago, directly ahead, but that was the problem.

  It was still exactly where it had been a moment ago. Despite the wind in his hair, the spray of the water, and the grumble of the engines, the boat didn’t seem like it had closed any distance between it and the island in the last couple of seconds. In fact, it seemed like it was moving backwards!

  “What’s happening?” Damien said to the Captain, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “We’re not going to make it, boy!” the captain said. “You’re going to have to jump.”

  “Jump?”

  “Aye. Jump if you want to get to the girl.”

  Damien looked into the water at the head of the ship. It seemed still, somehow, but the distance between the ship and the prison was great and he wasn’t the best of swimmers. He was sure he could reach it. Sure he could. But the smoke would get to him first, wouldn’t it?

  He rubbed the Amber in his hand with his finger and enjoyed the comforting warmth it gave him. When he closed his eyes he thought of Lily and remembered how happy they had both been that night when they escaped the Compound, when they put their old life in the rear-view.

  Then a hand reached for his and clasped it tightly.

  “Hi,” Lily said, smiling. She was on the ship with him now, and in that moment he couldn’t remember whether she had been on the ship with him all along or if she had just arrived, but it didn’t matter. A pure, raw happiness surged through him at the sight of his sister and he threw his arms around her.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” he said. Emotions were coming now, like a well filling up almost to the point of spilling over. He didn’t know where they came from, only that they were there and they felt… urgent.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said, “I’ve always been here. And I’ll always be here.”

  Damien pulled away and smiled. When he looked over his shoulder, the Dark Fire seemed to have stopped moving. It was still there, clinging to the city and the bay, black smoke crackling with green light, but it was still; like a storm seen from a distance.

  “Do you see it?” he asked.

  “I do,” she said, “I wished so hard for you to never have to see that again. Lot of good that did us.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Look, it’s stopped.”

  “Just like it did for us that night.”

  “It’ll start again soon, won’t it?”

  Lily nodded. “That’s why we have to go now.”

  He craned his head around and found Alcatraz, now, rising up in front of the ship. Up ahead was a tiny wooden port, and the Captain was headed for it at a slow pace. It seemed like the port hadn’t been used in a long while, but there was another boat next to it; an inflatable RHIB much like the one Damien’s uncle used to take out to sea when he was a boy.

  His heart caught in his throat. Lily’s hand tightened around his.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Lily said, “Whatever this is, we can deal with it.”

  “You don’t think he… he’s really responsible?”

  “I don’t know. Could be that our own memories are mixing with Natalie’s, or that whatever’s keeping her down somehow knows what we’re thinking.”

  Or who we are, Damien thought. But he didn’t say it aloud. The resting speedboat looked pretty conspicuous, and the likeness to his uncle’s down to the camo print and the silver duct-tape patch from when he came in to the port a little too hard one Sunday afternoon and ripped the hell out of the rubber. Could his uncle have been that man in the alley, or was Lily right? Was this all just… imagination?

  When the Captain brought the ship to a halt he appeared on the outside of the cabin, despite the lack of a door, and went about the process of tying the ship to one of the sturdy wooden beams jutting out of the water. With the boat securely in place, he lowered the walkway onto the wooden harbor and stood aside.

  “This is your stop,” he said.

  They approached, thanked him, and stepped off the ship. When Damien turned and saw that the Captain wasn’t immediately untying the boat, he asked, “Will you wait for us?”

  The Captain smiled a bearded smile. “The West is at your service even in here, Master Colt.”

  Damien felt a tingle of excitement rush through him and nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Your thanks are welcome. But you should hurry. Storm’s coming.”

  Lily tugged on Damien’s hand and together they proceeded up the stony path leading from the harbor to the prison. It loomed over them now like some monolithic thing; a tall, patchy building, worn with age and battered by salt and wind, with bars on the windows, rusting guard towers, and paint peeling off the walls like scabs falling away to reveal black, clotted blood beneath.

  The sight of it gave Damien the chills, but he didn’t falter.

  When they arrived at the outer fence, they weren’t entirely surprised to find it open. Mocking them. Daring them to enter. And so they did. If this was a trap they had already fallen into it, so what use was there in playing it safe? Whatever entity was coiled around Natalie’s soul like a boa constrictor wanted Damien, not Natalie.

  She was a bystander, an innocent. Her only crime had been the desire to be near Damien. He would never forgive himself she had been dealt any kind of lasting damage by this thing that had attacked her, and he would do anything to get her out of this nightmare. Give anything. Whatever she wanted, whatever she needed, it would be hers.

  Even if that meant his life.

  Chapter Eight

  “The dimensions in here are off,” Damien said to Lily.

  Having never before set foot within the massive concrete enclosure that was Alcatraz, Damien didn’t have any idea what the place actually looked like inside. He had seen pictures, sure, but images never gave anyone a real sense of the whole. You couldn’t smell the dampness through a picture, couldn’t feel the cold of the walls, and couldn’t hear your own footsteps echoing all the way up to a ceiling that seemed impossibly high.

  For a prison, this one had been all too easy to get into. First there was a chain link fence; it was ajar. Then they had crossed through a huge vault door, which they had also found ajar. He had expected they would emerge in a reception area flanked on all sides by offices, water coolers, and vending machines. But they had, it seemed, gone right into a cell-block which was a great deal smaller than he would have expected.

  “You’re not kidding,” Lily said. Her echo agreed.

  She was walking along a long row of ground floor cells. Most were empty and many of them reeked of piss and shit and sweat. Some had small tables with little trinkets on them; candles, photographs, and books. Lily even pointed out one book that was open, a candle flickering gently by its side.

  “Was someone just reading that?”
she asked.

  “If someone was, where is he now?”

  Lily shook her head and moved on to the next cell, but the instant she looked into it she recoiled, slapped her hand to her mouth and turned away from it. When Damien saw what was inside, turning away was all he could do to prevent his stomach from emptying all over the concrete floor.

  “Oh my God,” Lily said, fighting the urge to wretch.

  His heart had started to beat fast and hard against his chest, but he turned to look at the cell all the same and took it in.

  First were the flies. They were everywhere, hovering, buzzing, and multiplying. And where there weren’t flies there were maggots, crawling and tumbling all over each other. Then, of course, was the smell; a gag-inducing stench so completely overpowering, Damien wondered if it would persist even after he woke from his Astral Dream.

  And then there was the blood. It looked as though someone had emptied an eighteen wheeler full of pig’s blood and guts into the cell. Black and syrupy, it was dripping from the bars, bedposts, and light fixtures in large dollops. Bits of flesh, brain, intestines, livers, hearts and lungs—all but unrecognizable individually—were scattered around like discarded toys.

  The worst part was it all seemed so senseless.

  Why show me this, he thought. To frighten him, no doubt; to throw his mental fortitude a curve-ball and send it reeling. That showed intelligence. This thing wasn’t about to take it lying down, it was clever and crafty, and capable. Damien didn’t want to admit it, but the grim tableau had jarred him a little. Despite the dreamlike state he was in, most of the time he had spent here had been as real to him as the world he had just come from, save for a few small oddities. He would not be able to simply pinch himself awake. The fear he was feeling was his to carry now, and while it certainly didn’t help his psyche it did mean one thing.