Chapter 21: Garden of Gethsemane

After I had hung up the phone with Sarah, I sat in the park and watched the clouds for a few minutes. The sun was getting lower and the clouds were showing signs of pink and orange. Cerberus stood next to me, staring up into the sky while casually chewing on his toy. I patted him on the back of the head and ushered him into the car.

"Uh uh. You're not bringing that thing into my Jeep. Drop it."

Cerberus snorted and then dropped the inner tube before hopping in.

When Sarah had spoken to Eunice's granddaughter, she had said the old hag was flying in at that very moment and was going to be staying downtown at the Terre Haute House. Which was interesting for two reasons. The first was that the Terre Haute House had been recently purchased by Darby's new beau, Eli Carson in another step toward expanding his ever growing business empire across the state. The second and most obvious was that the Terre Haute House had been closed for the past four decades because, well let's face it, who wanted to shell out two hundred bucks a night to a view of the bland Hulman Center and the sinus-melting stench of a paper mill. But it was a perfect meeting place to exchange the box for Darby's dowry. And if this Eunice Deveroux was half as bad as Sarah made her out to be, I needed to get the box back from Darby before Queen of the Stone Age got her carbon-dated mitts on the thing.

Cerberus and I drove back into downtown and stopped in a back alley behind the old hotel. The Terre Haute House was built in 1928 at the tail end of Terre Haute's swingin' days. It was seven stories tall, all brick, and its architecture had all the beauty and charm of a wet dishrag. The building was so dilapidated from lack of upkeep that it was a wonder the damn thing wasn't condemned decades ago.

The sun was low enough that the building's shadow spread over the back alley all the way to the railroad tracks that ran through the vacant lot behind it. There were several cars, all black and shiny, parked farther down the alley behind two large service doors in the back of the hotel.

I reached back and grabbed Cerberus' chain. I hooked one end to his collar and then wrapped the other tight around the passenger seat. He started whining and growling as if he couldn't figure whether it would be better to threaten me or make me feel sorry for him.

"Don't get bent out of shape, dog. I'm just going to have a look. I'll be right back"
He barked. Two inches from my face. My hair blew back and my ears rang. And then I almost passed out from the smell of his breath. "Sweet…mother…of Christ! You could scour the hull of a battleship with that breath."

I stepped out of the Jeep and checked the bandages on my head. I still had a headache, but whatever Heather did to fix the hole, she did a hell of a job. Usually when I was damaged this badly I'd have a fever by now.

Cerberus whined and barked. Thankfully a train coming down the tracks masked the sound somewhat, but I still waved at him to shut up. The dog stopped, but I could still hear his whines over the speeding train that was now thundering past.

Keeping to the shadows, I walked up to the cars and took a closer look. Darby's truck was there, looking as if it had just been driven out of the pages of a car magazine. I looked inside, but saw nothing. The other cars' windows were too tinted for me to get a good look inside but they all appeared empty as well. Other than Darby's truck, they all had rental plates. And the trunk door of one had a nice little dent in the shape of a familiar asshole's face.

Something moved in a window a few stories above and I ducked behind one of the cars. A man in his early thirties wearing a suit and sunglasses peered out the window and gazed at the train moving by. After the train had completely moved past, the man turned away from the glass and disappeared.

I stood up to make my way to the giant service doors but came to a sudden stop. I tried to move forward but couldn't take a step. Something was holding me back. I looked behind me to find Cerberus with his massive jaws clamped on the waist of my jeans. The chain was still around his neck and the passenger seat was now lying in the middle of the alley attached to the other end. There was a jagged white scar across the pavement where the dog had dragged it behind him. He let go of me, gave me a soft whimper, and then slapped at me with his tongue.

"What the hell did you do to my Jeep?" I ran to the seat and pulled at the chain as if it were strangling it. "I said I'd be right back. How could you…what am I supposed…my Jeep, it's…look what you did to the…and the…ahhh puke!"

He walked over and licked my face. I let go of the chain and wiped the dog slobber from my cheek. "Okay, okay. But we need to get some ground rules straight. First and foremost, no fuckin' around with my Jeep. Got it?" He just watched me with his black eyes so I made nice and unhooked the chain.

