The Last Temptations of Iago Wick Page 5

  “Welcome back to the waking world, Mr. Cox.”

  He flipped awkwardly from the window seat and turned to face Iago. In the distance was the rolling of thunder.

  “I’m free?” Cox asked weakly.

  “You will be free from the nightmares, yes. I thank you for your autograph. And now, I must hold up my end of the bargain. You have two choices.”

  Sudden lightning brightened the room, and still the heavens held their rain. “What are they?”

  Iago paced slowly forward. “I know your father’s pistol is in the top right drawer of your desk. You can either end your life…” Cox flinched. “Or you can go to the police and tell them everything.”

  The blood rushed from Cox’s face. “Everything? Concerning the business of The Order? They’ll need a week to hear it all.”

  “I have a feeling they would be a willing audience.” Iago shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Either choice will free you from your nightly terrors, though I must admit, they both bring problems of their own.”

  “And if I refuse to do either?” Cox asked.

  “Then you return to the land of your nightmares. Simple! These matters are very simple, Mr. Cox. I said that if you signed your soul to Hell, I would provide you with two ways to end the nightmares. I did just that. Either way, your soul is still ours.”

  Cox looked meekly to the top drawer of the desk. He gulped. “Were you responsible for Dylan Courtwright’s plight?” he asked.

  Iago shook his head. “Not responsible, no. Courtwright did this to himself, as you all have. You see, life is a series of choices, sir. And if you continue to make choices which wrong your fellow man, it places a fantastic strain upon your soul. It distorts it, ruins it… which makes it quite attractive to Hell. No one can bear the blame but yourself.”

  In the distance, over the sounds of a brewing storm, there was pounding on the front door and a tenor voice calling out desperately.

  Wilburn Cox rolled up his sleeves. The inventor was too late.

  Thomas Atchison was a thorough man. He didn’t wish to worry Wilburn Cox unnecessarily, but when he found the strange gritty residue on the probe after observing his dreams, he had a sinking feeling he knew what it was. As a man of science, he had to be certain, and he sent a sample away to an acquaintance who knew far too much about such things.

  Three nights after his last visit, Atchison pounded on Cox’s front door. An unseasonably late thunderstorm was brewing in the sky above, the wind whipping about him and the clouds growing heavy.

  “Cox! Cox, open this door! I must speak to you!”

  Wilburn Cox couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t hear anyone. His brains were smeared across the floor, and his father’s pistol rested beneath his limp, lifeless hand. He stared blankly to the ceiling, surrounded by scores of books he would never get to read. A pity—but they never seemed to hold his interest, anyway.

  And so, Atchison had no one to whom he could tell his discovery. The strange grit was brimstone, a tell-tale sign of demonic activity.

  IV.

  The façade of the house at 13 Darke Street was pleasant in style. But as its address may have implied, the home was a shiny red apple with a worm in the middle. Its interior decoration was far from pleasant. The skeleton of a raven under glass, a rather charming two-headed rat in a jar, dead flowers pressed in picture frames; it was the kind of art made of death a demon such as Dante Lovelace could appreciate and even find inspirational. He enjoyed candlelight, which only added to the home’s romantic gloom.

  In the parlor, sitting on the floor before a simmering fire, Dante cut out every article on the Lady Liberty Disaster he could find. A black photo album sat at his side. He wanted to preserve and treasure every single printed word he could find concerning the tragedy alongside volumes chronicling other misfortunes he had caused. Above him was a large and menacing taxidermic vulture which sat upon the mantle with outstretched wings. He was a frightful thing. Dante called him Montgomery.

  Upon the settee, Iago Wick was content to reflect in his shirtsleeves with a glass of whisky at hand. It took an inordinate amount of drink for a demon to feel even tipsy, but inebriation was not the goal. Iago was more in love with the taste, the smell of the drink. Though the teetotalers pushed for Marlowe to become dry, a demon would always have access to the libation he required. Iago reached to a small box on the table beside him and placed a chocolate petit four in his mouth. Reward for a job well done.

