TWELVE

The heat of the sun helped bake away the tensions in his body. It did little for the tensions of his mind, as he laid on the lounger beside the infinity edge pool overlooking Phoenix. Behind mirrored sunglasses he furtively studied one of his new house guests lounging on the inflated raft on the water. While her one piece swimsuit was concealing, it left little to the imagination highlighting her narrow waist, firm breasts and not an ounce of fat anywhere else. She looked no older than twenty or twenty-three, although he remembered Devlin telling him about her more than fifteen years ago.

The sun glistened off the oiled skin, highlighting the trim muscles of her thighs and arms, creating a longing in him that he had never felt towards another woman. He wanted her. He wanted to ravish her body. He wanted to claim her as his. Sanity made certain that he would never approach her outside of normal pleasantries and courtesies extended to any houseguest, due entirely to his second houseguest.

At fifty-eight, Max Kirkland was proud that his body was still strong and lean. His doctor had told him that he was in better shape than most men half his age. Max relished that fact. Every day he worked out for two hard hours and then another two hours by the pool for tanning and relaxing. It was hard working keeping his body in such prime condition, but Max had never shied away from hard work or challenges.

In his whole life there had been only three things which truly terrified Max. When he was seven his father had died and his mother moved them in to live with her father, his maternal grandfather. A mean man who took great pleasure in terrifying the boy with stories of mutilations and savage beatings if he ever stepped out of line. It was a bittersweet memory of his grandfather lingering for six days after his pride and joy, a 1960 Cadillac had backed over him when he had appeared to forget to set the hand brake on the steep slope of his driveway.

Grandfather never forgot anything. The car had knocked him down and then ran over his legs and part of his chest, crushing bones and puncturing a lung and other internal organs. His mother had suffered so much watching him struggle to survive. She learned to hate her father as much as her son, at the reading of the will when he left her just enough money each year to exist, but not really live. A mean, tight fisted bastard to the end and even beyond.

The second thing to terrorize Max was spiders, but that he could control. He had every property that he owned sprayed twice a month, the legal limit, for spiders and all things crawley.

The last thing that terrorized Max was that second houseguest, Devlin McGuier. Now Max was positive that Devlin was the devil himself, or in league with him. Thirty-one years ago Max had met Devlin by accident. Some of Max’s boys had tried to relieve Devlin of the two thousand dollars he had won shooting craps in the backroom of a pool hall Max owned in Phoenix.

Devlin had brought Max’s boys back to the poolhall, unconscious and with various broken bones. A partnership had been proposed by Devlin. He would be Max’s silent partner receiving twenty-five percent, gross of all illegal and legal businesses that Max wished to engage. Devlin would ensure success in all endeavors, and Max would agree to do little favor that might crop up from time to time. Naturally free of charge.

Within five years Max had control of Arizona, New Mexico, parts of Oklahoma, Texas and southern California. Drugs, gambling, human trafficking; if he could make a profit, Max did it. On the flip side, he became a respected land developer in those areas, and the money just rolled in. Success came easily. Unlike most others in his chosen field, Max never had any problems with the IRS or the FBI. Now he was friends with Mayors, Councilmen, Congressmen and women in both state and federal government, as well as a few Senators. Max was very well connected, and he understood when to use them and when to leave them alone.

During the thirty odd years of association, Max had only seen Devlin a few times more than half a dozen. The requests were usually easy enough to handle with Max’s basic crew. It was the third such request, and while Max didn’t really have a problem, even with the strange way the man had to meet his demise, in Max’s mind he was paying twenty-five percent and no longer receiving anything in return. Time for the partners to go their separate ways.

The day after the suggestion, Devlin stood before the huge desk in Max’s white oak paneled home office. In terror Max watched as Devlin morphed into his grandfather. The first person he truly hated. The first person he had killed. Saying that it didn’t matter that Max had released the parking brake, he would never leave Max alone for a moment of peace. Tales of whippings and canings along with the same terrorizing stories he had told him as a child filled Max’s mind, as the apparition spoke calmly and slowly with his grandfather’s slight Eastern European accent.

With his body ripped and torn from the whipping, pain emanating from every nerve ending, his grandfather was going to place him in a room with large hungry rats to feast. As the final coup d'etat, the grandfather raised his hands and a giant tarantula stood in the palm of each hand, as he reached for Max’s trembling body. The spiders were the size of softballs and their front legs pawed the air as if forever reaching for Max. Pain gripped the center of his chest, as if he were having his heart ripped from his body.

A sardonic smile twisted his grandfather’s face. Softly, in Devlin’s voice, the grandfather asked if he would like to reconsider their relationship. Max said they were still partners and would always be partners. The grandfather morphed back to Devlin. He smiled and said now his share was thirty percent.

In thirty years the nine or ten visits reinforce the idea that Devlin was not human. He never seemed to age. Max knew lots of friends that had face lifts and other procedures to try to keep their body from aging. All showed signs, no matter how small, or talented the surgeon. Devlin was ageless. He looked as if he were in his early thirties, and even thirty odd years later, he still looked as if he were in his thirties. And Max was certain that Devlin did not put the hours in at the gym to keep his body so strong and young.

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The inhuman Devlin was at his house once again, for another small favor. Max did everything in his power to keep his fear under control. Devlin wanted him to find a man who lived in Arizona. No name. No address. All he had was a black and white photo which looked as if it had been burned into the paper.

Calling a friend at the police department, Max set him to work with facial recognition software to go through all the driver licenses and state IDs. Twenty-seven hours later, and a driver dropped an envelope off for Max. The face belonged to Evan Cooper, 4415 Indian Canyon Road,

Tucson, Arizona.

