The Last Temptations of Iago Wick Read online

  It pained him suddenly to wonder what the value of the soul truly was. In the end, regardless of the life lived—or the complexities of the temptation planned—it all came down to one question. Was a man good or was he wicked? How did his life, when parceled out, balance upon the golden scales? A hideously simple question for a beautifully complex world. For every detestable Dylan Courtwright, there were a dozen humans walking the tightrope, acting out of desperation. Perhaps they did not deserve the condemnation of those scales.

  Iago frowned and resolved to pull himself from the miserable, philosophical hole he’d suddenly dropped into.

  “Oh, I meant to tell you,” Dante said, “I received a message back from Mr. Morte. He recalled a matter regarding a young man named Thomas Atchison in Ohio, but that’s all he remembered. He is… begrudgingly… going to research the matter further. It could be the same man.”

  “Wonderful. He appeared again today, you know.”

  “He’s persistent.”

  “Incredibly, and he knows for certain now that he’s after a demon. He attempted to warn Boeing, and he indicated he would do the same for Abraham Pauley, who happens to be my next target.”

  Dante’s mouth became a thin line as the lights dimmed to accommodate a brief tale told by stereopticon, an appetizer before the evening’s main event. “Be careful.”

  “Please don’t worry about me, darling—it’s insulting,” he teased.

  They turned their focus to the screen so that they might enjoy the tale of Adam and Eve, as though they weren’t insufferably familiar with the story already. It had been driven into their skulls even as they dragged themselves through the muck as demonlings. Naturally, they were predisposed to be fond of that old serpent, regardless of the representation. Not everyone crafted portraits as epic as Milton’s, but the tale’s conclusion was always the same.

  Every story has its ending, every play has its final act, Iago thought. Contrary to the catastrophic work of Mr. Dante Lovelace, there is a wonderful sense of satisfaction when life’s finale simply fits. Perhaps the end of the story of Adam and Eve was not so lovely for mankind, but a happy ending and a good ending were not mutually exclusive.

  Hazel Boeing’s ending fit beautifully.

  That was not to say Iago was going to halt all interference in the lives of humans, no! It was his passion, his work! But that did not mean he couldn’t appreciate the tales told by another, stories which did not require his artist’s touch.

  “Do you think the Powers Below know that my assignment was nearly turned on its ear today by Gloria Ambrose?” he asked suddenly. “Will they mark that in their great book chronicling my performances, or will that detail fall by the wayside? Do they know just how hard I worked?”

  Dante sighed. “Oh, not this again.”

  “It’s a question that’s entirely justified!”

  “Take a moment, my dearest Iago, and ask yourself: does it truly concern you?” Dante whispered.

  Iago blinked. “What? Yes! Of course, it concerns me!”

  “Well, then I ask you, for whom are you working?” Dante smiled. The serpent coiled about the tree before them. “In all the magnificent years that I have had the pleasure of knowing you, I was always under the impression—given your unbridled passion—that you worked for your own self first and Hell second.”

  He took his head in his hand. “Dante, I fear my mind is unraveling.”

  “I assure you, it is not.”

  “I am not usually in the habit of questioning myself.”

  Dante placed his hand upon Iago’s knee and said, “Perhaps you’re over-taxed. You’ll have plenty of time to relax once you’re promoted to Overseer. Lucifer knows, Overseers mostly sit around and twiddle their thumbs.”

  Iago had been so swept away by the thrill of this final assignment that he hadn’t stopped to consider what waited for him at the end: a comfortable office, a gaggle of eager demonic secretaries and a lot of nothing to do.

  But it was a good thing. Promotions are good. Recognition is good. Eager demonic secretaries are very good.

  He tried to convince himself, as the tale of Adam and Eve came to an end and Colonel McCormick’s beautiful, swaying automatons took the stage, that it was nothing to worry about. These sudden insecurities were natural. He had done and was doing everything a successful demon was supposed to do.

