Broken

Lore

HECATE’S HAVEN WAS A TINY BOOKSTORE ON YONGE Street, wedged between a candy shop and a Korean takeout. When we arrived, a plump woman with a long silver braid was flipping the open sign to closed.

She looked out at us, her faded blue eyes crossing our faces with a questioning look, as if we weren’t her usual clientele. Then her gaze dropped to my stomach, and her lips parted in a silent “Ah.” She hurried over and opened the door.

“Let me guess,” she said. “You’re looking for something to protect you against the water contamination.”

Before I could answer, she leaned forward, hand on my arm, and continued. “In times of trial, many of us feel the need to turn to the mystical. To be blunt though, dear, there’s no ward that can protect you as well as common sense. Follow the health bulletins and avoid tap water, and that will serve you far better than any charm or amulet.”

“Anita Barrington?” Jeremy asked.

She looked up at him. “Yes?”

“You were recommended to us by Robert Vasic.”

A frown line appeared between her eyes, then she let out a small laugh. “Ah. Well, that’s different, isn’t it? Come in, come in.”

She ushered us into the shop and locked the door, then closed a beaded curtain over the front window.

“You must think me a dotty old lady, jumping to conclusions, but you would not believe the day I’ve had.”

She waved me to a stool pulled up to a counter stacked with used books.

“Is that too high?”

I hopped onto it.

“Excellent,” she said. “Now, there’s another one there if you gentlemen care to fight over it.”

She headed behind the counter. “Such a day. Mind you, when one runs a bookstore with ‘Hecate’ in the name, one comes to expect shoppers looking for charms and wards and other New Age nonsense.”

Still talking, she climbed onto a stool behind the counter. “Today, though, the phone hasn’t stopped ringing, nor the chimes over the door. We consider ourselves such an enlightened society and yet, when our most basic fears are aroused, where do we turn? Magic and superstition.”

She pulled the plastic wrap off a plate of bakery cookies and pushed them toward me.

“Eat up,” she said, eyes twinkling. “While you still have the excuse.”

I took two.

She continued. “Now, if Robert Vasic referred you, then I know you aren’t here for charms against the water contamination. While humans are scrambling for supernatural cures, we supernaturals are renting cottages and stocking up on bottled water. So, how can I help you?”

I started by asking her about supernatural stories related to Jack the Ripper.

“Ah, our folklore,” she said, eyes lighting up. “My specialty. I adore stories-they tell us so much about ourselves and our world, and our particular world has some of the most fascinating ones. However, in this case, I suspect you’ll be disappointed. What fires the imaginations of humans does not necessarily fire our own.”

“Because we’ve seen far worse than Jack the Ripper?”

“Exactly. If you look for human fiction and folklore speculating that Jack the Ripper was a supernatural, you’ll be absolutely swamped by it. There’s a wonderful story by Robert Bloch-” She laughed. “But that’s not what you’re here for, is it? Let’s stick to our folklore. Now-”

“Nana?”

We turned to see a girl with a light brown ponytail peeking from behind a beaded curtain leading into the back rooms. She looked about twelve.

“ Erin,” Anita said. “My granddaughter.” She smiled at the girl. “Done with your homework and thinking this sounds more interesting? Come get a cookie, then.”

The girl took one, then Anita whispered to her, telling her she could listen from the back room, but not to disturb us.

Of the four stories Anita told us, two postulated that Jack the Ripper had been a sorcerer and the dead women were ritual sacrifices. In other words, the obvious angle, but very unlikely, she said. Brutality wasn’t necessary for sacrifice, and even if a sorcerer preferred doing it that way, he’d never take the risk of performing the murder and the ritual in a public place.

The third story said the killings were done by a werewolf and were part of a territorial dispute. One werewolf had been trying to scare another out of London, and hoped the killings would do the trick. Nice theory…if you didn’t think about it too much. If you’re a werewolf who wants to spook a fellow wolf with the threat of exposure, why make the murders only vaguely werewolf-like? Why not just change to wolf form and make them the real deal? Whoever started this rumor knew nothing about werewolves except for their reputation as the thugs of the supernatural world-very violent and none too bright. Typical.

The last tale was apparently the most popular, with multiple variations dating from the time of Jack the Ripper himself. According to that story, Jack had been a half-demon who’d made contact with his father. Not that easy when Dad lives in a hell dimension, but I guess an enterprising son can find a way.

