“What the fuck are you doing?”
Royce grimaces, tightening grip on the gun.
“We need to call Hardwick, before anything else happens. That’s the protocol, Mark. It’s all that keeps us safe.”
“You’re insane,” his colleague replies, and I anticipate this whole thing may be about to resolve itself in short order. “After everything? You would shoot me, Ryan?”
I don’t know what has happened in the years since their shared trauma to strain things so badly. Even more honestly, I don’t care. Some part of it is probably guilt on Royce’s part, because the detective seems legitimately torn.
“Don’t test me. We need to call Hardwick.”
“You’re being foolish, Royce,” Mark says, “Jordan would not have wanted this for us. He would have told us to band together- that whatever came, our unity could help us overcome anything.”
“Jordan is dead!” Royce yells, “This was not at all what he meant! But you have twisted his words so far...they’re broken, Mark. We are all fucking broken, man.”
Jordan West never had a part in this.
Mark, who appears to be their leader- not Royce- chuckles at his old friend’s tortured emotional state. My lover spins between the suited man and his friends. Hands in pockets, Mark gestures to the others. Slowly, they begin to enclose him.
“Jordan’s death united us all. He always said that fury was not in him. But we are briers, and they are aflame, aren’t they, Ryan?”
I immediately recognize the words Patrick Barker quipped in an interrogation room when I asked him about Jordan West, and where I could find him.
Would that I were as the briers and thorns in flame, I would with one step burn it altogether.
West was one of them, but didn’t harbour anger toward the past. He was free of it, and encouraged his friends to be the same.
All I can tell you is that until the day he disappeared, he was an upstanding citizen, Harry Quinn told me when I questioned him.
West was their voice of reason, and they killed him for it. The surviving boys embarked on this twisted adventure with Stephen Hardwick. They dragged West’s legacy in front of the world, and tarnished it for all time with their devilry.
Jordan was always an extremely private person. He would take the concerns and troubles of others upon himself, but never asked anyone to do the same. His relationship of greatest value is that with God, and I don’t believe another human being could ever trump that.
Likewise, the priest could not figure out the contradiction between the man he once knew, and the notorious criminal he had become. West’s relationships were genuine, and the descriptions from Harry Quinn and Father Lowe now make sense.
Jordan West was murdered by those he held closest, and tried to help.
“Put the gun down, Ryan,” Mark says, pulling my attention out of revelation’s rock bottom, prompting me to listen. A knock from the pier door pulls all eyes to it. In all the tension, the sound of a speedboat being turned off failed to register with everyone present, including me. “Mind if I answer it?”
Royce shakes his head, lowering the weapon he almost shot the suited man with. His friend thinks little of it, walking to the door on the boathouse’s opposite side. I can’t see well enough to make out the faces until they are inside the boathouse, where kids leave their knapsacks on summer break to go rowing.
It should never be used for this.
The two men Royce referred to as “the Russians” aren’t specifically Russian, only Eastern Europeans. One is tall and one is short, but both look equally dangerous. The taller one has a silver goatee, which his companion matches with streaks through his hair.
“Gentleman,” the shorter one, who sounds Serbian or Albanian, says as they step into the boathouse. “Where is Agent Hardwick?”
From the opposite door, I study my late partner’s connection, who takes the kids this group abducts and disappears them for large sums of cash. At last, the full extent of their operation is clear.
This goes farther than I could have ever anticipated.
Mark speaks on behalf of the group.
“Agent Hardwick is running behind. He instructed us to make the handoff on his behalf.”
“Bullshit,” the taller one snarls, but falls quiet as his companion consoles him in a foreign tongue. In the garbled language, the Serbian man refers to his friend as Dmitri. Turning back to address Mark, his English is far more tolerant.
“We have an arrangement which ensures our...how do you say it? Peace of mind. Until we hear from Agent Hardwick, we cannot complete the transaction.”
Finally, someone has knocked a cog from their clockwork, and I feel better than ever for ending Hardwick.
“What do you propose we do?” Mark asks, “We have the girl with us; we can’t just linger here!”
“Fuck you,” Dmitri spits.
The Serbian calms him once more, telling Dmitri he’s handling it. His friend’s response goes beyond my preliminary understanding of the Russian language, but identifies the second man as Milodan.
“Unfortunately,” the Serbian says, “that sounds like your problem, gentlemen.”
Royce may have started a trend, because several of the altar boys reveal weapons, training them on the human traffickers, and I wonder how much weirder tonight can get.
In all the commotion, it’s a blessing none have seen me.
From behind their backs, the visitors reveal semi automatics- Uzis, to be precise. They return the gesture, and suddenly, it’s a fucking standoff.
I have to get Emily out of there.
“We held up our end of the deal,” Mark pleads, “You need to do your part, and take the girl. We have her in the trunk of a car in the lot. It’s not our fault Hardwick is a no-show.”
Milodan grimaces.
“Unfortunately, my American friend, there is no deal without the agent.”
The outcome of their confrontation matters little now. I have the information I need. But in casting a final look at Royce, holding his weapon level at the traffickers, we lock eyes a moment.
