by Drue M Scott
What the hell is going on here? Jason whispered into his own consciousness. Reeling in his own thoughts as to not betray them he shouted with all the energy he could amass. “I hope you fucking die a thousand painful deaths, you motherfucker.” Despite his anger, the puzzle pieces presented themselves as a whole. It all fell into place. Jason’s soul ached at the knowledge. Each image that filtered through him detailed all that Devin had said, and it matched with the sickness he understood to be true. Jacob’s initial role would have led to a different outcome; his part had been simply plan B. Life and death were nothing more than a feather floating on the breeze. Its direction and destination wholly determined by the whims of the wind. His part had been orchestrated so easily and played so fiendishly by his captor that Jason began to see how little he could have done to alter the outcome. He loved Mikale—with all that he was he loved him—but his own weakness allowed Devin’s twisted lust for revenge and power to convince him otherwise. Does Mikale love Brennan more than…?
“There’s the doubt I so longed to feel again.” Devin’s voice sounded to Jason as a chorus of snakes. “Did Mikale ever really love you?”
##
Hours passed like seconds while Mathieu pressed his energy into Sergei but moved like years when they were not connected. Each moment together was a myriad of feelings and emotions, most of which felt foreign to Sergei, but showered his own essence with a peace that he had not known prior. The hospital room glowed with a vibrancy that warmed it but was invisible to the naked eye. Each session Mathieu sat with him and shared his own energy reserves, Sergei could sense Vevila’s strengthening. She wasn’t whole, but her will within him was gaining a vitality of its own. The harmony held within each moment together, though, carried with it sadness, as well. Mathieu could not help but share some of his own heartache and turmoil each time they connected. As he weakened, the guards he had placed in order to wall off his greatest sorrows cracked and leaked over feelings and images that broke Sergei’s heart. Vevila’s grief in all of it was nearly more than he could bear.
Abruptly letting go, after only just reconnecting, Mathieu backed away. Tears streamed down his face. “We must stop.” His chest heaved in heavy breaths at the pain he felt. “I cannot continue.” He paused wiping the liquid sorrow from his face. “There are shadows in me that I wish to remain obscured.” Turning to Mikale and pacing the few steps from the far wall where he had been sitting to his patient’s bedside, Mathieu drew in a hard, long breath. “I’m sorry, but the remainder of your path must be achieved on your own.” Attending to Mikale, though he did not intend to, Mathieu fell silent. Uncounted moments passed as the warmth of the room faded. His recently gained physique, from the year of training, slouched deceptively concealing the breadth of his chest.
“He forgives you,” Vevila interjected softly using Sergei to speak out loud. “I do not know the transgression or the circumstances which preceded it, but I know love.”
Spinning back towards Sergei angrily, Mathieu interrupted. “LOVE? Love! No one who loves someone kills…” Stopping before he completed the sentence, Mathieu fell to his knees, the sound of which could be felt in Sergei’s chest. Sorrow bore its weight down on him so heavily, he could barely breathe. Seeing Aiden’s face as the knife sunk into his chest broke Mathieu. The horror of it haunted his every waking hour; sleep was worse. What decisions he made and what actions felt forced upon him blended together creating a nightmare that he could not break free of. “Knowing in each lifetime there is the one soul meant to match your own, be the positives to blanket your negatives, be the glue that holds you together when you are breaking…” Choked up, Mathieu could hardly continue. “He is dead, and I am the cause.”
Rising from his chair and stepping closer, Sergei knelt down to Mathieu and placed his hand upon the grieving man’s shoulder. Significantly shorter than his new friend, Sergei’s stout figure appeared much smaller in comparison. “I thought I knew about life, hell, I thought I knew about love, but the entire world has been turned upside down recently. I cannot say with any amount of certainty, the things I once knew are still fact, but I can say,” Sergei moved in even closer, lifting Mathieu’s head so the two could see eye-to-eye, as he stretched his torso upward to match Mathieu’s height. “Each of us is worthy of loving ourselves, all of us are worthy of forgiveness. You must first offer yourself that forgiveness, but most importantly, you must accept it as well.”