According to the lore, the half-demon had made a pact with his father, trading sacrifices for a boon. The nature of the boon varied-invulnerability, immortality, immeasurable wealth-pretty much all the regular wishes. The demon connection, the stories claimed, explained why the killings had been so brutal and why Jack had corresponded with the media rather than commit his crimes in silence. Demons feed on chaos. A demonic sacrifice isn’t about bloodletting, it’s about the chaos caused by death. This, then, would have been Jack’s true offering to his father-not the five lives themselves, but the fear and panic they’d caused.

“Now that one makes the most sense,” she said. “Though it is, of course, almost certainly only a story.”

“And not…really what we’re looking for,” I said.

“Well, perhaps if you put this into context for me…”

I glanced over at Jeremy. He nodded, and I told her what had happened.

For a moment, Anita just sat there, staring at me.

“Jack the Ripper’s From Hell letter?” she said finally. “As a dimensional portal trigger?”

“I know it sounds preposterous-”

“No, it makes perfect sense.”

She slid to the floor, then came out from behind the counter and paced to the far shelf and back, shaking her head.

“Mrs. Barrington…” Jeremy began.

“Anita, please. I’m sorry. I’m just…exasperated. I knew there was a supernatural story behind that letter. Why else would Shanahan have had it stolen? I haven’t been in Toronto long. I came five years ago, when my daughter died and her husband needed help with Erin. But my reputation as a folklorist is impeccable. So, when I heard the infamous From Hell letter was here, in the collection of a man known for gathering supernatural oddities, I presented myself to young Mr. Shanahan and requested permission to see it, and learn the story behind it. He-”

Spots of color lit her cheeks and she glanced toward the back room as if remembering her granddaughter listening in.

“He was…not accommodating.” She paced to the shelf and back again. “It is so frustrating. I don’t know what race you young people are, and I won’t ask, but I hope you don’t have any such prejudices to deal with. They can make life quite intolerable at times. Sorcerers and witches-” A sharp shake of her head. “A ridiculous feud rooted in events so far back in time-” Another, sharper shake. “I’m sorry. You didn’t come to hear me rage about that. But, yes, I don’t doubt that the From Hell letter has a supernatural legend behind it, and that Patrick Shanahan knows all about it.”

“If he does, we’ll get the story from him, and we’ll give it to you.”

She smiled and nodded. “Thank you, dear.” She turned slowly to face me. “I don’t suppose-I shouldn’t ask but…well, at my age, I’ve learned to pursue opportunities when they present themselves to me. Is there any chance I could examine that letter? Presuming you still have it…”

“We do,” Jeremy said. “And when this is over, we’d be happy to show it to you. In the meantime, may we contact you if we have questions?”

“Absolutely. And perhaps, now that I know the letter’s supernatural link-a portal and dimensional zombies-I might be able to dig up some more stories for you.”

The first restaurant we passed had a note on the door, saying that the shop was closed due to E. coli in the city’s water supply.

“E. coli?” I said. “So they know what it is? Or is that just a guess? Maybe I should call my newspaper contacts and-”

“And do what? Find out the situation is worse than we thought, giving you one more thing to worry about? Won’t get the portal closed any faster.”

“Clay’s right,” Jeremy said. “We need to keep the blinders on and move forward, however tempting it may be to stop and look around.”

We picked up sandwiches and took them to a downtown park, where we could be assured of privacy. With the exception of the occasional late-working office employee cutting through to the subway station, privacy is what we had…until a change in the wind brought a now-familiar stink.

“Son of a bitch,” Clay muttered under his breath.

“Guess Rose was right,” I said. “They can find me. Saves us the bother of looking for this one.” I inhaled deeper and nearly gagged. “I can barely pick up a scent under that stench. I think it’s male…”

“You’d be right,” Clay said.

He nudged my leg to the left. On the pretext of taking another napkin from the bag, I glanced over and saw a figure almost hidden behind a metal sculpture.

“Shall we try to find a convenient alley?” Jeremy murmured behind his sandwich.

“I know something better.” I wiped imaginary sweat from my forehead, made a face and raised my voice above normal. “God, I have to get out of this heat. Can we eat someplace else? With air-conditioning…and tables?”

