by Sawyer Black
The Tracker burst through the shattered glass, black sword extended in his right hand and a glowing net fluttering from his left. Peterson dangled from the chain at the Tracker’s waist.
Pastor Owen rose to his knees, his dazed eyes filling with blood from a gash on his forehead.
You will know peace this night.
Henry fell back, barely able to throw his hand out to keep his head from bouncing off the floor. He welcomed the Tracker’s message. He was exhausted. An end to his suffering seemed like just the thing right about now.
The Tracker’s net spread above him and fell to cover him in rippling waves, like a sheet fresh off the line.
Peterson jumped down and walked over to Mandyel’s crumpled body. Kicked him over and lowered into a squat. Pulled the angel’s shirt, jacket, and overcoat open, exposing his chest wound. Then he lifted the black blade over his head and plunged it into the split in the angel’s breastbone.
Mandyel’s eyes sprang open, and they lit on Henry’s gaze.
He reached for him, but Henry lacked the energy to reach back. Mandyel’s hand fell, and his eyes rose to fix on something overhead.
Henry forced his gaze toward the angel’s attention. Christ. Hanging from the cross, His carved face spoke of forgiveness through pain.
Sacrifice.
Mandyel’s final breath returned Henry’s attention to the floor. The angel was dead, and Henry felt only mild curiosity. The heat from the net settled over him, and his pain fell away. His troubles were a thing of the past. He no longer needed to worry, and he almost wept with relief beneath the net.
Peterson stood with his wild eyes on the bleeding angel’s heart in his palm.
He lifted it to his mouth and took a squelching bite, blood squirting onto his cheeks and dripping onto his chin. He swelled, his form filling his yellow suit to a ripped stitch from bursting.
“The power!” He exclaimed.
The back of his suit split with a rasping tear. Dark leathery wings spread from his shoulders. Black horns at the tips, and pulsing veins running the length of his translucent skin. The Tracker’s light reflected off of bristling hairs.
The remains of the heart blackened in his hand, and Peterson let it tumble through his fingers to the floor. He bent down and gathered a handful of the net, smirking at the sizzle in his hands. He slung the net containing Henry over his shoulder with nary a strain of effort, and Henry curled into its comforting heat.
“We’ll be leaving now, padre,” Peterson said, his voice now deep and beastly.
“You have much to answer for,” Pastor Owen shouted, sounding pissed.
Henry nodded.
You’re fuckin’ A right, Peterson.
Peterson shrugged. “Maybe. But not this night, guvnor.”
“Begone!” the pastor shouted, and Henry rose, carried into the night by the beast and its beating black wings.
Henry woke in a stone room lit by candles set into the walls. On a wooden chair with the Tracker’s light warming his face. His mouth watered from the roasting meat.
Peterson walked in to block the forgiving light, his black wings folded along his back. He wore only the yellow pants, and the Order From Chaos tattoo glistened with the sweat on his chest.
He strode up to Henry and flicked the black knife through the net at his throat. Burning strands fell away, and the searing pain crashed into Henry’s senses in a blinding wall of agony, crashing harder by the heartbeat.
Peterson smiled and jabbed a thumb at the Tracker standing in the corner with his eyes at his feet. “Yeah, them cunts know how to hurt a guy, don’t they?”
Henry moaned as the pain wracked his body, burning wherever the net sunk into his steaming flesh. He rolled his eyes up and fixed Peterson with a desperate glare. “You’re one of them, you fucker.”
Peterson wiped a finger across his tattoo. “What, this? Of course I am, Mr. Serafino. Or is it Henry?”
“You killed my daughter. MotherFUCKER!”
“Your daughter?” Peterson’s face fell in thought, only to brighten with memory. “Henry Black? The comedian?” He laughed and slapped his knee. “Mr. Punchline, his very self? Sorry, that wasn’t me. But I did show up to join the boys soon after and put my cock in your wife’s bum while you bled out at her feet.”
