Into the Fire Page 2

  “No longer your concern,” Mayfair said. “You will be working out of a different office altogether, with me. Tom?”

  Captain King put a hand on my shoulder. “Sam, I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do.” He handed the folder back to Mayfair.

  Mayfair ruffled around in the folder and handed a stack of the papers back to Captain King. “Copies for your files.”

  “Hold on,” I said and took a step back to shrug off the hand on my shoulder. “Just like that? I’m transferred? How the hell does that happen?”

  Mayfair spun on his heel and opened the door. “You’re with me, Detective Kane.” He exited the office without another word.

  I searched my captain’s face—my former Captain—for some sort of answer. There wasn’t one.

  “Sam?” he asked. “Good luck.” Another deep breath. “And be careful.”

  He ushered me out of the office and closed the door.

  What the hell just happened?

  * * *

  I caught up with Mayfair just as he stepped into the old elevator. My head swimming, I squeezed in after him and gave him the once-over. Like my former Captain, this man stood taller than me. I put him at about six four. Long, tall, and lanky, or “built like a runner,” as my dad would say. A beat-up badge clipped to his coat flashed in the fluorescent light of the elevator.

  The doors closed, and his hands went into the deep pockets of the trench coat.

  “Lieutenant John Mayfair,” he said. “Garage?” he asked.

  I pushed the button.

  “Most folks call me Jack,” he added with the shadow of a smile.

  Lieutenant Mayfair. I filed it away for future reference. The name didn’t register at all. How had I never seen or met him before? I knew just about everyone in the Denver PD; hell, most of them have been to my parents’ house for barbecues and football Sundays.

  “Samantha Kane, but everyone calls me Sam. Who are you, and what the hell just happened?”

  “Straight to it, then?” he asked. “I am a specialist. You’ve been transferred to a new task force created in the early morning hours by a special grant of the chief of police, mayor, and governor. You should be honored to be chosen. I only take on the best. We work out of a different office, by the way. You’ll like it. Very homey. Do you have a car?”

  “Yes. Don’t you? How could I be transferred? Shouldn’t I get a choice?”

  “Yes, I have a car, but it’s not here. I expedited the paperwork given these are very special circumstances. And I only deal with very special circumstances.” He winked at me. “And yes, you do get a choice. Your choice is to come with me or not come with me.”

  “Well then,” I said, a little mollified. “I choose not to come with you.”

  “All right. I can’t force you,” he said. “Have your desk cleaned out by five. The duty officer will accept your badge and weapon. Have a good life as a civilian.”

  The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and Jack Mayfair stepped out into the garage and left me standing there. The doors started closing, and I reached out with a hand to hold them open. The bloodstains stood out in this light, or maybe it was just my imagination. The cuff of my light jacket had a ragged stain fading halfway to my elbow. Irregular blobs went up my arm. The smoky scent clung to the elevator, and I had to admit, some of it radiated from me, from last night.

  I caught my reflection in the elevator panel and froze. Part of me wanted to burst out laughing maniacally, just let it all push me over the edge and embrace the madness flirting around the edges of my mind. My partner hospitalized, my job in jeopardy, my life in shambles. I’m a cop. To protect and serve, that’s my mission. Just like my dad. Telling him about all of this would be …

  I ran out of the elevator and shouted, “Wait!”

  Jack Mayfair hadn’t made it far, only around the first of the thick stone support columns. Maybe he waited for me?

  “I just,” I said, “I need to know what that means.”

  “You prefer to be called Sam?” he asked.

  I nodded. My parents called me Samantha. They managed an inflection conveying disappointment and guilt in equal measure, too.

  He regarded me, and I felt self-conscious, memory flashing to that momentary glimpse in the elevator. My red hair hung loose about shoulder high and gave the impression rats had built a nest in it. Ten rats, maybe twenty. With babies. And the blood—I didn’t want to think about the blood anymore. To my eyes, I looked heavy. My ex often said I simply had curves in the right places. Men.