  The fearsome storm settled outside. Once Wilburn Cox made up his mind to end his life—something Iago had confidently predicted—the demon escaped before the storm hit. The inventor and the lumpy woman Iago had come to recognize as Cox’s housekeeper were entering the home as he crept away.

  Cue screams on the part of the lady and a well-timed curse on the part of the gentleman. End of Act II.

  “In Lucifer’s name, look at that,” Dante said. With all the pride of a mother showing off her newborn, he held up a tremendous rendering of The Lady Liberty engulfed in flames. He smiled, and so did Iago.

  “A fire fit for Nero.”

  “Ah, it warms my heart, Iago. Such an infernal blaze almost reminds me of home.”

  It was curious how Marlowe felt more like home now than Hell ever had. Hell was bone-chilling and unpleasant even for a demon. Most of the workers were idiots, and most of the humans were too busy having their skin filleted or their eyeballs boiled in oil to engage in any meaningful discussion. Only a few of the torturers had any artistic integrity to speak of, and it was difficult to have a conversation with them that went beyond grunting or spitting.

  “So, you were able secure Wilburn Cox’s soul without any interference from the inventor?” Dante asked.

  “Narrowly. He pounded like a madman upon the door as Cox took his life.” Iago took one more petit four, gingerbread this time.

  “How dramatic. Demon hunters can be a terrible inconvenience.”

  He swallowed the cake. “Now, now. He may not be certain yet of what he’s against. For all you know, he thinks I’m a ghoul. Lucifer forbid.”

  “At any rate, another job well done, Mr. Wick,” Dante said warmly.

  Iago thanked him, but found his gaze wandering to the fire. He felt oddly out of sorts. It certainly wasn’t due to the damned inventor. He was interesting, yes, but nothing more than a novelty. Iago was successful, and yet, he felt some uncommon restlessness crawling about him like a dozen scarabs.

  Was he ill?, he wondered. He hadn’t felt so out of sorts since the last time he set foot in a church!

  Dante said, “You seem tired.”

  Iago blinked a few times before answering, “Well, it’s a terrible amount of work, dredging up memories of victims, appealing to his greatest fears. To create such nightmares is taxing. I spent an entire evening simply pawing about Cox’s brain, unbeknownst to him.” Iago looked thoughtfully into his drink before adding, “The landscape of the mind is often treacherous to traverse. You never know what horrors you’ll stumble upon.”

  “And in this case?”

  “Some rather unsavory thoughts about his mother and… well, a few sleeping dragons from his past not even I wished to prod. Suffice it to say, he had quite a few quirks which could not be discussed in polite company,” Iago explained.

  Dante grimaced and placed another pruned newspaper at his side. “As unpleasant as that might have been, I’m certain it was your thoroughness which led to a job well done. No other demon I’ve met puts quite the effort into their work that you do.”

  He smiled as he refilled his glass for the third time that evening. Dante rose to his feet. He was determined to have a glass for himself before Iago made that an impossibility. “Do you… do you think they notice?” Iago asked.

  “Who? Notice what?”

  “The Powers Below. Do you think they notice the details? The effort? Or do they simply look at the number of humans a demon claims for Hell?” Iago asked and took a slow drink.

  Dante frowned. “Hmm. What a
question.”

  What a question, indeed. It was one which occasionally troubled Iago, and yet, he had never voiced it until now. The insecurity of his words tasted like poison on his lips. “I only want to know. Am I merely a quota of souls collected?”

  Dante furrowed his brows. He examined his partner intently. “I’ll be damned. Is this uncertainty I see in Iago Wick’s eyes?” he laughed.

  “I only wonder what they value, what they take into consideration when appraising a demon’s performance.”

  Iago had never cared much for numbers. Numbers were cold things. There were emotions here to manipulate, bonds to break, and nightmares to conjure. But was one perfectly orchestrated disaster nothing in the eyes of his superiors compared to a dozen quick and simple Faustian contracts gathered frivolously like daisies in a field? The Faustian contract was an integral part of a tempter’s arsenal, but there were also demons who did nothing but offer dull deal after deal. The idea that those uninventive creatures could be ranked above him in any way made him feel terribly… icky.