Fuck.
Anticipating the detective to snap sights to the door, or reveal me to his friends, a little black heart drops in this girl’s chest, concealed against the wall I have stood this whole time. Royce does neither, drowning out Mark’s attempts to barter with Dmitri and Milodan.
In the moment we share a look that lasts forever, there are tears in the eyes he closes in looking back at the traffickers.
Royce pulls the trigger, putting a bullet in their heads. As his friends recoil in shock at the Russians’ bodies dropping to the ground, Royce turns, emptying the clip’s remainder into Mark. The suited man falls at his feet as the other ten men fire on the detective. Royce is driven back toward the mooring, disappearing over its side into the water.
That marks the line in the sand for me. I pop out from my corner, firing on his killers. Five are caught unaware, falling dead as each head is spliced by a bullet. The sixth bullet misses its target, burrowed into a wall on the far side.
Of the remaining five, I only know Patrick Barker. That I broke him out of the Hoover Building is forgotten; he screams that the FBI bitch is alive and his friends turn their sights toward the door.
Clawing away from the boathouse, I scurry on hands and knees, kicking up gravel and dust all around my flailing limbs.
Taking cover behind the closest vacant vehicle, I assume it must have belonged to Mark, because it’s far too nice to blend into a children’s rowing club lot. Pressing against it, out of my would-be killers’ sight, screams and pounding from its trunk startle me, sending my heart into near arrest.
Emily.
She must have been unconscious, woken by gunfire.
I can’t free her yet.
Loading my only spare clip, I return blind fire over the car’s hood. I miss all of them, evident by five distinguishable voice pouring from the entryway I watched them through. Gun spent, I toss it aside, ducking behin
d the car from which Emily’s pleas echo across the lot.
I’m coming for you, girl.
“She’s out here!” calls a voice which sounds a lot like Barker, “Kill the cunt!”
This is it. If they find me, not even sirens forming in the distance will reach us in time. Their path to salvation is broken; most of them lie dead beyond the door frame.
But the ones who live are armed, all too willing to put a bullet between my eyes.
And just as they reach the car, seeing me; as I close my eyes and pray to whatever God still protects these twisted, demented souls- a sharp pain breaks the skin of my back. A familiar sensation follows, and a black cloud vaults over me, launched above the car’s roof.
Retaining none of the composed manifestations from my confrontation with the Bureau, the darkness is a raging wound, sent flying at my assailants in the shape of knives. Each pierces the hearts of Barker’s companions, breaking through their spines on the other side- a sight only apparent in brief glimpses out of cover.
The sound travelling alongside the spears of shadow is terrible, like wind from a thousand conflicting directions. It forces hands over my ears to prevent the drums under my palm from rupturing, rendering me deaf.
When the wisps pull back, retracting back underneath my shirt and I look over the hood, seeing Patrick Barker is the only petrified survivor of this massacre, I feel much better about my chances.
Sliding across the hood, I hit the ground running, tackling him to the ground.
I don’t recognize the words from my mouth; I am only barely aware of grabbing his shirt, lifting him off the ground, repeatedly slamming his head into the gravel earth beneath. I do this, screaming, until Barker stops moving and I am inconsolable, sobbing over his vacant eyes. His face is bloody and his life is forfeit, but he deserves every bit of it.
The world is a blur, and I can’t purge its ambiguities under the weight of everything which led to this. My hands are drenched in Barker’s essence; its thick darkness soils my hands with the deed of killing him.
“Please! Help me!”
With the battlefield of my rampant, unearthed emotions falling quiet, Emily Rickard’s screams pull me back to reality. I scramble over Barker’s corpse, clawing over to the trunk where her voice begs within. Dust from my disturbance settles as I pull at the handle.
The fucking thing is locked.
“Help me!” the girl within sobs, terrified for her life and any sort of former safety.
Grabbing a rock, I slam it into the mechanism. The trunk door shudders, but does not unlatch. I hit it again, and the compartment pops open.
The girl is exactly as her numerous family photos painted her- beautiful golden hair and blue eyes, soiled by tears and terror and grime. I hoist her from the trunk and together, we collapse to the ground.
We lie there, looking back at each other, sobbing as the sirens round the corner, blaring toward us.
The little girl cries because she is free. One less thing gone wrong for Royce and his crew, she might have been lost forever.
I don’t know why, in caressing her face over pebbles and settled dust, but I cry too.
Maybe because I freed her.
Perhaps, the events of the last few days require such release.
As the armada of cruisers screeches to a halt, and agents and uniformed officers pour between chain link fences, it could very well just be the fact about myself I didn’t believe would prevail.
I am not a monster.
Epilogue
I am a beast of the sea.
Two days after rescuing Emily Rickard and exposing Hardwick’s scheme, I am fully debriefed and pardoned, showered and cleansed of my darkness. Not the black, twisting rabbit hole of my spirit; just the grime of my shell.
I went to a hairdresser, ditched the bangs and bought a new suit for work, but the darkness is still in me.