Unable to speak, Mathieu lowered his head and continued to cry. The tears fell free of his face and collected on the scuff-marked floor. The compounded emotions Sergei felt, his own and that of Vevila, quickly overtook his composure and tears began streaming down his face, too. Caught up in the moment and unaware of their surroundings, both men missed the door to the room opening slowly. Vevila sensed the presence entering, but emotions delayed her response until it was too late.
“What a touching scene,” Jacob mocked as he clicked the door closed behind him. “I could come back if you two need some alone time.” Still visibly intoxicated his steps were uncoordinated and speech mildly slurred. “But I think the proposition I have…” He paused, swaying as though there was a strong wind pushing against him. Proposition, I like that word. “I’ll tell you everything Devin has planned if you help me get free of him.” There was no sincerity to his words, and the evidence of it was plastered across his grinning face.
Leaping up in anger, Mathieu bolted over to Jacob, lifting him swiftly off his feet and slamming him into the wall. Holding him six-inches from the floor by his throat, Mathieu shouted his response. “No fucking way in hell are we going to trust you!”
“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Drunkenly, Jacob’s words fell from his lips, slurred almost beyond comprehension. “Then how about a gift.” Pulsing a force of energy outward, Jacob sent Mathieu flying across the room. The blue/white light beneath his skin radiated in lines as detailed as a spider’s web. The outward display of power receded slowly but left lines of blue energy pulsing in his veins. His once tanned skin was far paler than normal and showed the erratic bolts of energy pulsing just beneath its thin surface. Stepping to the center of the room, he laughed. Each foot placement sparked lightning bolts between the laminate floor and his bare feet. His tight-fitting, black shirt and equally tight, deep blue denims, though covering his nudity, did not conceal the realness of Jacob beneath their threads. Crackling flashes snapped and popped bouncing small bulbs of energy away from him as embers escaping a fire.
Jumping between Jacob and Mathieu, and by extension Mikale, Sergei outstretched his arm and placed a flat palm to their visitor’s chest. Tentacles of light sprung from their connection and lapped at Sergei’s hand and forearm. “That’s far enough.”
“Is it?” Jacob laughed retrieving a knife tucked into his jeans at the small of his back. “And by whose authority do you speak?” Swiftly plunging the blade into Sergei’s chest, he twisted it clockwise as he cocked his head to one side quizzically. “Maybe you should just sit down.” Pushing the other man off of his hunter’s knife, Jacob smiled. Watching Sergei stumble back and fall to the floor, he giggled just beneath his breath. Slowly turning his attention to Mathieu, he dropped the knife, mocking the damage it had caused. The blood from its blade speckled the floor as it fell. “I know you lust for revenge because of a slight you believe I committed against you, but today will not be that day.” Looking over to Mikale and back to Mathieu, Jacob’s eyes flashed bright blue. “Devin will release this one’s lover,” gesturing with his head towards the healing patient, “IF, you meet us on the Golden Gate Bridge three nights from this evening.” Pausing awkwardly, Jacob dropped his head, and his brow furrowed in confusion. “Four nights from now?” Turning to leave, he mumbled beneath his breath as he hastily moved towards the door. “That’s Friday, or is it?” Bloody hell. “Friday Night.” Whipping his stance around a full 180 to face Mathieu again, he blurted. “This fucking Friday, okay?!” Exiting with a hard slam of the door, he continued to c
urse.
Still stunned by the shock of energy Jacob had hit him with, Mathieu crawled over to Sergei. Blood poured from the wound in his chest. Flashes of Aiden interrupted Mathieu’s sight making it increasingly harder for him to focus. Reality bent, and Mathieu found himself crawling on all fours, naked and alone, towards Aiden. He, too, was naked and lay in a pool of bloody mud. His skin, blueish pale, was translucent and bore the cuts of a thousand wounds. He was barely recognizable as the man Mathieu loved. Continuing to struggle against an invisible force, Mathieu fought but gained no advancement. Each dragging of his knees and placement of his hands stirred up the burnt yellow dust of the catacombs. Breathing became increasingly painful as the particles caked-up within his throat and lungs. But there was no god or devil or demon on earth that was going to stop him from reaching Aiden.
