Brooklyn Knight Read online

  Conversation had ceased between the pair as they fought their way through both the crowd and the growing smoke. Preparing to open a door to the basement, Dollins was slightly startled when three uniformed officers burst through from the other side. Half-blind and gagging, they stumbled into the first-floor hallway, gasping for air. Grabbing one man by the shoulder, as much to keep him steady on his feet as well as to capture his attention, the large detective asked;

  “Phillips—what’s goin’ on down there? Couldn’t you guys lay some fire extinguisher action on it or somethin’?”

  “Property room,” the man answered weakly. Coughing violently, he forced his voice back under his control, then added, “Didn’t see what started it. Couldn’t get near it, really. Smoke, everywhere. All of a sudden like, out of nowhere. Bitter, makes you gag … had to run… .”

  Dollins and Knight looked at each other for an instant, simply staring. The professor gave his head the slightest of nods, which was apparently good enough for the larger man. Moving into the stairwell, the detective stopped the pair for a moment at the top of the stairs. Popping the plastic lid off his coffee cup, Dollins told his companion to hold still. As the professor complied, the detective poured coffee across the top of his own sport coat with half its contents. The other half he splashed on the lapel of Knight’s suit coat. Throwing away his cup, the detective grabbed the edge of his jacket, moved it up to where it could cover his mouth, then directed the professor to breathe through the wet material of his own coat.

  “It’s no gas mask, but it’ll filter a lotta the shit we otherwise would end up breathin’. Ain’t no tellin’ what’s burnin’, but from what Phillips said I’m thinkin’ maybe we don’t want all that much of it gettin’ in our lungs.”

  Knight did as instructed, giving the big man a grateful nod. The detective accepted the acknowledgment, then started down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, even as he made a slight prayer that the lights would not cut out on them. The smoke had already thickened within the stairwell to the point where it made Dollins more than a bit apprehensive. The professor was also feeling an extreme touch of apprehension himself, but for a completely different reason.

  Knight respected Dollins’ abilities.

  Three times their paths had crossed over the previous few years in an official manner. The last had been in Red Hook, when Dollins had miraculously escaped death despite scores of rounds being fired at him from nearly point-blank range. He had been decorated for his valor when the shooting ceased, but despite the fact that he had willingly smiled for the television cameras and happily accepted his upgrade to sergeant, the incident had continued to gnaw at him.

  Although the detective knew there was no rational reason for him to think so, Dollins believed the professor had somehow kept him from being murdered that day. It was an absurd notion, he had told himself then—continued to tell himself. Knight had been behind him, face to the ground. There was nothing he could have done. The detective knew this, knew as certainly as he knew anything, that there was no way the professor could have possibly interceded with Fate on his behalf.

  “He’s not God,” Dollins had told himself over and over, “no matter how much he acts like it.”

  But, despite all logical approaches to the incident, the big man knew in his heart that he should not have lived through that evening. There was absolutely no reason for him to still be alive, outside of something on the order of Heavenly intervention—and angels had not been reported as being sighted anywhere near Red Hook that evening. He had checked.

  “Dollins,” Knight shouted through his lapel. “I believe there’s something wrong here, something no one has taken into consideration.” By that point the pair had reached the bottom of the stairs. Directing the larger man’s attention to the base of the door before them, the professor said;

  “The smoke coming under the door. The smell of it, the color—doesn’t it seem a bit suspicious to you?”

  “What’dya mean?”

  “Besides the fact this building is one big block of concrete, that there shouldn’t be all that much about it that could burn, I don’t think this smoke is coming from a fire.” Taking a deep breath through his jacket, allowing himself to capture a sense of the reeking billow, Dollins answered;

  “I’m thinkin’ you may have somethin’ there.” Taking an extra sniff of the air, studying it for a second, the detective added, “Yeah, that don’t smell electrical. And it sure don’t smell like wood, neither.”

  “Trust me when I tell you I have no idea what’s happening here, Detective,” said Knight, his eyes beginning to sting. Wiping at them, trying not to cough, he added, “But after what I’ve been through so far tonight, I really do believe you should draw your weapon before we go through that door.”

  “You what … ?”

  Dollins gave the professor a long, hard look, his mind splitting in a number of directions. A half-dozen voices all barked at the detective, urging him to as many different courses of action. Yes, he did not trust the professor, but to what extent? On the one hand, he knew in his bones the man was hiding something from him. Almost certainly far more than one thing. But on the other hand, he also firmly believed that it was Knight who was responsible for his not dying in Red Hook.

  If he was really up to something, the part of Dollins’ brain he relied upon the most whispered to him, if he was actually one of the bad guys, then why bother saving some cop he knows doesn’t trust him? Dismissing the other factions warring within his mind, Dollins growled through his coat’s lapel;

  “Stay behind me.”

  Pulling his service revolver, he gingerly touched both the doorknob and the door itself with the barest ends of his fingertips, testing for heat. Finding them both relatively cool, he started to open the door. Hesitating, however, the detective bent over instead, fumbling at his ankle. When he stood up again, Knight could see the large man had removed a second weapon from his backup holster.

