Chapter 8
NOLAN
T he south gallery still reeks of blood and tension when Allison orders the guards to clear the room.
She holds herself rigid, her voice crisp, but I see the toll in the taut set of her shoulders.
She is fire contained, trying to burn without breaking.
I know that look. I wore it more times than I can count on missions when the odds were stacked too high against us.
It never fooled anyone who knew me, and she doesn't fool me now.
Saltmoor House feels different once the gallery empties. Allison stays close, her boots striking the marble as she sweeps the room with me, both of us unwilling to give the silence free rein. The walls seem to breathe, the weight of history pressing close.
I walk the perimeter, forcing my thoughts into order whilst she checks locks and angles.
The mask's legend, the staged blood, the split replica—none of it is random.
Someone is weaving folklore and fear into their strategy.
While guests sip champagne in glittering halls, another game is unfolding beneath their noses.
"Patterns only show up when you step back," I tell her. "And tonight the thread pulls toward a name I didn't want to see."
She studies me closely. "Whose name?"
"Ryan Murphy's." The words taste bitter, and I lift a hand before she can cut in. "But he isn't the enemy. He's the target being used by whoever is staging this."
Her eyes narrow. "You're sure?"
"As sure as I can be. I've known Ryan too long, trusted him when all he had was grit and ambition.
Money didn't change him, but it changed the way people circle him.
Enemies got bolder. Allies more dangerous.
Opportunists hungrier. He still loves collecting beautiful, cursed things, but that doesn't make him complicit.
If someone is pulling strings under his roof, he's the mark, not the mastermind. "
Allison folds her arms, voice low but firm. "Then we don't waste time chasing the wrong lead. We protect him whilst we hunt whoever's circling. Agreed?"
I meet her gaze. "Agreed."
The room feels wrong in a way I can't quantify through any security manual. Not just the evidence of intrusion, but something deeper—as if the air itself remembers violence. I've felt similar sensations in places where terrible things happened, but never this strongly.
"Temperature's dropped again," I observe, my breath suddenly visible.
She checks the thermostat readings on her phone. Normal. But my skin tells a different story, and when I pull out my phone, the screen flickers with static that has nothing to do with signal strength.
She narrows her eyes. "You're avoiding the obvious."
"Careful, Bennett," I murmur. "Some truths you don't want to hear."
"Try me."
The distance I tried to build collapses under the force of her stare. I know then I won't be able to protect her by pushing her away. She's already in too deep. And so am I.
When Allison finds me burning sage in my room at two in the morning, I know my carefully maintained cover is finished.
"What the hell are you doing?" She stands in the doorway, weapon drawn but lowered, staring at the salt circle I've drawn around my bed and the smoldering bundle of herbs in my hand.
"Protecting us," I say simply, not bothering to lie anymore. The truth is coming whether I want it or not.
She steps into the room, closing the door behind her. "From what? And don't tell me you're just an anxious academic with eccentric hobbies."
I extinguish the sage and face her. "My grandmother was Seminole. Part of the Otter Clan that claimed descent from the Calusa who escaped Spanish slavery. Tonight feels different, though. The spiritual atmosphere is unstable, agitated. Someone's been interfering with forces they don't understand."
I gesture to the ritual circle. "She taught me this when I was twelve, after I started having dreams about warriors made of water and bone."
"Dreams."
"Visions, if you prefer clinical terminology. The point is, I've been lying to you about why I'm here."
Allison holsters her weapon but remains alert. "Explain."
"I've been tracking the Reina de Oro mask for five years.
Not for academic research—for containment.
My grandmother told me stories about 'hungry spirits' bound in sacred objects, warriors too proud to cross over who fed on the living.
" I pull out my phone, showing her photos from the archives.
"Every time this mask appears publicly, people die. "
She studies the images—newspaper clippings, police reports, death certificates spanning more than a century. "Coincidence. People who collect dangerous artifacts live dangerous lives."
"Joshua Crowe was a fisherman who found it in his nets. Silas Cord was a businessman who bought it at auction. Harrison Webb ran an art gallery." I move closer, my voice urgent. "What dangerous lives? They were ordinary people who happened to possess something extraordinary."
"And you think it's what—cursed?"
"I think it's a prison. The Calusa had ways of binding spirits who refused to pass on, warriors who died in battle and couldn't accept defeat. They forged spiritual containers to hold them, gave them purpose guarding sacred sites or tribal treasures."
