After Prison, I Became the Apex of the Stars

CHAPTER 7

 

Marcus Clarke had spent twenty-three years married to Gwen, and in all that time he had learned that when she cried, something expensive was about to happen. 

But the sound coming through the phone right now wasn't the calculated crying she used when she wanted jewelry or a vacation, it was like broMarcus sobbing of a woman whose world had been turned inside out, and it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

"What did you say?"he said, gripping the phone so hard the case creaked. "Say that again."

"Luigi's leg is broMarcus, Marcus. That filthy animal Eddard had some woman's bodyguards beat us like dogs in the street. They slapped me, Marcus, they slapped me in front of that worthless criminal like I was nothing, and then they snapped Luigi's knee like it was a twig and threw us out of the villa like garbage."

The rage that hit Marcus was immediate and total, the kind of anger that starts in the gut and spreads upward until it fills the skull and turns the world a shade darker. 

He had connections in this city, not the kind that showed up on business cards or got mentioned at dinner parties, but the kind that answered phones at two in the morning and didn't ask questions about what needed to happen or why.

"Take Luigi to St. Catherine's, the best hospital in the city," Marcus said, and his voice had gone flat and mechanical in the way that voices do when the person speaking has already made a decision and is now simply executing it. 

"I'll meet you there. And Gwen, listen to me, that piece of garbage Eddard is going to wish he'd stayed in prison by the time I'm done with him."

He hung up and immediately dialed another number, one that wasn't saved under any name in his contacts.

"I need six men at this address within the hour," Marcus said, reading off the villa's location. "There's a man living there who needs to learn what happens when an insect forgets its place. Break whatever you need to break. Just make sure he understands the message."

Then he grabbed his keys and drove to St. Catherine's Hospital, running two red lights on the way because his son's leg was broMarcus and somebody was going to pay for it in ways that the legal system was too slow to deliver.

Across the city, Agatha's convoy of black cars pulled into the private entrance of the same hospital, and Eddard stepped out into the controlled chaos of a building that smelled like disinfectant and anxiety. 

St. Catherine's was the finest medical facility in the region, and on any given day its hallways were packed with patients and families and doctors moving between emergencies with the practiced urgency of people who had learned to run without looking like they were running.

But the top floor was different.

The elevator doors opened onto a hallway that was silent and still and guarded by four men in suits who looked like they had been grown in the same laboratory as Agatha's bodyguards. 

Every ward on the entire floor had been cleared and reserved for a single patient, and the kind of money required to make an entire floor of the city's best hospital disappear from public use was the kind of money that most people couldn't imagine even in their most ambitious dreams.

"He's in here," Agatha said, leading Eddard through a set of double doors into a private suite that was larger than most apartments. 

The room was filled with machines that blinked and beeped and monitored vital signs that were slowly, steadily declining. 

In the center of it all, lying on a hospital bed that probably cost more than a car, was Jude Smith.

He looked smaller than Eddard remembered. 

Three years ago, the old man had been fierce and stubborn, the kind of patient who argued with death and won through sheer force of personality. 

Now his skin was the color of old paper, his breathing was shallow and irregular, and there was something wrong with the way his body lay on the mattress, something that went beyond illness into territory that medicine wasn't equipped to map.

Eddard stood at the bedside for a long time, studying the old man's face, his pulse, the way his eyelids twitched in patterns that didn't match normal sleep. 

He checked Jude's pulse at the wrist, then at the neck, then placed his palm flat against the old man's chest and closed his eyes and listened with senses that went far beyond what any stethoscope could detect.

When he opened his eyes, his face was serious.

"He's not sick," Eddard said.

Agatha blinked. "What do you mean he's not sick? He's been deteriorating for weeks, he can barely breathe on his own, the doctors said his organs are starting to fail one by one."

"The doctors are looking for a disease because that's what doctors do, but there is no disease here. Your grandfather has been cursed." Eddard pulled his hand away from Jude's chest and turned to face Agatha directly. "It's called Tame Head, a very old and very dangerous form of witchcraft that attacks the body from the inside by planting something dark in the victim's energy. It mimics organ failure, it mimics degenerative illness, it mimics everything a hospital would look for, and that's exactly why no test and no specialist has been able to identify what's wrong with him."

Agatha's face went through several emotions in rapid succession, disbelief and confusion and fear and finally something that settled into desperate acceptance because she had already tried every rational option and none of them had worked. "Witchcraft. You're telling me someone did this to him on purpose."

"That's exactly what I'm telling you. Tame Head can only be cast using the personal belongings of the victim, something he's worn, something he's touched regularly, something intimate enough to carry his energy." Eddard paused, and when he continued his voice was quieter but carried more weight. "Which means whoever did this to your grandfather had direct access to his personal possessions. This wasn't done by a stranger, Agatha. Someone very close to Jude, someone he trusts, someone in his inner circle, did this to him."

The blood left Agatha's face the way color leaves the sky right before a storm. "That's impossible. Everyone in our family loves him. Nobody would ever hurt him."

"I'm telling you what the evidence shows. Someone close to him did this, and until you figure out who, removing the curse won't matter because they'll just do it again."

Agatha's hands were trembling, and she clasped them together in front of her stomach to hide it. "Can you save him?"

"Yes, but I need three things. Silver powder, white sage, and obsidian powder. Get them for me as quickly as possible, and I'll begin the process of removing the curse."

Agatha was already pulling out her phone before he finished the sentence. "I'll have them here within the hour. Whatever you need, whatever it costs, I don't care, just save him."

Fourteen floors below, in the emergency entrance on the ground level, Gwen burst through the hospital doors dragging Luigi beside her with one arm while the other waved frantically at every person wearing scrubs who crossed her line of sight.

"Somebody help us right now," she screamed, and her voice bounced off the tile floors and glass walls with enough volume to make three nurses and two patients in the waiting area jump in their seats. "My son's leg is broMarcus, he needs a doctor immediately, why is nobody moving?"

Three doctors came running, and after a quick examination of Luigi's knee they loaded him onto a gurney and began wheeling him toward the elevator.

"We'll take him up to the fourth floor," the lead doctor said calmly. "We have an excellent orthopedic ward there, and this type of fracture, while painful, is actually very straightforward to treat. He'll be walking again within six to eight weeks."

"The fourth floor?" Gwen's voice went up so high that dogs in the parking lot probably heard it. "The fourth floor is a regular ward. You think my son, my Luigi, is going to lie in some common ward surrounded by ordinary people like some kind of nobody?"

"Ma'am, this injury really doesn't require anything beyond standard orthopedic care, and the VIP wards on the upper floors are currently unavailable."

"Unavailable? What do you mean unavailable?"

The doctor shifted his weight uncomfortably, the way people do when they know the next thing they say is going to make everything worse.

 "The entire top floor has been reserved by another party for a patient with an extremely rare and complex condition. Every VIP suite is occupied or blocked off for their use, and I'm afraid there's simply nothing available in that section of the hospital right now."

"Do you know who I am?" Gwen grabbed the doctor's sleeve with enough force to wrinkle the fabric permanently. "My daughter is Arya Lewis. Her company is about to go public. My future son-in-law is Fred Gordon, heir to the Gordon family. We are not ordinary people, and my son will not be treated like some stray dog in a common ward."

"Ma'am, I understand, but the party who reserved the VIP floor has priority and there's nothing I can do to change that arrangement."

Gwen's face twisted into something that looked like it was trying to be rage and disbelief and humiliation all at the same time, and what came out of her mouth was a shriek so loud that three more nurses came running from the break room thinking someone had coded.

"What kind of person actually dares to compete with us for a VIP ward? Who do they think they are?"