  “You open the door,” he ordered the professor. “Then I’m through first.”

  Knight nodded, moving forward. On a nod from Dollins the professor pulled open the door. Then, both men plunged into the thick smoke on the other side and rushed headlong into madness.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Christ,” cursed Dollins softly, trying not to breathe deeply as he did so, “I can hardly see a thing.”

  The hallway the two men entered swirled with a deep, gray smoke, one containing hints of an oddly light, bluish haze. As on the other side of the doorway, neither man felt anything much in the way of undue heat coming toward them as they moved outward into the basement. Both continued attempting to breathe through their jackets as best they could, but the sparse amount of coffee Dollins had splashed them with was rapidly drying out.

  “My God,” said Knight harshly, coughing as he did so, “doesn’t this building have sprinklers down here?”

  The oddly colored smoke stinging their eyes, the pair continued to fumble their way forward, their senses straining to understand what was happening. Rather than answer verbally, Dollins instead pointed toward an alcove ahead of them. As the two men entered, the professor saw what the detective was leading them toward—a watercooler. Understanding what was expected of him, Knight immediately set to filling cups of cold water.

  “Yeah, you’d think they woulda run some kinda sprinklers down here by now,” growled Dollins. “That’s the way’a things, though—building’s just too old. Budget keeps going toward luncheons for the top brass. Us grunts’re probably lucky we even got the damn smoke alarms.”

  “I guess so.” The professor mumbled his answer as he splashed the detective and then himself in the face to relieve the growing pain in their eyes. After that he doused both their heads and then their jackets. Dollins did not even look in the professor’s direction, his focus aimed down the hall, as were the weapons he held in each hand.

  Pointin’ guns at a fire, thought the detective. They might as well call the men in t
he white coats to get their nets and come on over.

  Despite his attempt at humor, however, Dollins kept both his weapons pointed down the smoke-filled hallway. Though it made no sense and would be considered insane by any reasonable person, something within him, some primal section bound deep within his soul, refused to let him waver. Something was being hidden by the oddly colored, strange-tasting fumes. Something terrible enough to set off all the alarms within his mind at full alert.

  As he kept his eyes focused dead ahead, Knight held a cup to the big man’s lips so he could take a drink.

  Dollins gulped the first half deeply, then used the second half to gargle before he swallowed, realizing that would be the last relief he would know. Diverting his attention for the briefest of moments to his companion, he saw that the professor had taken his own drink. Not seeing any reason to hesitate further, Dollins started them down the hallway once more.

  The two men encountered no one else as they continued making their way steadily forward. With the fire alert siren still blaring they could hear nothing else, either—could barely understand even each other. So loudly did the alarm echo in the narrow corridors of the underground section of the precinct house that when it suddenly ceased being broadcast it was actually several seconds before either Dollins or Knight realized the thing had gone silent. Both men stopped moving, pausing to listen to their surroundings.

  Fire, each of them knew from bitter experience, possessed a very distinctive sound. They were also listening for any other possible noises, such as any others who might still be in the basement area—friendlies who might be trapped somehow or intruders who might have been the reason the alarm had been set off in the first place. Able to detect nothing out of the ordinary, the pair continued their cautious forward movement. Once they turned the last corner between them and the property room, however, the sounds reaching them changed.

  Dollins turned to the professor, moving close to ask him if he might be hearing the same thing the detective was. Before the larger man could speak, however, Knight gave his head a sharp nod, making his eyes go wide so as to indicate that he was as suspicious of the sounds reaching his ears as was Dollins. Both of them understood the need for silence as they continued onward as cautiously as possible.

  Once they were within ten feet of the heavy steel door to the property room, Knight caught hold of the detective’s arm. Pulling on it hard enough to signal he wished the big man to stop, the professor drew Dollins close, then whispered to him;

  “That sound, that hissing sound—do you recognize it?”

  The detective gave over a few seconds to intent listening, then whispered back;

  “I know it’s somethin’ I’ve heard before, but I don’t know what. What’re you thinkin’?”

  “It reminds me of a campfire,” answered Knight. “But, not when there are flames. I’m talking about when it’s at its hottest, when it’s all coals, that burning sound heat makes as it dries the very moisture out of the air around it.”

  Dollins’ eyes went wide. He recognized the sound immediately, knowing the professor’s deduction was correct … but how could that be? Unlike some of the rooms on the station’s upper floors, which still retained much of their wood from the old days, the basement rooms were mostly stone, brick, and poured concrete. The property room was lined with nothing but metal shelves and cabinets. There simply was not enough flammable material within it to feed a fire of such intensity.

  All right, let’s say you’re right about that, Jimmy, the detective’s mind responded to him. Fine—it’s impossible. But if that is the case, then just what the hell do you think that is that you’re hearin’?