  His mind sought refuge from the unsettling, and so, it turned to Thomas Atchison. Although his next soul to take was Abraham Pauley’s, thoughts of the inventor danced about his brain as swiftly as the machines on stage, revitalizing his sense of purpose.

  It had been longer than Mother would have liked.

  Detective Stewart was not in the habit of visiting his brother. It was no exaggeration to say he was better acquainted with the other members of The Order than he was with Augustus. Indeed, he might have had a more satisfying conversation with the Man in the Moon than with his own brother.

  Alas, his rapping marked the fourth time he knocked upon his younger brother’s door that afternoon. There were half a dozen cheap rooms rented above the cobbler’s storefront on Westmore Street. One such room housed Augustus Stewart.

  The building’s other tenants—many of whom were just as secretive as Augustus, if not more so—were likely upset at the persistent knocking, but Augustus wouldn’t answer. These were citizens of Marlowe who did not feel welcome in their own city, and they did not appreciate being bothered. They had already been cruelly swept under the rug by those born with silver spoon smiles. One man with bug-eye spectacles watched the detective closely before jerking back into his apartment and noisily clicking several locks.

  Finally, the door opened a crack, and Detective Stewart saw one of his brother’s dark eyes peer through.

  “Brother. What a surprise. I imagined you were Thomas Atchison coming to bother me again.” He still didn’t open the door, content to have the conversation through the quarter-inch crack.

  “Will you let me in?” Detective Stewart asked.

  “What’s the password?”

  Detective Stewart grumbled and sounded like their father. “Let me in, Augustus.”

  “…Fine.”

  Detective Stewart knew his brother lived in something that perhaps aspired to be squalor, but he didn’t realize it was quite this bad. His bed was little more than a cot. Dozens of half-finished portraits were scattered about the place. Every surface was covered in mixed jars of paint and water. Augustus didn’t ask him to take a seat. Even if he had, there were very few places which might have qualified in any sense as a “seat.”

  “What brings you here?” Augustus asked impatiently and chewed on the tip of a dirty paintbrush. His shirtsleeves were dotted with inks, and blue paint was smeared across his left cheek.

  “Augustus, if Granddaddy knew this was how you were living, how you were using the money he bequeathed to you, he would crawl from his grave and strangle you.”

  He laughed with great bravado. “I’m not living for the dead, dear brother. Now, what can I do for you?”

  Detective Stewart rolled his eyes. “Do you at least read the newspaper?”

  “I’m not a complete hermit. Yes. The lovely lady across the hall buys them for me and leaves them at my door.” He shrugged boyishly. “I’ll reimburse her eventually.”

  “So, you are aware of what is happening to your brothers in The Order.”

  Augustus sucked on the paintbrush, producing a disgusting squelch that again reminded the detective of why he didn’t often visit his brother. “I wouldn’t need the papers to be aware of that. Thomas Atchison is like a town crier, coming to my door to warn me.”

  “He’s not as foolish as you think he is,” Detective Stewart sighed and leaned against the wall for want of a chair. “He has everyone’s best interests at heart, I’m sure. Septimus Boeing killed himself this afternoon. Mrs. Boeing finally passed away.”

  “So I’ve heard. He had been rotting away for some time. He always was a weakling.” />
  “Perhaps,” the detective sighed wearily. “He was a sad man.”

  “Not to mention, a drunk.”

  “It all just seems strange to me. The incidents are tied by The Order, but every tragedy has a perfectly understandable reason: intoxication, madness, grief. There’s no one suspicious involved. I briefly considered blackmail, but to no avail.” Then again, as a police detective, it is awfully difficult to thoroughly investigate matters you don’t want the police to know about.

  Augustus snorted. “You mean to say you don’t find Thomas Atchison suspicious?”

  Detective Stewart frowned. “No. Augustus, you can’t place the blame on Atchison just because you don’t like him.”

  “This has nothing to do with the fact that I don’t like him. I’m only saying that Atchison is not truly one of us. We let him into The Order on a whim. It was a desperate attempt to keep the organization alive, all based on some vague relation,” Augustus said. “What if he is involved somehow?”

