by Lou Paduano
Thinking of the Courtyard, Kok’-Kol’s words plagued Loren. The green, glowing eyes of the black raven followed the racing detective, clouding everything around him in the dark beside the muttering Soriya Greystone. You have the signs needed to complete the story. The pieces needed to finish the puzzle. You have the knowledge, Greg Loren.
What knowledge? What pieces? Everything he saw before him was a jumble. There were signs left at every murder, except for the fifth, which failed to fit the pattern in victim as well. Was it a case of desperation? Was it something else entirely? The four remaining signs were dead languages as far as Soriya knew. Nothing Loren had been able to dig up brought any more light to that aspect of the case. You are looking for the old soul. They were still no closer to learning the soul’s name let alone his endgame. After everything he had seen, Loren was still no closer to an answer.
It drove him mad. Old souls returning from the dead to enact some revenge plot against the city that spurned him. It sounded like something from a comic book. It was not the work of a cop trying to put in his twenty to take home a decent pension, like Pratchett. It wasn’t the life of a man trying to find a life in the city, or raise a family, like Ruiz. Where Loren stood on that spectrum he no longer knew. Life in general, let alone his own, was not something he understood anymore. No, the only thing he did know was that it was all true. Every word of it. The threat was real and he could not bury his head in the sand. The rest of the city was on the hunt for a killer, one with a pathos leaning toward ritual. Loren was hunting a Lazarus wannabe with a vendetta.
“It’s not too late,” Soriya whispered. They turned down the abandoned junction and found the large door directly in the center of two emergency lights of dim red. The distance between them was great enough to leave the door completely in shadow from any subway line visitors. “It’s not too late.”
Loren heard the words and for a moment thought they were his own. He could leave. There was that option. Five dead and only a black raven and grizzled old curmudgeon living in the sewers as leads. Ruiz was right about not being able to share the world they knew with anyone. How could they understand? How could he? When he was a kid, Loren raced along the city streets, believing in the wonders of the world as anyone else. Aliens. Superheroes. The whole shebang. That slowly turned to killers and rapists during the week with monthly bills and dating on the weekends. That was life. That was the life he chose when he arrived and it was the life he chose by leaving Portents. Still, he remained. Still, he chased ghosts and threats that no one truly believed in anymore. The wonders of the world. They were around him and he was one of the few people that knew them. It scared the hell out of him.
The door slid open, Soriya grunting under the tremendous weight it bore. A large stairwell greeted them. Loren peered down, letting Soriya race ahead. A green light glowed at the other end of the stairs. The tired detective hesitated. He had never been to the chamber before. He had never seen so much of Soriya’s world or so intimately, not in the four years they had worked together. You have the knowledge, Greg Loren. The words of the raven egged him forward, mocking his stubbornness. He was missing the connection those green eyes saw clearly, though the spirit walker was unwilling to share that tidbit with the rest of the class. For all his trepidation, for all his doubt, Loren was still that kid racing along the streets of Chicago looking for answers to things greater than him. He needed to know.
The stairs were sturdy and faded quickly behind him, shifting toward the green glow at their base. Vacating the steps, the wide expanse of the Bypass chamber stretched before him. The four great columns and the high ceilings, but above all else the floating orb that hovered in the center of the room. The Bypass. Soriya had talked about it in passing. It was never something she felt comfortable sharing with him, which surprised him considering how easily she accepted him into her world when they first met. It became the one topic that was always sidestepped, yet he knew the importance it carried for her. He knew it was her purpose for being, beyond the ghouls and ghosts of legend and myth. The Bypass was more Mentor’s area, she would say. She would tell him about it from time to time, when she saw something dancing below the surface or heard a voice that made her think about what her mother might have sounded like while rocking her to sleep as a child. Those were moments they shared but even that failed to prepare Loren for the green orb that greeted him at the base of the stairs. It was larger than life. It was greater than life. It was everything.
The Bypass pulled at Loren—so much so, that he failed to hear Soriya’s mutterings in the distance. Though she was only feet away from him, her voice was a million miles away, the words soft and lonely.
“I’m not too late. I can’t be too late.”
Pulling away from the orb, Loren turned to his friend, remembering her desperation. Finally, they saw the object of her searching. Behind one of the four large marble columns, he lay—Mentor. She raced over to him, forgetting everything around her, but Loren knew the truth with but a glance. The way the old man’s body lay twisted along the cold concrete. The lack of movement in his chest and the blood that pooled in front of him. Loren knew it very clearly.
Soriya reached her teacher, her father, her friend and for a moment felt relief. A small smirk curled his lips. She remembered days of old when they played games like this with each other for a laugh. However, this was no game, she realized. The smirk was but dried blood, stretched from his lip. She knelt close, her hands shaking at the broken arm of the man she called Mentor. The man who raised her, who saved her from the orphanage and the darkness.
“I can’t be too late. Not again.”