  Before Dollins’ brain could offer him anything in the way of an answer, however, suddenly both men began to notice the one thing they had been dreading since they began their descent. At first each of them had believed or at least sincerely hoped that the sensation they were detecting was only a result of nerves on their part. Taking another few steps forward, they both knew such was nothing more than wishful thinking.

  “It’s starting to get warmer,” hissed Knight. “Too warm. There has to be something on fire in there.”

  “Any ideas what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Dollins turned to stare the professor square in the eye. Something was not right about their situation; of that the detective was certain—the same kind of something that had been off-kilter every time he and Knight had ended up in the same place. During each of those occurrences things had gotten just a bit stranger, just a little more twisted. This time, however, as far as Dollins was concerned, he had stumbled into the Twilight Zone, and he had dragged his own personal Rod Serling along with him.

  His eyes locking with Knight’s, his years of on-the-job experience watching for any attempt to mislead him, the big man snarled, “You and me, we ain’t got no more time for shittin’ around. Now tell me, straight-out and honest—just what the goddamned hell is in there?”

  The professor was taken aback a trifle by the question. It was not, after all, his job to be there. He had accompanied Dollins out of concern for the Dream Stone. Knight would have done so even if he possessed no other relation to it outside of the fact that it was the property of the Brooklyn Museum. Considering his family connection to the piece, however, let alone Ungari’s revelations of its sudden, possibly history-shattering importance, and then its attempted theft, Knight simply had to know what was happening to the antiquity that, less than twenty-four hours previous, was considered utterly worthless.

  Knight found the detective’s question, coming at the moment it did, not so much a request for help, but a challenge bordering on accusation. Dollins did not fully trust him, but then, considering the fact he was hiding a great number of things from not only the officer but the world in general, Knight could not very well take offense. Indeed, over the years he had grown used to such things. Although, like most of those who dabbled in magic, he strove to appear merely a harmless eccentric, the pose was no longer working with the detective.

  Sweat had begun to bead on the professor’s forehead. It was nothing compared to the soak matting Dollins’ thinning hair to his skull, but it was reminder enough that things were escalating at a fantastic rate there in the basement. Also, knowing their time was certain to be running out, Knight went on the offensive, snarling back at the detective;

  “And just how am I supposed to know what in hell is in there until we open the door?”

  His face going a deep red, from both the heat as well as frustration, Dollins took a step toward the professor, bringing their faces only inches apart as he growled;

  “This is not over, wise guy.”

  Then Dollins turned abruptly, moving on the door to the property room. Still carrying a weapon in each hand, the detective was just about to shove one into a pocket so he could safely open the door when he stopped—transfixed. Closing with him, a worried Knight caught sight of what the officer had seen and stopped moving himself. Both men blinked involuntarily, Dollins shaking his head violently, as if the motion might change the image before him.

  It did not, however, and there in the silent, smoke-filled basement the center of the steel property room door continued to glow, a harsh electrical steam fizzing away from it as the thick metal of it began to melt.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “Back up—move. Hurry!” shouted Knight, coughing as his sudden exclamation caused him to breathe in far more of the acrid smoke swirling in the hallway than his lungs could handle. The taste of the smoke frightened him, its increasingly bitter tang telling him far more than he wished to know. Pushing at Dollins, trying to force the far larger man into moving even while still choking, the professor barely managed to add, “Now!”

  “Why?” The detective snapped the word defiantly, as if whatever response he received to that question might answer many others. Grabbing Knight’s arm, he demanded, “What’s in there? Just what in hell is in there?!”

  “Somethi
ng that can melt its way through steel, you idiot!” Pointing at the growing spot in the center of the door, the academic focused the large man’s attention on the streaks of fiery liquid metal beginning to ooze downward from the glistening core. Then, shaking off Dollins’ grasp, the professor began backing down the hallway, forcing words out in between coughs;

  “I don’t possess … any means to combat that … whatever that is. We’ve got to get—get out of here!”

  Free from the detective’s formidable grip, Knight took two more rapid steps backward. Working hard to control his breathing, desperate to stop coughing, to clear his eyes of the terrible burning sensation gnawing its way into them, the professor knew with an unshakable certainty that whatever was coming through the door could not be stopped by two mere mortals.

  Because of the growing taste of copper in the air, Knight believed he might have some slight idea as to what might be melting the door. But, he also knew that if he was correct, he and the detective would be lucky to escape the building, and then only if they turned and ran—immediately.

  “You know what it is that’s in there,” insisted Dollins. Following the retreating professor down the hall, he growled, “I know you do. Fer Christ’s sake, tell me what it is—what we need to do to put it down!”

  Stopping for a moment, the last time he planned to do so before he reached the street, Knight placed his hand atop his head, wiping the remaining water in his hair down into his eyes. Then, placing his still-wet hand over his mouth and nose, he dragged down as deep a breath as he could through his fingers, then told the detective;

  “Listen to me. Believe me when I tell you this. Yes—I might have some idea what it is that’s breaching that door, but even if my guess is correct, that doesn’t mean that we can stop it. Do you understand me—we can’t. We can … not … stop it!”