Henry lunged forward, but the net held him in check, his boiling flesh sending ripples of heat and smoke in front of his eyes. He fell back, gasping for breath, tears making cool paths down his face. “I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch! You’re fucking dead, and you don’t even know it.”
“Come now, Henry.”
“You don’t even fucking know.” Henry’s voice was a wheezing whisper, choked by pain and the smoke of his own burning skin.
“I was told to keep you alive, Henry. And alive you’ll be. But first …” Peterson stabbed the black knife through the netting, piercing Henry’s hand, staking it to his burning thigh. His red skin turned pale. His black claws thinning into dirty fingernails. Pain jolted through him in a galvanizing flood, seizing his muscles and cracking his thoughts into a thousand points of light.
Peterson reached through the net, slid the ring off of Henry’s finger, then stepped back and slid it onto his hand.
Henry fought for breath. For sanity against what he saw standing before him: Mike Serafino looking at his hands in confusion.
“What’s this?” Serafino’s voice and accent. Only his hairdresser would know. “This will come in handy the next time I see your wife.”
Henry vented his rage and pain in a howl that made Peterson fall back in alarm. The Tracker raised his head and stepped from the wall.
“That was impressive, Henry. But too little, too late, I’m afraid. I would like to thank you for this ring, though. And for finding the horn. Adam will love being a part of The Order.”
“Adam?”
“What, your angel friend never told you? Adam is a very powerful child, but he will be the most powerful man in the history of the world.” Peterson looked up at the ceiling with Mike Serafino’s eyes slitted in rapture. “He is the one destined to bring order from chaos. Not just the opposition to the identity of Christ, but a reigning king of Earth. A conqueror. A true savior.”
He looked back at Henry, and tears streamed down his face. He transferred the ring, and Peterson’s feline grin split his dark face. He spun and walked out. As he passed through the Tracker’s waning light, he said, “Put him in the hole.”
The Tracker stepped forward with weary shoulders, his growing song seeping into Henry’s brain. Bone glistened beneath the rips in his face, and still the Tracker’s eyes shone with sympathy.
Will you take my offer now?
And an end to your suffering?
“No fucking way.”
The Tracker held his open hand above Henry’s head, and the pain dimmed to a dull throbbing. His face and throat healing, knitting in the light spreading from the Tracker’s fingers.
I will defy them, end your misery, even at great risk to me — only because of your efforts to save those innocent souls.
“You want to help, then set me free.”
That I cannot do. I can only offer you death. Child, I can only make the offer this once.
“I’ll take my chances.”
The Tracker nodded, his face crumpling with sorrow.
So be it.
He grabbed Henry in a rough embrace and lifted him from the chair. Henry’s moan of pain was lost in the folds of fabric covering the Tracker’s shoulder above his armor. Vertigo bubbled the acid in his stomach, and he fell.
To the bottom of a shaft, with his stomach rising into his throat, and the circle of the Tracker’s light shrinking above him. He crashed down into wet rocks. Ribs splintering and stabbing. A bright lance of pain as his skull cracked on a jagged stone. Warm blood mixing with the cold water that swirled around his head.
Light dimmed, and an object filled the shaft, growing as it fell. Mandyel’s body, his overcoat flapping behind him li
ke the frantic wings of some giant tan bird. It landed in a jumbled heap across Henry’s legs.
Blood and water splashed up into Henry’s eyes. The angel’s felt fedora floated down like an autumn leaf.
The grinding of the cover stone vibrated through the walls as the Tracker sealed Henry off from the light.
Panic burst through his mind, and the searing pain swelled as the net bit into his burning skin.
The walls reflected the red glow of his burning wounds, and Henry screamed his daughter’s name.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I’m going to kill them all.
Henry was blinded by thoughts of murder. But also of being stuck here, dying. Maybe he would just waste away in the dark while the net ate through his body, leaving little chunks of his old self in the steaming water on the well floor.
No.
I will get out of here. I don’t know how, but I will. And then …
First, I’ll kill that fucker Peterson.
Drink his blood while he watches me tear his dick off.