She collapsed beside him, cradling his head in her lap. Tears stung her cheeks. She was too late. She was always too late.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Soriya Greystone slumped heavily against the oak table in the center of Mentor’s small bedroom. It had been hours since she found her only family crumpled up on the stone of the Bypass chamber. Hours that felt longer, as if days had shifted from her memory without her knowing. The weight of the room was heavy, the air thick with grief. Every inch of her felt that weight bearing down, begging her to surrender and fall, but the table helped to keep her standing. Glossy eyes from tears kept her vision clouded. Her hands remained balled in fists. Everything in her demanded to scream but silence was their only release. Silence and the deep breaths of a young woman with nothing left to lose.
She remembered sitting in the room as a young girl, curled up in the corner of the bed as Mentor relayed the night’s adventures to her. It would make her scared to no end, the descriptions of the minotaur tearing through the streets, taking whatever and whomever he wished, or the time Mentor chased out a horde of demon spawn looking to make the Northern Coves their new breeding ground. The descriptions were necessary to the story and she wanted to hear it all. For her, it was more than the story, though; it was the man telling it. Since he walked up to her in the orphanage and freed her from the darkness, there were times she was scared and alone. But never when he was there. The stories bound them, it tightened them, it made her part of his world in more ways and she refused to let fear end that part of their time together. Some nights she would fall asleep in the thin cot that served as Mentor’s bed and he would lie beside her, holding her close. Other times, when fear won out, he would stand watch so that the nightmares faded from view. She missed those times. She missed Mentor.
Looking up from the scraped and dented piece of oak that served as his table, Soriya saw the outline of the old man’s thin frame in the cot. Since she started taking more of a role on the streets of Portents, he had stayed below more, content to assist with the research she may need from threat to threat. He was getting older, the pain in his leg and back increasing with each passing year. More than that, she knew he preferred the solitude. Some cases she kept from him completely, when she saw his tired eyes in the darkness of their home within the cavernous Bypass chamber. She hated that part but she wanted him str
onger. She wanted him happy, as she always remembered him when she closed her eyes.
He always knew, of course. Every case. Every threat.
He knew them all, even when she took care of it on her own or with the help of the connections she had made during her adventures through the streets of the city. Mentor knew everything there was to know about Portents, all while tucked in his cot. He was every bit the protector Portents needed. She was not, and it hurt to know that truth. It hurt to know that no matter the strength she carried, no matter the power she wielded, it would never be enough. It was not the same as when he was beside her or, before that, when the job was his and his alone. Mentor knew it too, making the pain that cut through her that much greater in intensity. He knew it with his looks of disapproval and with his final words, spoken not even by him but that of the black raven Kok’-Kol.
You can’t stop him. Not as you are.
Soriya’s elbows slammed against the table, her hands washing over her face. They wiped away the sweat and grime from the day including the fresh tears that welled in her eyes. Continuing, they pulled back her thick, black hair, letting it fall behind her shoulders. Her eyes widened from the deep massage they gave her. Mentor was gone, though his broken body remained within the confines of the Bypass chamber. She could see him from the corner of the doorframe leading to the main cavern. A blanket covered him from view, the only fragment of respect she was able to offer him. He was gone but the work remained, she told herself. The work always remained.
The cot lined the wall on the left-hand side of the room while the right consisted of four large, overstuffed bookcases. None were in any semblance of order though Mentor knew each and every single piece of literature he owned down to the shelf it could be found. Sitting before the Bypass and reading was the only guilty pleasure he sanctioned during their time together and it was also time she spent watching the man that raised her while he pondered the words of the universe in front of the nexus point floating before him. Reading was not Soriya’s strong suit, though she made it through a fair number of texts littered throughout the room. It was a necessary rite of passage to leave the safety of the chamber, as well as the only way she could learn what awaited her on the streets of Portents.
In the back of the room, there was a large corkboard. Tacked into place was a map of the city. This served as Mentor’s work surface. Where computers and technology replaced most of the thinking and deductive reasoning granted to man, Mentor used simpler methods to figure things out. Throughout the map, small tacks and post-it notes were put in place. They were places of violence, sites of unrest heard about through rumors and sources. Some were given by the Bypass in the late night through dreams that connected the old man with the crossroads of infinity and the words of those long dead. They were signs of Portents. Signs of distress. Signs of the job to be done.
Soriya stepped up to the map. There were three notes posted in various places throughout the city. She knew most of the events unfolding in the streets, though no one knew about the killer in their midst until it was too late, but the three notes were unknown to her. Each contained the same phrase though she was unable to decipher its meaning. It was scrawled in thin black marker and circled heavily on each note. It read:
A Circle of Shadows.
Another secret lost. Soriya could only imagine the others that were not noted and tacked to a wall. He held the entire city in his hand for decades, working tirelessly for Portents. Now it was hers to carry. The weight upon her shoulders returned, threatening to break her. Forcing it away, she continued her search through the small bedroom.
In the corner of the room, there was a pile of thick blankets used during the winter months in the dank dark of the chamber. It was a necessity, though Mentor allowed the occasional fire in the fireplace, next to the wood-burning stove in what they considered their living room within the small domicile. Underneath the blankets was a chest. Soriya peered queerly at it. In all her time in the room, in her studies and the long nights waiting for Mentor to return from his work, she had never seen the small chest. It was a dark cherry wood and hid in the shadows of the room so much so that Soriya was forced to toss the blankets to the floor to get a clear look at it. There was a small rune etched into the front of the latch.
