The Hollow Ones(86)

“What happened?” she said, her tongue stiff, her mouth tasting of ashes.

“You…you fainted,” said Blackwood.

She saw the mustached Mexican tattoo artist, Joachim, his shirt torn, holding a wrinkled old Hollow One, its mouth-face open and groaning.

Then she remembered: Earl Solomon. She reached out to Blackwood’s shoulder, gripping the fabric of his jacket.

“Solomon,” she said.

Blackwood helped her back through the catacomb to the smaller chamber. There lay Solomon, the bulbous wooden handle of the awl sticking out of the back of his head.

Odessa covered her mouth, stricken by horror at what she’d done. Blackwood dropped to one knee near Solomon, looking over his body, curled on its side.

Blackwood said, “Look away a moment. Please.”

She did, and he removed the awl blade, tossing it aside. He straightened Solomon’s body, fixing the hospital gown neatly, setting his arms straight down at his sides—just as he had once done with Vernon Jamus in another slave graveyard.

Odessa had turned back, tears running down her face now.

Blackwood opened his kit. “I am going to commend his soul to peace,” he said.

He performed a sort of funeral rite, cleansing and releasing Solomon to the ages. Odessa paid little attention to his ministrations, weeping through it. At the end, Blackwood staggered to his feet, exhausted.

Odessa caught him, helped steady him. Blackwood nodded, returning his implements to his kit, and the kit to his jacket pocket.

Odessa could not believe it had come to this. But as she stood there mourning the death of the man whose body she had killed, she remembered watching the Hollow-as-Solomon twitch and die.

The emanation. Something had floated out of him, just like the thing she’d seen rise out of Walt Leppo when he died.

“Wait,” she said, looking around. “How did I get from here into the crypt?”

Blackwood did not answer her. Something wasn’t right.

Joachim entered the chamber, the Hollow One firmly in his grip. He paused near them, looking down at the body of Earl Solomon.

“I need to get this one up to Providence before something else goes wrong,” he said. “He can join the other three. You did it, Hugo.”

Blackwood nodded without joy. “Your timing was impeccable.”

“Well, it was a long ride down from Providence. Nice work to you, too, Agent Hardwicke.”

“Oh, I didn’t…” Odessa started to say, but never finished the thought. As Joachim walked away with the Hollow, she thought she saw, before he disappeared into the shadows, folded against his broad back, a pair of beautifully inked angel wings.

Odessa returned to the crypt, trying to remember how she’d gotten there. She looked down at the centuries-old grave site. Blackwood entered behind her.

“This port island was one of the colonies’ largest slaveholding communities in the early eighteenth century,” said Blackwood. “African and Caribbean slaves constituted one-quarter of the workforce in New York.”

“Unbelievable,” said Odessa.

Blackwood said, “If past wrongs are not addressed, and dealt with honestly, dark spirits will erupt through the unhealed seam. It is the same for cities and towns as it is for people.”

Odessa remembered the image of her father then. And something else came back to her. “While I was out,” she said, trying to remember, “I had a dream. I saw a woman.”

Blackwood turned to her, captivated. “Tell me.”

Odessa reached deep into her memory. “Black hair. Black eyes. She wore a white dressing gown…”

“Yes?” said Blackwood, with quiet urgency.

“She wanted to help me. To wake up. I think she…she sent me back. Does that sound crazy?”

Blackwood didn’t answer. He was lost in thought.

“You mentioned your wife,” said Odessa.

Blackwood came back from his reverie. “The invading spirit revealed itself to me as her. She is trapped in a netherworld, waiting for me to rescue her. If I can complete my tasks, and save the world from these dark forces enough times, I believe I can free her from limbo.”

Odessa understood then. Hugo Blackwood had been slaying projections of his beloved for four and a half centuries in a quest to save her. That was what made him the prickly creature he was.

Odessa was still unaccountably sore. Aside from her cuts and bruises, and the pain in her jaw, it felt like something more. She reached around to rub the back of her sore neck, and felt something strange there, beneath her hairline.

A raised vein. Fading now, but she probed it with her fingertips, and remembered…

A sigil. The mark of the Hollow Ones.

She looked at Blackwood, and saw that he knew then that she knew.

Odessa jumped back and clawed at her arms, sick at having been inhabited by one of those disgusting imps.

“My God!” she said. “That thing was in me?”

Blackwood did not say yes, and he did not say no.

“What did I…what did it make me do?” she said. She saw dirt on Blackwood’s suit, a missing button. “Did I go after you?”

“You did,” he admitted.

“But wait. I thought you said the only way to rid a body of one of those things…was to kill. You saved me.” She was deeply confused now. “Why?”