Then, I’ll find the rest of the fuckers. Every last one of those Order from Chaos cunts, and kill them all for what they’ve done.
He thrashed his hips until Mandyel’s body rolled off his legs. His broken ribs dug into his chest, and he licked blood from his lips. He looked up to where he remembered the stone lid dropping over the hole and strained to slide his hands up under the net. If he could only get his hands free.
“If anybody’s listening,” he croaked, “I sure could use some fucking help right now!”
Maybe he could bang some rocks together. Get out of the net and scale the walls. Burn the rest of his suit and send a fucking smoke signal.
A signal.
He halted his efforts to loosen the net. He took a calming breath and crawled his hand up his body like a blind spider. The net sizzled into his knuckles, smoke rising from his claws. He dug his hand under the flap of his shredded lapel and felt a lump in his interior pocket. His mouth watered with the thought of the bag with the food, but he could tell it wasn’t the Sack of Three Squares. It was the whistle.
He got the edge of the leather sack between two fingers, then slid his hand out with the slow patience of a beekeeper gathering honey with a case of the shakes. Laying the bag flat on his chest, he worked his burning fingers past the copper wire holding the neck closed.
He poked his fingers into the bag, his claws clinking against the copper whistle. Skin on the back of his hand blistered and puckered under the net. He fished the whistle out, pulled it into his fist, then paused for another breath and rolled off the rocks with the pain in his ribs knifing through his chest.
He ended up face down in the brackish water. He held his breath and submerged his burning hand into the cool soaking his front. Soothing relief, but his back started burning where the net touched skin. He held himself still for a slow count of ten, and he jerked his head out of the water, rolling back for the rocks to stab into him, his ribs screaming in agony that took his breath away.
He worked his hand up into the crook of his neck, the net burning the water away. With a final push, his fist burst free and he punched himself in the chin. Henry bit his tongue and blood filled his mouth.
“Gawldamma muttafucka thit!”
He spit the blood, working the rest of it to the back of his mouth. He swallowed and licked his lips, smearing the blood in a frothy swirl. He raised the whistle and took a breath.
Thank God I didn’t keister this fucker.
He blew as hard as he could but heard only a sputtering whisper. He drew another breath around it and then blew harder. The whistle shot from his mouth and his lips farted with bloody spit spraying his shoulder.
The whistle splashed into the water next to his head, and Henry did an impression of a panicked salmon, flopping to get his face lined up with where the whistle had fallen.
He took a breath to plunge his face down and froze in a painful arch when the stone grated above him. He spun to his back, and the well opening filled with a writhing shape that dropped to land with a splash next to his head.
A shadowed hand reached out to grab the net, jerking back with a hiss of pain. The hand came out again, and a clawed fist grabbed Henry by one of his horns. His savior climbed the algae covered walls, dragging Henry behind. He thought his head would tear off, the bones in his neck grinding and popping. Or the horn would yank the skeleton out of his meat sack where it would rattle against the stone.
At least I’ll be out of this fucking net.
He slid over the lip of the well like a fat paralyzed snake, then looked up into a pair of glowing eyes set into a gray smiling face.
“Hello, Master Henry.”
“Ezra!”
The goll nodded, his tongue wagging out of his wide jaw like a dog waiting for a stick to chase. The last time Henry had seen Boothe’s servant creature, he’d been guarding Samantha’s hospital room after her overdose. He always thought Ezra had broken some kind of rule by bringing him to her room, but he’d never gotten the chance to ask. He sure wasn’t gonna ask now.
“How’s it hangin’, Ezra?”
“With great difficulty, Master Henry.”
Burning pain rolled up Henry’s body in shivering waves. “Tell me about it.”
“I would like to Master Henry, but we should flee first.”
“Fuck, Ezra. I want nothing more than to flee, but I’m kinda stuck here.”
Ezra leaned forward to scrutinize the web holding Henry in its holy cocoon. The goll looked at his hand, singed from contacting the Tracker’s net, and his eyebrows shot up in understanding. He bent over and pulled a bag around to the front of his waist.