Max was intrigued as to what this Evan person knew or had about Devlin McGuaire, that Devlin had ordered him killed as quickly as possible. Max dispatched four men to Tucson so that he could speak with Evan, before he decided if and how he would carry out Devlin’s orders.

Not always a patient man, Max was finding the wait intolerable. A little fun with the dark haired beauty in the middle of his pool would help to make the time go faster. Unfortunately she belonged to the wrong man. His wife came to mind, and he wondered what she was doing in Paris now? He would have to call her later for the answer. Surely two months was long enough to find herself, anyplace. If she intended on staying for another two months, she was going to be very disappointed.

The phone beside the lounge vibrated to life. Answering it quickly, he listened for a few minutes. Softly he spoke, “Take the jet and twenty guys and get up there to find him. It can’t be that hard in that city. I want him found quickly.” He listened for another moment. “I don’t give a damn about the agreement with them. I only want to talk at the moment. You are not to do anything to him in Vegas. Find him, hold him and call me. I can’t make it any clearer for you Ted. Fuck up and whoever was involved will share a fate similar to Mr. Cooper.”

Max hung up not waiting for a response.

THIRTEEN

Edgar Franklin Goodman thought about how much information in people’s private life is really available in public records. Ten minutes after landing he had Evan’s home address simply by looking it up in the telephone directory. It was startling to think that something so innocuous, such a common service provided free by the telephone company could lead to someone’s destruction. Perhaps Devlin had used the telephone book and is already here, or on his way. He was going to complicate things, of that there was little question. Edgar would have to deal with Devlin soon. He wondered where those paths would cross.

The door was closed. The window were dark. It appeared that nobody was home. The cat meowed loudly and jumped down from his arms as he reached for the doorknob. His reaction was instinctive at the warning. He stepped back and withdrew his hand. He moved to an acute angle to the door. The morning sunlight struck the door in a one hundred and fifty degree angle. They were there, shimmering in the light. Pale blue lines of energy crisscrossed the door every six inches. Guards, and from the glow, they would knock a man unconscious for at least a half hour. It seemed that Evan was not taking chances. He knew people would try to follow him. Edgar carefully studied the guards and the door for a few minutes, becoming more impressed as he looked.

The cat meowed.

“I see it,” Edgar said softly. “I may be old, but I’m neither blind nor

senile.”

The trap with the guards was that the doorknob itself was not protected. If the average person reached for the knob, their hand would touch one of the surrounding guards, but the knob was unprotected from other means. Evan evidently anticipated that someone with power similar to his would follow. Closing his eyes, he muttered an incantation. The forefinger of his right hand rotated as if opening the doorknob. The door slowly opened into blackness. Opening his eyes, he smiled.

The cat purred contently, her tail waving casually behind her. “Now it’s up to you Cleopatra.”

The cat stood in front of the door and tilted her head right and then left. There in the center of the door was the perfect opening. She crossed over the threshold into the apartment, dipping her tail at the last second as she passed the guards. She turned and faced out of the apartment. Her head started to bob up and down in a significant pattern while she meowed. Suddenly she froze. She emitted one last meow. A minute later she turned and walked deeper into the apartment. Edgar crossed the threshold and walked in also, closing the door behind him.

The apartment was dark; darker than it normally would have been with the lights off and sunlight streaming through the slats of the blinds. Edgar stopped and slowly looked around the room. Evan had definitely not wanted prying eyes. There on the corner end table sat the box. Edgar had not seen one in centuries. Stepping over to the table he held his hand above the rune etched box that was absorbing all the light like a sponge to liquids. A small incantation and a brief pattern with his fingers turned the room filled with light as nature intended it to be.

Turning to look at the room now revealed, Edgar noticed the one primary occupant of the room, books. Columns of books were stacked against the wall from floor to ceiling, by chairs and in chairs, on all of the tables. Slowly Edgar moved about the room reading the titles of many of them. Then he found what should not have been.

At the bottom of a stack going to the ceiling was the leather clad binder of the Ladder of Light. There were only supposed to be seven copies in existence, but here was the eight, an impossibility in the physical world. The spine was cracked with age as his. He opened the book and read the familiar pages, recognizing at once the familiar handwriting of the author. How could this exist?

The walls were covered with ancient alphabets, charts of hieroglyphics, runes and sigils. He slowly rotated his body scanning for any type of sign from Evan as to a clue where he was now. Nothing. Cleopatra meowed.

“I agree he scattered the energies, which says he knew people were coming for him. The question is how many people and if there is a secret message just for us?”

Edgar walked through the apartment noticing details as he went. The partially obliterated pentagram and sigils on the table. The black cube below the table. The candles and small pieces of metal discs. Metal

working tools and a crucible. All spoke to the interest of the man, but not as to where he disappeared. The bedroom and bathroom proved to be just that, a bedroom and bathroom. Two utilitarian rooms for basic human body functions. If there was a message, it had to be in the living room area.

Again Edgar scanned book titles, looking for a clue. As he read the titles he realized how much further his studies appeared than he had thought possible.

The cat meowed as she curled into a ball by the wall below the Phoenician alphabet, what looked like a combination of original Hebrew and runic symbols. Edgar carefully moved his hand from left to right across the poster and then right to left again.

“Oh, he is a smart one. So hard to detect, so easy to overlook. Letters, individual letters, G, S, E, A, V.” Edgar said three words and the letter shone as if spotlights were on them. Cleopatra moved between his legs to have a better vantage point to see. With a happy meow, Cleopatra twitched her tail and sparks like from a fourth of July holiday danced across the poster paper, moving the letters.

V, E, G, A, S.

“Wonderful Cleo! The jet can have us there in just a few hours.” Cleopatra walked under the poster, tail twitching wildly.

‘Ready to go?”