Rolling his head to the side to face Mathieu, Aiden’s corpse began to speak. The words, at first, were unrecognizable, but as each one passed his muted, purple lips, they gained volume and distinction. Louder and louder they grew until the sound of his voice began to pain Mathieu’s ears. “You Fucking Killed Me!” Blood began spewing from Aiden’s lips in time with his words. “You Fucking Killed Me!” Each syllable raised the decibel. The catacombs rattled under the boom of it until it simply stopped. Silence followed the echoes of his voice as they faded deep into the tunnels and caverns beneath Paris. Everything went still. Even the dust he had stirred with his crawl hovered in the unmoving air. Leaping from the muddy blood and grasping Mathieu by the throat, Aiden pulled his lover in tight to him. Kissing the blood away that trickled down from Mathieu’s ear, he whispered. “Why did you kill me, Mattie?”
Shocked back to reality by Sergei grabbing his arm, Mathieu faltered. Nearly landing on top of the injured man, Mathieu quickly regained his position. Still on hands and knees, he tried to shift himself in order to place pressure on Sergei’s critical wound. “Stay with me.” Understanding there was no way Sergei could hold on more than a few moments, Mathieu screamed for help. His shout was matched by the terror shrieks echoing in the hallway outside the room. Though the screams outside frightened him, Mathieu could only focus on Sergei.
“It’s okay,” Sergei whispered through the blood that swelled up in his mouth. “Don’t give them what they want.” Each word was more labored than the last. Vevila. Feeling his being fade more rapidly, Sergei reached out for his soul’s companion. Take the rest of the energy I have. I pray it is enough to… His mind, his voice, and his body fell silent.
Grasping at Straws
Defeated and exhausted, Mathieu collapsed. His own energy waned in a way he couldn’t remember experiencing. The horrified cries for help and blood-curdling screams of pain outside the hospital room faded into a muffled commotion with no discernable origin. His body became cold. Three souls in only two nights had been ripped from the fight, and for all his efforts, Mathieu couldn’t remember why he had joined this particular fight at all. Jacob was the target of his ire, and he was now lying flat on his back in a hospital room because of a young man and a chance encounter. Meanwhile, the monster that turned his entire world upside down simply walked away. The year of training, the hundreds of hours of disciplining himself, the connections and informants he fostered, all of it wasted because he tried to save a boy with a bullet hole in his chest. I don’t know what to do. The energy disruption Jacob had caused was slowly fading, but the ache in is soul was steadily increasing. I cannot do this any longer.
“Hall of the Mountain King” suddenly drew his attention. The specialty ringtone he set on his LG for real_soul22 was an important reminder of the calamitous nature life had become; plus, it just sort of fit with what he thought real_soul22’s personality might be. Not finishing its first run-through the phone repeated the song. In rapid succession, four more sounded off. Unsteady in his movements to regain his feet beneath him, Mathieu half crawled to his phone set between the two chairs he and Sergei had been using earlier. Fumbling the phone awkwardly to open the first of six messages, Mathieu lifted himself into one of the chairs. His heart sank.
“Incident at the hospital” real_soul22 posted. “Headed there now, something big is going on.” The second message read. The third and fourth were screen-caps showing the hospital; it was the same one. “Police say it’s a shooter, but it’s not.” “Look at the far window on the seventh floor of the second picture.”
Scrolling back to the image, Mathieu focused on the small picture. Zooming in, he saw the window and in it was a faint blue light. The same blueish white light Jacob had stunned him with just moments earlier. Disbelief and anger flooded him as he dropped the phone and slumped back in the chair. For fuck’s sake.
“Hall of the Mountain King” began again.
“Goddamnit!” Mathieu shouted reaching for the phone. “God-fucking-damnit!”
The first part of the message read, “IT’S JACOB.”
Yeah, you could fucking say that.
“Where are you?” The question that followed aggravated Mathieu further. In any other moment over the past year, he would have been excited for such straight forward and concrete messages from his informer, but that was nothing close to what he felt seeing that query now.