After scratching him under his thick leather collar, I turned and made my way to the service doors. The faded brown paint on the wooden doors was curled and chipped. I found a spot where most of the paint had eroded away and pressed my ear against the door, listening for any activity on the other side. I didn't hear anything.

The door squeaked as I pushed it open. I moved it just enough to allow me and Cerberus to squeeze through then shut it behind me. Inside it was dark and smelled like cold, wet cement. A few seconds passed and I was able to start making out shapes in the shadows. There were pipes sticking out of the walls where stoves and ovens used to be and the green and white ceramic tiles that were still on the wall were faded and cracked. The others were piled in dusty heaps on the floor.

I saw footprints in the dust.

I followed themuntil they stopped at the entrance to a dim corridor. There was just enough light for me to see about thirty feet in each direction. The carpet was old and faded and there were large stains wherever it wasn't worn through to the concrete beneath. Graffiti decorated the walls as far as I could see. It reminded me of Steve and Dwayne's place, only it didn't smell as bad.

There was movement.

I peeked around the corner and saw a man heading my way, dressed just like the guy I saw upstairs. He had a weapon of some sort dangling from his shoulder and he walked like he was on his way to the dentist. He had change in his pocket that jingled in time with his steps. I pressed my back against the door jamb out of sight. The guy was coming closer.

Cerberus crouched down next to me. I couldn't hear his growl but I certainly could feel it vibrating through the floor. I put my hand on his forehead and waited.

When the jingling was about to walk past, I jumped out and grabbed the guy by his left arm and dragged him to the ground at Cerberus' feet. The guy instinctively went for the hardware at his side, but before he could get a hold, I broke his nose with my palm and then snapped his wrist. His glasses were now nothing more than shattered frames. Dark bits of lenses stuck out of his skin as blood pooled down both sides of his face.

"Where's Darby?"

The man tried to reach for the gun with his other hand. I grabbed his fingers and bent them back, hard. He grunted then spit blood in my face. "Fuck you." He had a Slavic accent.
I didn't have time to mess around with twenty questions so I snapped at Cerberus. The dog came up to the man and then did something I didn't think was possible. He put the guy's entire head inside his mouth. The man flopped like a fish as he tried to pull his head past the dog's teeth, but when Cerberus' jaws tightened, the man froze.

"Last chance. Where's Darby?"

He made some kind of noise, but I couldn't make out what it was since he was half-way down Cerberus' esophagus. I gently pulled the dog's head away. The guy came out coughing and covered in blood and dog spit. "Oh God, the smell."

"It's nasty, yeah. Now answer me or it will be the last thing you smell on this earth."

The guy turned his head and spat. "They don't pay me enough for this shit."

"You have my sympathy, now tell me where she is or…"

Cerberus stood up and started sniffing. His nose worked the air for a moment then the dog bolted down the corridor into the darkness. There was a growl, a voice that went silent in mid-shout, and then nothing.

I grabbed the guy's broken wrist. "How many men are there? Unless you want me to feed you to that dog, answer me."

"Five. Well, four now, I think."

"And Darby?"

The guy gargled up a mouthful of blood and phlegm. "Upstairs. Top floor."

"What about Benoit? Is he here with you?"

The man nodded.

"Where?"

The man smiled through blood and dog drool. "Right behind you."

I felt something round and cold press against the back of my head.

"Well, I'll be damned. Why the fuck aren't you dead, Dingo?"

"Because God won't let me off that easy."

The man behind me laughed. "Well, I think He might have changed His mind about that. Now stand up. Slowly."

I stood up and turned around. Benoit was wearing a freshly pressed pin-striped three-piece with a solid green tie and holding a .45 caliber cannon to my head. Thick white bandages criss-crossed over his nose and his eyes were purple and swollen.

"You get women with a mug like that?" I asked.

He pressed the barrel of the gun to my forehead and pushed with each word. "Shut. The fuck. Up."

The bloody man at my feet struggled to stand upright and said, "Julius, he has a dog. I think it just took out Russell." The man pointed down the corridor in the opposite direction that Benoit came from.

Julius' bruised and swollen face paled a bit. He motioned at us with his gun. "Let's go."
He grabbed me and shoved me down the hall in front of him. We moved at a near jog. Benoit kept looking back over his shoulder as he pushed me along but then grabbed a fistful of my shirt and pulled me to a stop in front of an elevator. "Press the up button," he said.