  The very notion made Detective Stewart outstandingly exhausted. “You think he’s actually killing these people or at least driving them to act. Why?”

  “Well, he’s mad!” Augustus insisted and chewed vehemently on the paintbrush again.

  “No,” Detective Stewart continued and thought of Courtwright’s disfigured tattoo the night he had tried to scratch it away. “There’s something that makes me believe that what is happening here is God’s will.”

  It was now Augustus’s turn to roll his eyes and scoff at his brother. He did it with ten times the charisma Detective Stewart mustered himself. “Are you here to preach, brother?”

  “No, because I know you will not listen.”

  “Yes, I gave up listening to sermons a long time ago.”

  He gloated over his lack of faith; it would have broken their parents’ hearts. “I just feel as though we’re being punished, one by one.”

  “God is punishing us?” Augustus laughed. “He might as well. It would do Him well to do something.”

  Detective Stewart might have bristled and berated his unfaithful kin once upon a time, but now he could only shake his head. “Oh, Augustus…”

  “But what would we have to be punished for? We seasoned members of The Order have never pulled the trigger, never truly reveled in spilling our enemies’ blood ourselves,” he said bitterly. “We should.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Detective Stewart said and couldn’t entirely conceal his apprehension at his reclusive brother’s sudden bloodlust. Perhaps he needed a little fresh air. The paints had a way of confusing the mind, and Augustus looked as though he hadn’t left his hole in an age.

  “I certainly do! It does no good to allow some petty thief or assassin to speak for you. There’s no integrity in that.”

  “Augustus, lower your voice,” his brother hissed.

  He resigned and looked impatiently to his latest work, a painting of a ghoulish woman. Her nose was like a misshapen gourd, and her eyes were distinctly crossed. Detective Stewart could never tell if his brother only painted… unique individuals, or if he was simply the worst artist in Marlowe.

  “I wash my hands of The Order, brother. I am a member in name only.”

  “I wish it were so simple,” Detective Stewart admitted wearily. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought to confess to the police. I may not be a member, but I am guilty myself. God, that guilt keeps me awake at night.”

  Augustus gave a bark of laughter, twirling his paintbrush. “You think confessing would absolve us? We’d be hanged, and I’ve too much to accomplish to be hanged for the childish crimes of this idiot society.”

  “Augustus—”

  “Brother, you may be my flesh and blood, but if you do try to confess, I promise I will be the first member of The Order to kill someone himself.”

  There was a venom in his brother’s eyes that Detective Stewart had never seen before. He said softly, “I’m not going to confess, Augustus. I haven’t the strength.” He had promised his father years ago that he would protect The Order since he was not inclined to join himself. He would not actively work against the interests of the society, he resolved, but if it was God’s will that their follies and crimes be thrust into the light, then he would not interfere. He would be but flotsam and jetsam, drifting wherever the tide might take him.

  Augustus retreated again, remembering himself and looking to his paintings as though they soothed him.

  Augustus said, “Twice now, in the course of one day, Thomas Atchison has come to my door talking of demons, but I cannot bring myself to care. I didn’t even open the door to him the second time. Let him shout in the hallway like the madman he is.”

  At this point, there was little that could have taken Detective Stewart by surprise, but the statement made him blink dumbly. “Demons? He hasn’t told me about that.”

  “He’s insane. Surely you know that,” Augustus scoffed. “Something about a demon which haunted Cox and Courtwright. I’m sure he believes this creature bested Boeing, as well. That is, if he didn’t commit these crimes himself.”

  Detective Stewart begrudgingly noted that he must speak with the inventor again, but for now, his conversation with his brother had left him spent. “I want you to be careful, Augustus. Keep a sharp eye out.”

  “And you, as well, brother,” he said dismissively as he opened the door. Detective Stewart ambled through, trying to suppress the urge to slug his brother across the face. “It was lovely to see you. Give mother my regards the next time you stand morosely over her grave, would you?”