Clay nodded and we gathered up our stuff. I led them to the street corner and across to a looming business tower. We went inside. I smiled at the security guard and waved to a “down” escalator a hundred feet away. He nodded and returned to his reading.

Seeing where I was taking them, Clay stopped. “Is that-?”

“The gateway to hell. Sorry.” I took his arm and continued walking, then glanced over at Jeremy. “It’s part of PATH, Toronto ’s underground walkway system. Clay had a bad experience with it last winter.”

“Traumatic,” Clay muttered. “Still recovering.”

“Clay had an early morning department meeting, and I needed to buy him a new shirt,” I told Jeremy. “He’d ripped another one.”

“I ripped-?”

“So I told him to meet me at the Second Cup near the store. Only, he didn’t come in that entrance.”

“Probably because it was cold enough out there to freeze-”

“It was cold,” I continued as we stepped onto the escalator. “So he takes the nearest entrance, not knowing the tunnels stretch for over six miles. The first Second Cup he sees, he thinks, ‘This must be it’ and sits down. When I don’t show, he realizes there might be another one down here.”

“Or twenty,” Clay muttered.

“Be glad I didn’t say Starbucks. Upshot is, if you don’t know your way, it all starts to look the same. Of course, the logical solution is to stop and ask for directions.”

Clay snorted.

“So what happened next was entirely his own fault.”

“Dare I ask?” Jeremy said as we stepped off the escalator.

“Lunch hour. For thousands of office workers. With sub-subzero temperatures outside.”

“One minute I was just wandering around, the place practically empty, and then-” Clay shuddered.

“Traumatic, I know,” I said, patting him on the back. “But-” I swept a hand around “-much different now.”

We stood at the end of a hall stretching a few hundred feet, flanked with coffee shops, bookstores, drugstores and everything else an office worker might need between nine and five. But it was summertime, when no one cared to work later than necessary. The stores had been closed for hours. The walkways were left open only as a convenience for pedestrians.

“Not bad,” Clay said as he looked around.

“If our zombie pal wants to make his move, he’ll have plenty of opportunities. We just need to watch out for security guards and cameras. There’s an even quieter place a block over. We’ll head that way.”

Before we’d passed three storefronts, hesitant footsteps sounded behind us. Bait taken.

We made sure to turn lots of corners and avoid long straightaways, letting our pursuer stay close but hidden, watching us from behind the last corner until we turned the next. As we walked, I counted the number of attack opportunities we’d given him. When I reached five, I paused at a storefront and pointed to a display of baby sundresses.

“What’s he waiting for?” I whispered.

“Same thing his bowler-hatted friend waited for,” Jeremy said. “The doe to separate from the herd.”

He was right. Unlike Hollywood ’s brain-dead, brain-munching zombies, these guys weren’t stupid.

Before I could even open my mouth, Clay said, “No.”

“I-”

“Remember your promise? At my side. At all times.”

“I’m not suggesting I lure him away and finish him off myself. Just the luring away part.”

“Elena’s right,” Jeremy said. “We’ll be close behind. It’s safe enough.”

“Good,” I said. “Then it’s time for me to use the bathroom.” I raised my voice. “There’s a food court just around the corner. You two can sit and eat while I find a washroom.”

When we reached the food court, I put my sandwich bag on a table, then looked around.

“Oh, the bathroom’s over there,” I said loudly. “We walked right past it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I took one last hit of chocolate milk, giving the zombie time to get out of sight.

The bathrooms were down a service hall. As I walked, I tracked the distant pad of footsteps behind me, ready to turn if they got too close before Clay arrived.

I reached the end, only to realize the hall dog-legged. At least this would give Clay a chance to attack the zombie out of sight of anyone passing in the main thoroughfare.

As I rounded the corner, I looked around for security cameras. None. Good. The footsteps behind me sped up…and Clay’s joined them. I smiled. Easy as-

A shadow leapt from a recessed doorway. I wheeled, but too slow, and a body hit my shoulder, knocking me into the far wall. I kicked. As my foot went up, I mentally slapped myself. Again, the sudden move threw me off balance. As I stumbled, the figure rushed me, hands out, going for my throat. I swung and caught my attacker in the jaw. He flew back with a shriek…a very unmasculine shriek.

I leapt onto the falling figure. A face turned to mine-a woman’s face, pocked and red. Rose.

“Thought you were done with Rose, didn’t you?” she cackled.