Ansuz. A revealing message. Mentor was nothing if not direct about some things and obtuse about many others. Soriya felt the latch give way in her hand. It clanked loudly against the wood and she lifted the lid. It creaked from age, echoing throughout the room. Soriya failed to notice. Her eyes were wide, staring at the contents within the small chest.
Keepsakes. Mementos. All of her. Every moment of their time together trapped within the confines of the cherry chest to be pulled out on a whim. He kept it all. Her first dress, the drawn pictures of the artist she once dreamed of being as a seven-year-old, and stories written that always seemed to end with the words To Be Continued. All were from a childhood long since forgotten by the grieving young woman standing over them. Not by Mentor, though. He kept them all.
Yet, when he needed her the most, she had failed him.
The impact of that thought slammed into her harder than the fist of the drunken fool at the Town Hall Pub. Her throat clenched up and she fought for breath.
She failed. He died.
It was that simple.
Her failure. His death.
It spun before her eyes and she struggled to stay upright. Her chest heaved. The heat of the room was palpable. She needed out. She needed release.
Screaming, she slammed her fist down on the table in the center of the room. The thin oak shattered from the impact, collapsing the entire frame in a pile of shards. Her other fist lashed out wildly, taking with it an entire shelf of books. They poured upon the floor but she did not see them. Everything was gone. Everything was red, dead, and buried. Another swing of her fist cracked the side of the far right bookcase. It splintered under the blow and the top half of the unit heaved to the side before falling over to the floor. More books joined the piles on the floor. More screams joined the sounds of crashing and rending furniture. It happened in a flicker of seconds but the room lay in shambles when Soriya Greystone finally caught her breath and fell to her knees. Tears flowed freely, surrendering to the guilt.
It was when she stopped, when the tears took a break from shedding for a single moment, that she saw Loren. She thought he left, ever the detective working on a new lead with a new victim to throw into the mix, though he struggled to hold onto those former days and that former title. Instead, he remained. The screams and crashes did not faze him. He continued to stand in the center of the room, his eyes fixed on the orb floating off the ground in front of him. It was the same way for her when she first saw it, when she first began to understand it, if she could call it understanding. The idea that there was something more. Something after all of it.
Whether a single minute passed or an hour, Soriya could no longer tell, but Loren shifted from his position, stepping backward toward the small domicile in the corner of the room. When he reached the door he turned, one eye remaining fixed on the glowing orb in the center of the chamber. They were heavy, the thick brown of his eyes, as if he had stared at a computer screen for days without blinking.
“She’s in there, isn’t she?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “Beth. She’s…”
He trailed off without finishing. Soriya held her tongue. It was a question that had to be asked. She knew that better than most. She had asked it of Mentor as it related to her parents, to her grandparents, aunts and uncles. Everyone she never had the chance to know because of a fiery crash that took her former life away from her like a dream. Answering the question, however, was more complicated and more times than not led to nothing but more pain. Still, she answered as any friend would.
“Yes.” She wiped the tears from her eyes, finding her feet once more in the bedroom. “Somewhere. Some when. Some place. Some time. For all time.”
Her dear friend and partner
turned back to the glowing orb in the center of the chamber and fell silent once more.
In time, Loren nodded, still trying to understand but failing to fully comprehend what Soriya truly meant. To know that Beth was still alive in some way made him feel lighter on his feet, the pain receding. His shoulders straightened and a deep calm washed over him. Then, looking away from the chamber to the small living space, Loren realized the state of Mentor’s room. His eyes fell low, regretting the selfish nature of his question. The time wasted, dreaming of the past. He knew he needed to be there for Soriya, knew he needed to give her time to figure out the next step. He should have done more. Should have spoken to her, comforted her, but instead found the Bypass and the mysteries it contained too enthralling to escape. He stepped into the shambles of the bedroom, his eyes scanning the wreckage, refusing to look at his friend’s pain directly.
“Soriya. I’m…” he started only to see her head shake and the hair fall over her face.
“No,” she begged. “No more apologies for my failures. It’s over, Greg.”
Soriya stepped out of the room, passing Loren without a glance. He heard deep, calming breaths, the cool air of the large room filling her. Leaving her to her grief, Loren took in the room. Mentor carried more possessions than Loren did in a fraction of the space. It was becoming a habit for the detective, viewing the life of a recent victim with pangs of envy. Loren stepped deeper into the room to the large map and the tacks littered throughout. The victims of the first three murders were marked, each one taking a different corner near the city limits. There was something there. Loren picked up a tack from the side of the board and placed it at the apartment complex where Urg was found. He leaned back for a better look at the map but nothing jumped out. There were too many tacks in place, for too many purposes. But there was something about those four. He felt it and heard the words of the great raven in the back of his mind, playing repeatedly. You have the knowledge. It made him feel worse. If he had the knowledge, why couldn’t he see it clearly? Why were people still dying? Why did Mentor have to be one of them?