  “You’re to be promoted shortly, are you not?” Dante asked. “After finishing with The Order, you’ll be promoted to Overseer, distributing assignments to the poor toilers like me. I’m sure every detail carries weight in their eyes.” He placed a firm hand on Iago’s shoulder.

  Dante Lovelace had an outstanding ability to calm Iago when perhaps his passions overtook his sense of reason. It was something he would dearly miss when he left Marlowe. His promotion to Overseer would certainly lead him elsewhere. Iago shook his head to cast out his doubts.

  “Listen to me! Dante, I apologize,” he said, “I must have lost myself for a moment.”

  “How fortunate that, as always, I was here to find you.” His smile weakened. “And speaking of your whereabouts: do you know yet where in the world you’ll be carrying out your new duties?”

  “No, not yet,” Iago said. Dante tightened his grip slightly on Iago’s shoulder. “But I beg you, don’t give in to sentiment when I must go. Such things heartily disagree with me.”

  “That is a certifiable lie! You want nothing more than for all of Marlowe to cry out how they can’t go on without you.”

  Iago considered a grand hullabaloo over his departure, but he had a feeling the not-so-good people of Marlowe wouldn’t be pleased if they discovered his involvement in various cases of horror and heartache over the decades. He shrugged. “Well… yes, some sort of fuss would do this old demon good.”

  A crackling noise came suddenly from beside them, and the two demons turned to see a piece of charred parchment materialize on the side table. It burned into existence, edges uncurling until a perfect scroll sat waiting to be unfurled.

  “Mine or yours?” Iago asked.

  “I already have my next: a tragic carriage accident.”

  Iago reached to take the paper, unrolling it delicately so that he might learn of his next target.

  The mess in Wilburn Cox’s study was enough to send one young officer rushing from the room with his hand clamped over his mouth. Smatterings of brain on the carpet tend to weaken the stomach.

  Detective Arthur Stewart stroked his thick, dark moustache and gave a world-weary sigh. He had seen worse. Some murderers had a habit of getting a little too creative with their victims. At least Cox’s insides were, for the most part, still inside.

  What nauseated Detective Stewart was the clear and almost proud display of the scarab tattoo upon Wilburn Cox’s arm. He briefly considered hiding it, rolling his sleeve down in a hurried and sloppy attempt to conceal the truth, but the housekeeper, Mary Southard, was already clucking about it. She’d noticed it immediately upon discovering the body with Thomas Atchison at her side. Other officers saw it. Another scarab would wander out the door and into the minds of the news-conscious members of Marlowe society.

  It appeared to be suicide, and it would have been a simple and uninteresting case warranting a small article in the paper if not for that damned bug.

  “I was worried about him. I wasn’t entirely certain why,” Mary chirped to Detective Stewart in the adjacent parlor. “But I’ve always been able to sense when things are going wrong. Perhaps I should be a clairvoyant rather than a housekeeper.”

  Detective Stewart decided it would be unwise to feed that fire. The last thing the world needed was another one of those dismal crooks wandering around. “You’re certain you had no reason for thinking something might be wrong? To your knowledge, he hadn’t associated with anyone suspicious or unknown in recent days, had he?”

  “Only Mr. Atchison, and he was just as worried as I was. He was pounding on the door to get Mr. Cox’s attention when I arrived,” Mary insisted. “It was just a hunch, an inkling. I knew I must hurry over here despite the storm. Mr. Cox was distraught. It’s all because of that affair with his friend, Mr. Courtwright, I think.” She shook her head like a woman lamenting the state of the neighborhood rather than a suicide. “May I go now? My cat will be missing me.”

  Detective Stewart waved her away. “Yes, Mrs. Southard. That will be all. And if you could, please send in Mr. Atchison. I’d like to speak to him again.”

  The housekeeper shuffled out of the room. Detective Stewart deflated like a disappointed and mustachioed balloon. “Morgan,” he said to the young man positioned at the door, “would you assist Gilbert in the study, please.”