  “You disobeyed orders,” he said. “You continued to investigate a case taken up the food chain to more experienced detectives. You were expressly told not to touch that case anymore, and you did it anyway. As a result, your partner lies in a hospital bed with a dozen tubes going in and out of his body. A giant machine breathes for him. All in the hopes he’ll stay alive just long enough for his body to do that thing our bodies do: heal. Not a great chance, but hey—you gotta hope. After all of that, what did you think would happen to you? Medal of commendation?”

  Stunned, my mouth flopped open and closed like a fish out of water. Yeah, I knew I’d screwed up. My partner … all my fault. And I’d have to pay a price for it, but I thought … well, I thought disciplinary actions, sure, maybe even suspension without pay or something. I could even see riding a desk for a couple of years, but fired?

  A rising tidal wave of panic threatened to wash over me.

  “Face it, Detective.” He began walking again. “You’re lucky I want you in my task force at all.”

  I pushed the panic down. Swallowed it. I turned and started saying something smart-ass, then stopped. He stood next to my 2002 Ford Escort. Had walked right up to it.

  “Nice car. Ford.” He frowned. “I never did like a Ford. I’m a Chevy man.”

  “Yeah? So where’s your car?”

  “I didn’t bring it.” He tried the passenger-side door and found it locked. “I prefer alternative transportation most of the time. Easier on the environment.”

  Great. Eco nut. Not that I don’t do my part; I recycle my beer bottles. Piles and piles of them. “I appreciate that you want me in your task force; I do.” Standing in front of my car, I did the best I could to stare him down. “But there has to be an appeal process, something I can say or do to get my real job back!”

  “Nope. Sorry. It’s my way or the highway.” He tried the door again. “Power locks?”

  A sea of emotion swelled inside of me. The walls I’d spent years building cracked. From the first day I’d put on the uniform, male cops had tried to get me to cry, to show emotions. Emotions meant weakness in their eyes, and I’m a woman—the breasts give it away every time—and women only come in two varieties: the crying, simpering, useless waste they don’t want riding in the car with them, and the stone-cold bitch nothing touches so she must be a dyke. I showed them what they needed to see: a cop. I locked my emotions behind those walls every day, released them only at night when I’m back in my own home behind a locked door with the curtains pulled and a goddamned cold beer in my hand.

  The need to curl up into a ball on my couch overwhelmed me, and I pushed it aside along with the fear and pounded it down into a dark hole in my brain where it couldn’t touch me.

  I couldn’t break down in front of this stranger.

  Deep breath.

  Resolved face.

  I stomped to the driver’s side door (okay, so maybe I hadn’t managed to pound all of my emotions down as far as I would’ve liked) and pressed the unlock button on the keychain. Did I slam the door a little too hard getting in? Maybe. Mayfair had to shove the seat all the way back to accommodate his long legs, and he still appeared a little uncomfortable. Key in the ignition, I started the car and flipped the switch for the air conditioning. Screw Jack Mayfair. My day just got shitty, so could his.

  He frowned and said, “Take a left out of the garage, head to the Broadway and Sixth area. I’ll tell you more when we’re in the neighborhood
.”

  “You want to tell me, maybe, what the fuck I’m getting into?”

  “Of course. Since you asked so nicely,” he said.

  That almost made me stick my tongue out at him. Almost. Decorum, Sam. Professionalism. Resolved face.

  He continued, “I’m only called in on the most difficult cases involving the strangest of situations. My squad, though mostly civilian contractors, are elite. Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket.

  “Yes, I do.”

  He sighed. “Pity. Everyone used to smoke, you know.”

  “Right. Most of them are dead now. You were telling me about your squad?” Didn’t the Captain say he worked alone?

  “Hmmm?” He returned the cigarettes to his coat pocket and pulled his coat close around him. “Oh, yes. Very special unit. Very elite. I take only the best candidates. You should be very proud.”

  “I am. Very proud. Can hardly contain myself. So why me?”

  “Well, that’s easy enough. Why don’t you tell me about the Ghost you saw last night? Oh, red light.”