It’s hard to imagine it ever going away.
I have not seen Tim, but his final words from the Arcway still linger. He spoke of a separation, but I have seen no evidence of one. Maybe it was easier than he thought.
Applying mascara in the bathroom of my apartment, it is all I can do to drown out the many voices haunting me. Too many have accumulated.
I set the brush down on the counter beside the sink. Trying to meet the girl’s eyes in the mirror, I want to reflect fully on the emptiness within her.
At first, I can’t do it, as has always been the case. I never thought myself unattractive or unapproachable; I just didn’t see much to love about the girl looking back at me.
Initially, like every other day of my life, I can’t look at her. She is me, and belongs nowhere. She makes people uncomfortable. There is no light remaining in her high cheekbones or crow’s feet; no hopefulness in her feigned smile or dead eyes.
After Ryan, I need to be alone for a while.
In that time, I need to love myself more.
Forcing my gaze back up, lifting my head as it traverses the chin and nose. It glazes over the eyes, but I push it back down, forcing myself to see how lost a cause I am.
You are a hero now, Maya’s voice assures me as the gaze locks onto its reflection, maybe for the first time ever. Despite every attempt to forget the woman who raised me, she is very much with me.
You should smile more, Ro. It goes with your eyes.
I wish she were here.
I look down at the sink; smiling, because I’ve overcome the fear of myself. It’s not much, but maybe I’m not a complete monster after all.
When my eyes look back up, perhaps to test the waters a second time, I am stopped short by Tim standing behind my reflection. Turning my head, he is not physically present.
But in the mirror, the manifestation persists.
“Tim,” I say into the glass, “You scared me.”
Over my shoulder, the man who calls himself Death is pale, corners of his mouth pulled tighter than usual.
“Tim? What’s going on?”
“We have to begin the separation process, Ramona.”
I hate when he talks in riddles.
“Separation process? And where have you been this entire time? ”
“Yes,” he nods in the mirror, but seems to take no pleasure in it. “And to answer your question, I didn’t go anywhere. I have had some time to think, and reflect on what happened.”
“And?”
“I think... we did the right thing. But now comes the next part. I won’t lie, Ro. I don’t know how this will play out.”
“What do you mean when you say, play out?”
My guardian angel sighs.
“When I merged with you in the Arcway, granting you my powers, I used less...foresight than I probably should have. Because now, Ramona? We are tangled, and I cannot do my job if I’m attached to a mortal being.”
“Okay,” I say, not okay with any of this. “So what needs to happen?”
“Exactly what the process implies, Ro.”
“So we have to separate? Like, I’ll never see you again, separate? Or just physically...separate?”
“Physically,” he replies, “although we may not see much of each other for a while.”
Because you got what you wanted, and now you’re abandoning me.
“Will it hurt?” I ask.
Tim nods slowly.
“Immensely.”
I guess I should have expected nothing less of my weird life. I turn around, closing my eyes.
Tim asks what I’m doing.
I reply I want to be able to see him in front of me when they open. He says it will be excruciating, and I believe him.
I want there to be something good about my life waiting when I open them.
He tells me to count to three.
I don’t know what waits at the end of all this; whether there is some greater purpose to our mundane lives, or appearing in the Arcway is just the period in a very confusing sentence for every poor soul unlucky enough to be born, and simultaneously sentenced to die.
“One.”
There are a million pieces of evidence to back up a million different viewpoints. So many of us, all funnelled to a single end, but of such different beliefs, cultural biases. Some see the white light, others come back and say there was nothing.
“Two.”
I have seen what waits at the world’s end, and the story I came back with is more insane than a hundred years of studying near-death experiences.
“Thre-”
I don’t finish counting before I feel it. It begins at my head, with the feeling of my skull being ripped in half. I want to scream but can’t, because I am splitting all the way down to the floor whose space I have always wasted. I want to go back , die where I should have died, because this is worse than anything I’ve ever felt. Flesh of my face burns; even with eyes closed, I am going blind behind them.
Why did I agree to any of this?
And when it is over, I experience a strange apprehension that was absent before, and a weird realization washes over me.
I’m not supposed to survive this.
Collapsing to the ground in front of the bathtub, my head smacks tiles. It is a much different reverberation than the one caused by Tim, and far less noticeable.
The rest of me is too compromised to register anything more than the impact to my skull. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can tremble, and exert a single stream down my cheek, but that’s all.
I can make out the ceiling, but its popcorn ceiling bleeds in and out of focus. Eyes flutter, heartbeat weak. Slowly turning my head, there is wetness under my hair, but all I can focus on is my twitching fingers, raised up from knuckles anchored to the floor.
Gasping, I hear Tim’s voice calling my name, but can’t respond. Dying vision registers his suit over me, and the beard I love so much about him, but I have no more willpower or ability to sustain conversation.
I only taste blood where the words should be.
“Hold on, Ro!” the man who calls him Death exclaims, “I am going to claim you, okay? You should wake in the Arcway momentarily.”
Leviathan Page 18