Allison walks to the window, looking out at the moonlit ocean. "But the Calusa are gone."
"Exactly. The spirits have no purpose, no community, no reason to remain bound except hunger." I join her at the window. "And tonight, with hundreds of people celebrating, drinking, their spiritual defenses lowered... it's a feast."
"This is insane."
"Is it? You've felt it too. I see it in your eyes when you look at the mask. The temperature drops, the electronics malfunction, you hear sounds that shouldn't exist."
She turns to face me, and I see the admission in her expression before she speaks. "I touched the case glass. Had what I told myself was a stress hallucination. Water, drowning, warriors who moved like liquid shadow."
"What did they tell you?"
"That I was a keeper. That blood remembers." She pauses. "That you were connected to this somehow."
I feel the familiar chill that means my grandmother's spirit is near, approving of my honesty. "The Calusa and Seminole intermarried before the Spanish arrived. Some bloodlines carry memory deeper than conscious thought. The spirits recognize their own."
"So what does that make me?"
"I don't know yet. But the fact that you're here, that Fitz sent his best operative to guard this specific artifact... there are no coincidences when old magic is involved."
Allison is quiet for a long moment, processing. Finally: "What do you need me to do?"
"Trust me. When things go wrong tonight—and they will—trust that I know how to handle spiritual threats the way you know how to handle physical ones."
"And if you're wrong? If this is all elaborate self-deception and the only real threat is human greed?"
I smile grimly. "Then I'm a crazy man with useful combat training and an unhealthy interest in folklore. But Allison..." I catch her hand, feeling the calluses from years of weapons training, the strength that comes from surviving violence. "What if I'm right?"
She squeezes my fingers, her decision made. "Then we protect people. That's what we do."
Outside our window, storm clouds gather despite the clear forecast. In the distance, we can hear the first rumbles of thunder—or drums, depending on what you choose to believe.
DRESCHNER
I kneel in the hidden chamber beneath Saltmoor House, surrounded by candles arranged in patterns I've copied from Spanish missionary accounts. The stone walls are covered with symbols I've spent five years learning to draw, Calusa spiritual markers that most scholars dismiss as decorative art.
But I know better. I've dedicated my life to understanding the truth the academic establishment refuses to acknowledge: some artifacts aren't just historical curiosities. They are doorways.
Of course, I don't actually believe in spirits or curses—that's superstition for the gullible.
But I've learned that belief is profitable.
Tonight's performance will convince everyone that the mask chose me, that I have mystical authority over it.
Ryan's reputation will crumble, and I'll walk away with both the artifact and a monopoly on 'authentic' Calusa spirituality.
The mask replica in my hands is my third attempt.
The first cracked when I tried to channel energy through it during a private ritual in my Miami warehouse.
The second simply went cold and lifeless, rejecting my efforts to establish a spiritual connection.
But this one—constructed with gold I've stolen from other Calusa artifacts, inscribed with symbols copied from original source documents—this one hums with potential.
" Tamuk chiska miskito ," I whisper, the words feeling natural despite my Anglo heritage. The language has come to me in dreams, along with visions of warriors rising from dark water, their faces painted for eternal war.
The irony isn't lost on me—Ryan was right about the sacred trust. But he was wrong about who deserves to hold it.
Academic institutions display these artifacts like museum pieces, stripping away their spiritual context.
Private collectors treat them as investments.
Only I understand their true power, their living connection to forces beyond the material world.
Tonight I'll prove that understanding trumps ownership.
I've been having the dreams for twenty years, ever since my first encounter with authentic Calusa artifacts as a graduate student. Most people see museum pieces when they look at pre-Columbian gold work. I see power.
When I wear the authentic mask—not this replica, but the real Reina de Oro—during the height of the masquerade, I will have access to more spiritual energy than any practitioner in recorded history.
The replica pulses with increasing warmth, and I feel the familiar sensation of consciousness expanding, of awareness stretching beyond the boundaries of my individual mind.
I can sense the guests upstairs, their bright life forces flickering like candle flames.
I can feel the authentic mask in its display case, radiating power like a spiritual sun.
" Tamuk chiska miskito ," I chant, and this time other voices join me—whispers from the darkness, agreements from entities that have been denied purpose for too long.
The time has come. The mask is calling to me, and tonight, I will answer.
I'm going to steal more than gold and jewels. I'm going to steal the power of gods.