  “What? Shit!” I slammed on my brakes, the car skidding and sliding towards the intersection. I hadn’t even seen the light change.

  How the hell did he know?

  Chapter Two

  I sat on the edge of the intersection, hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. Tremors cascaded down my body to my toes and back up. I could see that … that … thing, and everything else faded away. Back in the apartment building again, it whispered something I couldn’t quite hear. Out of the corner of my eye, it moved. The hollowness of it, the ghastly color of blue gray, sometimes translucent, sometimes solid, ragged edges moving with a breeze I couldn’t feel. The milked-over eyes pinned me where I stood, looking through me, making me feel naked and exposed while a thin layer of ice formed on the walls, the floor, and my own bare arms. White mist puffed from my lips. The world froze. I froze.

  In the other room, my partner screamed.

  “It’s never easy,” said a voice beside me, warm and inviting.

  The ice trembled and cracked.

  “The first time you see one,” said the voice. “They have this … power. It can penetrate right through you, right to your core.”

  I blinked. The hallway vanished, replaced by hands gripping the steering wheel so tight my knuckles went white. Another blink and I’m back in the hallway.

  The voice continued, “You see a little something of them, of course. Their true nature. But they seem to see all that you are in one instant, and you can’t quite break away from their gaze. Doing so takes practice and more than a little Talent.”

  A different sound reached my ears, and I shook my head. The ice broke with a loud crack, bits falling away and taking the memory with them. I sat in my car on the edge of a busy intersection. The light had turned green, but a moment before it had been red, and I’d nearly gotten us killed by running it.

  I needed a drink. A strong one.

  “Are you insane?” I croaked.

  “No,” Mayfair answered. “Of course, if you didn’t have more than a little bit of Talent, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Light’s green now, and the gentleman behind us doesn’t seem very happy.”

  Jack Mayfair turned from the side-view mirror to stare at me. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, his face unreadable.

  All I wanted to do? Scream. Pound my fists against the steering wheel, dashboard, and roof. Maybe even hit him in his blank face.

  Instead, I eased off the brake, did the rear-window wave to the driver behind me, and drove on.

  What I’d seen … How could this guy know?

  None of it made it into my report. It couldn’t. They would’ve locked me up. In those first tense moments when the first responders had shown up, I kept my mouth shut, hadn’t told anyone what I’d seen or thought I’d seen. Somehow, Jack Mayfair knew. Worse, he talked about it like it was nothing at all, an everyday happenstance. Tra-la-la-la-la.

  What the hell had I gotten myself into?

  “Make a right up here, just past the green car,” he ordered. “An El Camino? Lord, those are still on the road? Ugly damned things if you ask me.”

  On autopilot, I grunted and turned as instructed while he made idle chitchat I paid no attention to. This guy, the King of Crazytown, and I’m his newest serf? Transferred to a task force? More likely transferred to the loony bin. I blinked when we entered the Baker District, one of Denver’s oldest neighborhoods. Lots of cool houses with big yards and fences. Most of these places cost more than I’d make in my life. Why would there be a police station in the middle of a ritzy residential area?

  “Right up here.” He pointed to a tall stone fence with an imposing iron gate. Vines covered most of the fence itself, and metal versions wound their way up and down the gate in a dizzying pattern. Sharp arrowheads shot out of the fence to stab at the sky. Every fifteen feet or so, a stone gargoyle sat perched atop a column, wings half-spread, gaping mouths filled with sharp, jagged teeth. They were posed as if ready to leap down on anyone who got too close.

  Creepy.

  I pulled into the drive. Mayfair hopped out to push the gate open. When he motioned me forward, I pulled inside and waited for him to close the gate and get back into the car. A forest of overgrown trees surrounded us; the driveway cut through and veered left.

  “Just follow the road,” he said.