Henry hissed in fresh pain. “Rocking a fanny pack, huh?”
Ezra ignored him. He pulled his hand from the bag and held it over Henry’s body. He rubbed his fingers together like a chef seasoning his dinner, and a sparkling purple powder cascaded down. The threads sparked and shattered.
The pain stopped bit by bit, until the net fell away, its magic broken. Henry stared at the ceiling with tears streaming from his eyes. Tried catching his breath against the sobs that jerked pain through his broken ribs.
He turned to Ezra, and the goll looked back with a sweet smile that Henry wanted to kiss.
“Oh, that fucking sucked.” He sat up, holding his arm pressed into his side. “I’m gonna kill that rat bastard piece of shit motherfucker with my own goddamn hands, Ezra.”
“Of course, Master Henry.”
Henry struggled to his feet. Black dots swirled in his vision, and he felt the maw of the well open behind him. Ezra reached out and steadied him with a hand on his forearm. “Can we flee now, Master Henry?”
“They killed my daughter, Ezra. Raped my wife. And now they have the horn.”
Ezra leaned forward, his eyes fierce in the dim light. “What horn, Master Henry?”
“The Horn of the Lamb.”
Ezra’s jaw hung open and his eyes widened to their limits. Terror filled his face. The goll trembled in his grip. “We need help, Master Henry.”
“Tell me about it.” Henry swayed, fighting to keep his feet.
Ezra tightened his hold, claws digging into Henry's burned skin.
“Come!” The goll shouted in a hissing whisper.
Henry’s guts folded in on themselves as they vanished. He didn’t have the energy to scream this time.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Henry heard a baby crying in the darkness. As if from a great distance. In an alley. Its lonely voice bouncing off the featureless walls of the building looming above it.
He opened his eyes. Henry was in Nowhere on his side, curled into a ball. His head hung over his shoulder, scraping the dirt with his horn.
Mist clung to the base of a crumbling city. Thick, swirling, like unseen objects pushing blindly along, afraid to step into the clear air. The baby’s cry rose again, and Henry thought of San Diego.
After Samantha’s second miscarriage, afte
r little Avery had failed to enter the world, he took her on a trip. A little ocean and a lot of sun. They could sit and talk and try to come to terms with a world that wouldn’t even let them bring a new life into it.
Fog had rolled in so thick on the second morning, he hadn’t even been able to see past the railing of their shitty little balcony. It had lasted for three days, only breaking during the early dawn just before the sun. By the time the light was bright enough to see a path to the beach, the fog was back to slapping the window. They spent the entire time watching South Park reruns and eating delivered pizza.
Henry pushed off the ground to a sitting position, raising his arms and stretching with a jaw popping yawn. Scraping footsteps, and Henry looked over to find Ezra sitting on his haunches, watching him with a smile. “Good morning, Master Henry. How do you feel?”
Henry cocked his head and considered the question. He looked himself over, and had to admit it. “I feel pretty damn good, little buddy.”
Ezra clasped his hands in front of him, and his smile became a grin.
The memories of the last couple of days pushed to the front of his thoughts, trying to harsh Henry’s mellow. But he wasn’t ready. He shook his head and forced a smile. “Thanks, Ezra. You really saved my ass.”
The goll’s cheeks darkened in a blush, and Ezra looked aside. “It was nothing, Master Henry. I heard your whistle and came. Happy to be of use to you again.”
The pitiful wails of the baby floated out of the mist. Henry wanted to get away from it. Put it far behind him. He stood and stretched again, turning to leave the Forgotten, and its many ghosts, at his back.
Thick roots pushed through the ground a few feet in front of him. He ran his eyes along their twisted length, following them to the gnarled trunk of the massive Tree.
Under the swaying branches was a small stone table littered with chess pieces. Instead of the long table Henry remembered, it barely held room for two. A man with his back to Henry leaned with his elbow on his knees. A shining white suit hung perfectly from his shoulders. His black hair smoothed back in styled waves.