I did and the doors opened. When I glanced down the hall behind us, I saw a large shape move out from the shadows. Cerberus stepped forward and snarled, materializing out of the darkness like congealed smoke. His teeth were dripping with blood.

Benoit shoved me in the elevator then barked to his bloody partner, "Jaco, kill it!" Jaco raised his weapon with his unbroken hand and fired down the corridor. It cracked like thunder.
I moved to hit Benoit but he was ready for it. He brushed my strike to the side and brought the butt of his pistol down on the back of my head. My knees turned to water and I slumped in the corner of the elevator.

"I can't aim with my left hand!" Jaco fired a few more times then jumped in the elevator with us and started pressing buttons in a wild panic with the barrel of his gun. "Come on, come on!" The doors started to close.

Cerberus' barks were raging down the hall toward us like automatic cannon fire. I could see dust and flakes of plaster fall from the walls with each sound he made. The elevator doors were almost completely closed by the time Cerberus reached us and his head was too wide to fit inside.

Benoit turned his gun away from me and aimed it at Cerberus, but the doors closed before he could fire a shot. Cerberus was outside, barking and clawing frantically. Jaco leaned against the wall with his gun pointed at the door in a white-knuckled grip.

"You know, I don't think my dog likes you very much."

The elevator started moving. Neither Benoit nor Jaco said anything, for which I was thankful. I wasn't in the mood to trade barbs with these two. I reached back and felt a trace of blood on the back of my head where I had been pistol-whipped. If I got out of this, my head was going to be nothing but a mass of scar tissue.

Benoit kept staring bloody and violent hate at me while Jaco kept his eyes and his gun focused on the elevator doors. A few seconds later, we stopped. We could still hear Cerberus barking seven stories beneath us.

"Get up."

I used the walls to balance myself. I felt woozy, but it passed once I was standing up. Jaco led us out of the elevator and down a less damaged hallway to what at one time must have been a luxury suite on the west side of the building. Jaco opened the chipped and warped double doors and we stepped inside.

The room was bare except for a few folding chairs and a small lampstand. It looked as dilapidated as the rest of the hotel but the wallpaper and plaster seemed to be holding up better than in the hallways.

Darby was there, wearing stiletto heels and a plaid mini-skirt as she paced and talked on a cell phone. Her hair was lying stick straight over her perfect shoulders and her corset top was open enough to be distracting to the most noble of gentlemen. Three heavies, all dressed as nicely as Benoit, flanked her as she moved around the room. But when she turned and saw me, she stopped. Her face went pale then gradually swelled to a bright red. She grunted something into the phone, flipped it shut and said, "Today is my lucky day."

She grabbed one of the folding chairs, motioned to her thugs and stormed toward me. "Grab him and come with me."

They all got a hand on me and started half-dragging, half-carrying me. "Darby, listen to me."
Darby turned and slammed the folding chair over my head with all the grace and ease of a professional wrestler. If it wasn't for the guys holding me, I would have collapsed right there.
Without a word, she led us to a smaller room that had a view of the vacant lot out back. She unfolded the chair then grabbed some frayed and brittle curtain rope piled in a corner. "Tie him to the chair." She turned to Benoit and said, "Julius, I have to go. She'll be here in five minutes." Darby pointed a French-manicured finger at me. "Watch him. And if ice-pack here tries to get out, shoot him in the knees. But don't kill him. I'll deal with him when I get back."
I flexed my wrists as hard as I could to allow a little slack in the rope when I relaxed, but the heavies tied me to the chair with knots that would have made Julie proud.

Darby walked up to me and grabbed me by the hair. She threw one of her long legs over my lap, straddled me, and then put her mouth against my ear. In a breathy voice she whispered, "Do you know how much you hurt me, Dingo? How much pain you gave me? I was devastated when I heard about you and your little whore." She wrapped one arm around my shoulders and pressed her body firmly against mine. "You have no idea the amount of suffering you caused me." Then Darby held her face an inch from mine and wiggled her hips as my body betrayed me. She smiled. "But you will."

"Darby, I-"

"Shhhh…" She put a finger to my lips. "Don't waste your breath here. Not now. Save it. Because when I come back, I'm going to show you what a Graeae really is." Her grip on my hair relaxed and then she did the last thing I ever expected.

She kissed me.