  Mother Nature pushed hard to reclaim territory here. Wildly tall grass flourished beneath scraggly trees to create a jungle in the heart of Denver. Idly, I wondered if there could be wildlife bigger than the requisite Front Range jackrabbits running around in there. Rather than dwell on it, I did as told, following the road until we broke through the trees and I found myself parking in front of the strangest place I had ever seen.

  House didn’t do it justice. Mansion fit, but born of a hodgepodge of different architectural styles and influences mashed together like some sort of Frankenstein building. Three stories tall, it had a wide, wraparound porch reminiscent of something you’d see on a plantation in the South, complete with thick columns and lots of planters for flowers and greenery. Unlike on a Southern plantation, all of those planters were empty except for the dirt. As if plucked from some huge city like New York or Chicago, two stone lions sat on either side of the stairs leading up to the porch like twin eyesores. Above them and spaced at intervals across the edge of the first floor sat more stone gargoyles in various poses from “ready to pounce” to “I’m watching you, and you will dream about me tonight where I’ll be chasing you because I want to eat your soul with fava beans and a nice chianti.”

  Beyond creepy.

  The second and third stories appeared to be later additions with just as many gargoyles hanging around as the first. The windows on the first floor were long and wide; on the second, tall and thin; and the third, narrow and round. It made no sense.

  The kicker, though, had to be the towers. Three towers at three corners of the house. Each right out of some ancient European castle, not a mansion in Colorado. Built from huge stone blocks with thick gray mortar, the closest one had creeping ivy rising to about the midpoint and no door or windows visible.

  Sidling up to stand beside me, Jack Mayfair lit a cigarette and smiled at the mansion.

  “My great-grandfather started this place. He built the first tower there in the back, dug out the foundation, and built the house. He also gave it a name: Banba.”

  Banba. That seemed familiar. Like a name from a story I heard once. I stretched up on my tippy-toes to see the back left tower.

  “It’s Irish,” Mayfair added. “Actually, the Gaelic name for Ireland herself. Anyway, he thought it appropriate. It reminded him of home.”

  “Wait,” I said. “This is your house?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Don’t worry. I have a team working here. It suits our unique needs.”

  “Right,” I said. To the right stood the remnants of a
garage. Maybe a guest house too. Only the concrete foundations and a few bits of blackened wall remained. “What happened there?”

  His face darkened. “Fire. A long time ago. Come on. I’ll show you the inside, introduce you to everyone.” He sucked down more of his cigarette and stubbed the rest on the heel of his shoe, tucking the unused half back into the pack. Jack Mayfair stepped lightly up the stairs, past the lions, and into Banba.

  Alone half a second, and I imagined every gargoyle on the house stared right at me. As silly as the thought sounded, it made my skin crawl.

  I ran after Mayfair.

  * * *

  The wood beneath me creaked and moaned with every step. A set of solid double doors greeted me at the top of the porch stairs. Each damned thick, dark black, and as shiny as if they’d just been polished. An inlaid pattern of odd symbols ran up one side, across the top, and back down the other. They seemed to catch what light there was in an odd way, almost glowing. The door on the right stood ajar, so I stepped inside.

  I imagined a grandiose interior would greet me. It didn’t. Stone tiles formed a reddish-brown and beige pattern fanning out from the door and filling the entryway. A line of those same odd symbols from outside ran along the inside of the doors and across the top of the threshold. I couldn’t help but stare since these, too, seemed to give off a hazy, reflective glow of light whose source didn’t seem readily apparent.

  Mayfair cleared his throat, and I turned.

  He stood beside a large coat rack to the right of the door. His trench coat hung there, as did the hat he’d been wearing. The base of the rack held more umbrellas and walking sticks than it was meant to.

  “Welcome to Banba,” he said, waving past the entry.

  A door stood closed behind him on my right. Next to that, a wide, curving stairway hugged the wall and led up to a short landing with a decorative railing. In the open space beside the stairs hung a massive chandelier casting Tinkerbell light everywhere. Beneath it, a hallway disappeared past the stairs and stretched back to an outside door, maybe the backyard. To our left, another room could be seen through a wide opening. Mayfair led me into this room.