My surprise threw me off. She lunged at me, fingers hooked into claws, aiming for my eyes. An uppercut stopped her hands before they got within a foot of my face. As she fell back, I grabbed her by the throat and slammed her into the wall. Her face twisted, then went slack, and when I let her go, her body slid to the floor and started to crumble.

“Easy to kill,” I muttered. “Problem is keeping them that way.”

At a noise from the corner, I whirled, hands going up. Clay raced around.

“I heard-”

“Got her,” I said. “Again. It was Rose. I could have sworn it was a man-”

“It was.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back toward the main hall. “The same guy I killed at the truck stop.”

“Did you-?”

“Started to,” he said, now moving at a jog and pulling me along. “Then I heard you and mine got away. Jeremy went after him.”

“Let’s go,” I said, and we started off.

The bowler-hatted man had taken the first exit. We crested the top of the escalator just as Jeremy was stepping onto the down side. He backed off it and led us outside before speaking.

“He crossed the road and I lost the scent in traffic,” he said. “Are you both all right?”

“Just another encounter with not-so-sweet-smelling Rose,” I said.

Jeremy tensed. “Rose?”

“The zombie we-”

“Yes, I know. You didn’t-Did you touch her?”

“Sure,” I said. “I had to. She attacked me. But if you’re worried about the syphilis, I swear I didn’t have sex with her.”

Jeremy didn’t smile. “Did you touch her lips or any of the sores near her mouth?”

“I don’t think so, but-”

His fingers clamped around my elbow. “There’s a coffee shop across the road. You need to go into the bathroom and scrub your hands and arms.”

He didn’t even wait for the light to change, just led me across between cars.

“Jer?” Clay said, jogging up beside us. “I thought you said syphilis was easily treated.”

“It is. But it’s particularly dangerous to pregnant mothers.”

He caught my look and slowed, grip relaxing on my arm. “You’ll be fine.” A small smile. “I’m overreacting, as usual. The only danger is if you came in contact with the sores around her mouth and ingest the bacterium or transfer it through broken skin. A thorough scrubbing will do the trick. I should have mentioned something last night but…”

“Rose was already dead, or so we thought. So what’s happening-”

“First, scrub up,” he said, stopping outside the coffee shop doors. “Then we can discuss it.”

I scrubbed my hands and arms until my skin was red, then washed my face and neck, cleaning off every bit of exposed skin, even parts I knew hadn’t touched Rose.

When I went outside, we returned to the escalator leading down to the PATH walkways, and I found the bowler-hatted man’s scent there, but lost it at the street. Between the exhaust fumes and the smog and the stink of a thousand daily passersby, our target’s scent had disappeared.

I watched the steady stream of traffic going by. “If we wait a few hours and I Change, it would probably be safe.”

Jeremy shook his head. “It’s not worth the risk. Killing them doesn’t seem to help.”

“Either we have an army of zombie clones, or the undead aren’t staying dead. Remember yesterday, when Robert was talking about the difference between controlled zombies raised by a necromancer and those created by a sorcerer’s portal? He said both kinds are tough to kill. Necromancer ones just won’t die, but dimensional ones…” I frowned. “Did he say what happened with them?”

“No,” Jeremy said. “Because that shouldn’t have been relevant. This portal was created over a hundred years ago, meaning any ‘controller’ should be dead.”

“Should be,” Clay muttered. “But there’s always a catch.”

Jeremy nodded. “Time to talk to Jaime and Robert again. And let’s see if we can contact that vampire thief tonight. I’ll go back to the hotel to make the calls while you two track down Zoe Takano.”

Clay opened his mouth, but Jeremy cut him off. “Yes, I know you don’t like that idea, but it’s the best use of our limited resources. Even if that zombie did circle back and find me, presuming I’d know where the letter is too, they’ve hardly been difficult to kill so far.”

“Rose didn’t even have a weapon,” I said. “And unless my nose is wrong, they’re coming back a little the worse for wear. Deteriorating.”

Clay hesitated.

“You can walk me to the hotel and lock me in, if it makes you feel better,” Jeremy said. “After tonight, we won’t have this problem with dividing our resources. I’m calling Antonio, and asking him and Nick to come. He still hasn’t forgiven me for not summoning them back from Europe when Elena was taken. I don’t have an excuse for not bothering them this time.”

Clay nodded, and we walked Jeremy back to the hotel.