  The door closed not with any impassioned slam, but rather acute indifference. The bug-eyed man two doors down peered out, and Detective Stewart resolved—for the ninth or tenth time since Mother’s death—to wash his hands of his brother.

  VII.

  In Marlowe’s opulent North End, the home of Thaddeus Ackle and his wife, Eugenia, was ablaze with hopes of speaking to the dead.

  Invisible, Iago observed from across the street as the over-dressed and over-excited friends of the Ackle family scurried into the ruddy brick mansion. What an affair, to sit around some grand table while a perfumed charlatan brought loved ones screeching back from their final resting place purely for the pleasure of the living!

  If the spiritualists actually accomplished what they said they did, surely it would classify as some kind of abuse.

  It wasn’t that spirits didn’t exist. They were the lost, the uncertain, the restless. Iago had known some fine and respectable spirits, but they certainly weren’t wasting their time turning tables or rapping once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no.’

  Iago crossed the street. Trees rich in autumn’s deep hues reached to frame the large, hundred-year-old mansion of the Ackle family. Leaves rustled in a light breeze. The scene was idyllic with the season’s uneasy glory.

  It would be a delight to turn this lovely night upon its ear.

  Iago threw himself in with a plump nugget of a woman wrapped in at least three different skinned animals. Some weasel-like creature draped fashionably over her shoulders looked desperately at Iago, but alas, he was too late to help. He followed closely at the woman’s heels, and she knocked on the door. The lady, he noticed, had a noxious perfume, but she held her head high as though she left roses in her wake.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Proctor,” the butler greeted. He looked as though he could smell her pungent scent already. “The family is so happy you could attend.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t miss it,” she warbled as Iago quickly darted past her into the foyer. “Mind the furs, George! My furs!”

  She must have lost twenty-five pounds in an instant as the sullen servant took her beloved critters from her, delicately draping them over his arm.

  The foyer had vermillion wallpaper and a sweeping cherry staircase. Portrait upon portrait lined the walls—all of incredibly important members of society, to be sure. The Ackles were not in want of funds. The family sat upon a whaling fortune which had sec
ured them a happy place among Marlowe’s elite. They were, indeed, beneficiaries of The Order’s foul deeds. Their position was protected, their needs met, and their enemies left to meet unfortunate ends, all while they sat safely within this stately dwelling and lamented how Marlowe just isn’t like it used to be.

  Alas, money couldn’t always buy good company, as was evidenced in the chittering Mrs. Proctor as she was introduced to the parlor.

  “Why, Mrs. Proctor,” proclaimed a plainly handsome woman. “It is a pleasure.”

  “Eugenia, my lovely,” Mrs. Proctor greeted. “Oh! You wore the goldenrod gown. A brave choice considering your complexion, but you look ravishing!”

  As an ideal hostess should, Eugenia Ackle suppressed her disappointment.

  Iago had already crept unseen through the house that morning in preparation. A sketch of the place remained in his apartment, tied neatly in a bundle with that evening’s somewhat sinister plans: a tragic drama in three acts. It was to be a glorious performance.

  To his left was a ladies’ sitting room, empty. Beyond the foyer and the staircase were two more doors. The farthest away was closed. The closer pocket door was open. This was the passage used by the servants to travel from the kitchen to the dining room beyond the ladies’ parlor; there was also a back stairwell.

  Like most mansions, it was an easy house in which to creep and conceal oneself. Provided Mr. Pauley, the next target, behaved in the manner Iago expected, the mansion’s layout would surely help him in his endeavor. A mere afternoon of shadowing Mr. Pauley had allowed Iago sufficient time to slip his hands into his mind and discover the foul things he most desired.

  The afternoon had also brought another encounter with Thomas Atchison. The inventor cornered Pauley shortly after lunch time. He insisted that Pauley take care while the squat, rotund banker still brushed the meal’s lingering crumbs from his beard. As he indicated he would the previous day, Atchison withheld more information during this exchange than he had when speaking with Septimus Boeing. Pauley was not the sort of man who could stomach talk of demons.