“I’m in the fucking hospital!” Raring back to throw the phone as he shouted, Mathieu paused. I’m IN the hospital. Changing his mind, he quickly messaged back. “In the hospital, can you get me and one bed-ridden patient out?”
“What the fuck!?!” real_soul22 blasted back supernaturally fast. “How the fuck? What the hell? When did?”
“Can You?” Mathieu interrupted the barrage of messages filling his screen. “I really need your help.”
“Of course,” real_soul22 shot back without hesitation. “Hold,” he dropped off.
Finding energy he didn’t know he had, Mathieu sprung up from the chair and raced over to Mikale. “We gotta go man.” Pulling him up from the bed, he set Mikale’s limp body on the edge. “How the fuck am I going to carry you out of here?” Casting Mikale over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, Mathieu circled the bed for the door. Another messaged lit up his phone just as he reached for the door handle.
“Basement level 1 far north corner. Service elevator behind nurses’ station on seventh floor. Wait 5 minutes, then run like hell.”
“The next 10 minutes are going to be bad, sleepy!” Mathieu paused as he spoke to the unconscious Mikale while resting his hand on the silver door latch. Merde!
The entire plan was to run for an elevator that would most likely not be waiting for him, take it to the basement hoping no one was down there, sprint over to the far north corner, damn I wish I knew my north from my south, and pray real_soul22 had something miraculous planned from there.
“If we don’t die,” taking his hand from the door handle and patting Mikale on the shoulder, Mathieu let out a nervous laugh, “then this one will definitely go down in the record books.” Shifting Mikale’s weight, Mathieu readied himself with a deep breath and few of his favorite French curses. “I guess it’s time.”
As the door swung open and the waft of burnt flesh and smoke assaulted him, Mathieu paused. He could hardly believe the damage Jacob had done; the lives he had taken. Despite his worry for Mikale and his own safety, his eyes wandered endlessly trying to see if the sweet young African-American girl was among the dead. She did not deserve such an end. Stepping over a body near an overturned medical cart, his heart felt lighter because it was not Katahniesha. Maybe she made it out. His hope rose with each labored breath he took.
The smoke was heavy and obscured much of what Mathieu could see, but he had cased the entire floor when the nurses escorted him up after Mikale’s surgery. It was a habit he had grown accustomed to since Paris, and he was more than thankful for that paranoid trait now. Flashing white lights at the end of each corridor lit up the scene to reveal a macabre picture of impressionist art. The colors were muted, but the details were sharp. He knew by how easily each foot slipped as he navigated the carnag
e that blood ran freely. Circling the nurses’ station and pushing through the heavy wooden door Mathieu sighed at this first bit of luck. At least it wasn’t locked. He could hardly fathom what would have happened had the door been secured. Faint shouts, from lower floors, clued him in that the police, most likely S.W.A.T., were on their way up. Coughing to clear his airways, Mathieu pressed the elevator button. Had he been able to cross his fingers, he would have done so; the doors opened immediately. Well, fuck me. Luck was on their side. Mathieu never gave much thought to luck or its validity; that was starting to change.
Stepping in to the elevator starting to tire from the burden of Mikale’s weight and the lack of breathable oxygen, his phone began to play real_soul22’s ring-tone again.
“Police are looking for 2 men, one of them a patient. Should I worry?”
“It’s Jacob not us. Explain later.” Mathieu quickly typed waiting for the elevator to carry them down to the basement. What the hell is happening? His own thoughts ran circles in his mind. Nothing made any sense. Why did Devin only focus on Mikale? Why was Jacob not with him? Why was Jacob here now? Nothing fell into place that made any sense. If Devin simply wanted power, why was he using Jacob to begin with? Each ding the elevator made as it passed a floor startled him. The thought it would open and a barrage of bullets would follow featured prominently in his list of likely scenarios. It wasn’t the end he imagined he would meet. Devin wants power, Ding; Jacob is amassing unstable power, Ding; Devin hates Mikale, Ding; the doors opened. Cowering with the expectation 40-caliber bullets would soon riddle his flesh, Mathieu cringed. His worry did not come to pass. “North,” the word blurted from his mouth as he peered in all passable directions. Quickly deciding on left he bolted for the far wall. “I fucking hope this is north.”