  Morgan, still nauseated, nodded weakly and hesitantly stumbled from the room as Thomas Atchison stiffly entered the parlor.

  “Close the door, Mr. Atchison,” the detective said, and the inventor promptly obeyed.

  “Detective Stewart, I’m afraid I’ve told you all I know,” he said simply.

  “Why did you come here this evening?” Detective Stewart asked him for the second time.

  “I told you. Mr. Cox had been unwell. I wanted to see to his wellbeing.”

  “There was no other reason for your visit?”

  “Not at all. I simply believe he was so disturbed by Courtwright’s actions that he ended his own life. It’s tragic,” he said blandly. But he always sounded like that.

  The detective shook his head. “Well, you gentlemen are making it difficult to protect The Order. I may not want to be a part of your organization, but I’ve always done my best to make certain it did not receive the attention of the police. But now, I’ve got men at the station house asking questions about the Courtwright case—reporters, citizens, my wife!” He walked like a bulldog to Atchison’s side. “And here’s another man with a bug tattoo, proudly displayed. It’s almost as though he wanted it to be seen.”

  Atchison gave something of a snort. “Doubtful. Cox was a terrible coward.”

  “Be that as it may, he’s only making matters worse. The public will move on to new, more scintillating gossip eventually, but only if the rest of you stay out of the newspapers. I’m sure the crooks you gentlemen employ to carry out your deeds are hiding in their holes at the news of Courtwright. They’ll bar the doors once word of Cox gets out.”

  “For now, perhaps, but they, too, need to eat and have no other marketable skills, the animals. A shame there wasn’t a way to conceal the tattoo. Mrs. Southard was running about like a chicken missing its head when she saw it, chirruping of Courtwright’s crime. There was no calming her,” Atchison explained.

  Detective Stewart reached for a handkerchief to wipe his brow. “I have a feeling hiding the tattoo wouldn’t help, anyway.”

  “Why is that?”

  He drew a deep breath and stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “We’ve all been wrong to take part in such sin. God is punishing us. The truth always comes out.”

  A strange look came across the inventor’s face. “Why do you say that?”

  The detective cleared his throat, and for an extra measure, he locked the door to the parlor. “What I’m going to tell you is not to be discussed beyond this room.” Atchison nodded shortly. “Two days ago, I visited Courtwright in his cell and discovered him a bloody mess. He had s
cratched the skin bearing his tattoo until it bled. It looked like raw meat by the time I found him.”

  “Delightful,” he answered dryly.

  “But that’s not the strangest thing. I saw his nails. There was blood and flesh under them. He’d been at it incessantly for the entire night. And yet… when we cleaned him up… I saw…” He felt like an idiot under the inventor’s judgmental gaze, and then, subsequently, felt like an idiot for allowing the eccentric to make him feel so idiotic. “The skin healed before my very eyes. And in half a minute, the damned bug was looking back at me as though nothing at all had happened.”

  A gasp or harshly hissed curse on Atchison’s part would have been greatly appreciated by Detective Stewart. He was graced only with a bemused elevation of the eyebrows. “Peculiar,” he said simply.

  Detective Stewart sighed. “Yes. He may have cut out his tongue to protect The Order, but a greater power desires the truth to be known.”

  “And you believe that greater power is God Almighty?”

  “I’m not looking to be chastised, Atchison,” Detective Stewart growled. “I want to tell you to please be careful, and come to me if you notice anything strange. They’ll have our skins if word of The Order gets out. This whole business with Courtwright and Cox is strange, and I—”

  “Detective Stewart, I promise if I encounter any problem I believe requires your… expertise, then I will contact you promptly. Otherwise, I am a busy man. May I return home? My wife will be wondering where I am.”

  That was a dilemma with which Detective Stewart was woefully unfamiliar. His wife didn’t often wonder where he was or even if he would come home at all after a particularly taxing day. One day, she’d look up and realize he was dead and buried… before promptly scurrying to the Ladies’ Lunch Room to gossip about it. He motioned limply to the door, and the inventor did not waste another word. He simply left Detective Stewart with brain on the carpet and another beetle to squash.