Dark Prophecy

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  Graysmith was the one who insisted on Dark wearing Kevlar.

  “I spent too much money for it to go to waste. What can it hurt?” Dark had initially objected, worried that it would weigh him down too much. But then Dark considered Roger Maestro’s background, his skill with the gun. Dark would deal with the weight.

  “This first,” Graysmith had said, handing him a black button-down shirt, long sleeves. He took it, and was surprised by its weight.

  “What is it?” Dark asked.

  “Kevlar lining, front and back, nearly invisible. High protection. Can stop a .44 Magnum. Only $12,000 each, but I was able to get a discount.”

  Dark had worn the shirt, which felt like chain mail, and then added the vest—which, even though it was slimmed down, added even more pounds. “You got to be kidding me,” Dark had said. But now he was glad he’d worn it. The shirt had displaced the impact of the rifle blasts. The impact still knocked him forward and hurt like holy fuck, but the bullets did not break his skin, nor pierce his lungs or scramble his internal organs.

  A pro like Roger Maestro would come to confirm the kill. Dark would be ready for him.

  The moment he was on his feet, Dark stabbed his knife at Roger’s upper pectoral muscles. But Roger grabbed Dark’s wrist and twisted it hard, forcing his fingers open. The knife dropped. Roger grabbed Dark by his Kevlar shirt, pulled him close, then flung him back into the metal framework of the lighthouse windows. Impossibly, there was more glass to be shattered. The impact of Dark’s body shattered it. He slid to the ground, feeling a white-hot blast of pain at the base of his spine.

  His Glock. Dark reached around to his back—then remembered. He’d dropped it when he pulled Abdulia to the ground. There it was, a few feet from her body, partially hidden under the rusted base of the old light source.

  Roger charged forward.

  Placing his palms on the glass-covered floor, Dark slammed his boot into Roger’s knee. The damned thing felt like an iron pole. Such a move would have blown out any normal human being’s knee, or at least given them pause. Roger didn’t even seem to feel it. He picked Dark up again and slammed his body into the metal frame. Again. And again. This was going to turn out like their fight in the Niantic building. Without weapons, Dark had nothing—not against a human slab of concrete like Roger Maestro. Abdulia had been the brains of the outfit. But Roger had gone and blown them out of her skull. All Dark had was one last card to play.

  “She had a message for you,” Dark muttered.

  Roger stopped the pounding and held him up. “What did you say?”

  “As she was dying,” Dark said. “She told me to make sure you understood something.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “About Zachary. Your boy.”

  “Don’t say his name,” Roger growled. “You don’t have the right to say his name!”

  “She said the last card wasn’t about him, it was about you, you were Death all along. You brought Death into their lives, back from the war. You were responsible for your son’s death.”

  “Enough!”

  “Look in her pocket. It’s there. She made me swear to have you look in her pocket. She said it would explain everything.”

  Roger slammed Dark against the frame one more time before looking back at his wife’s dead body. Then he turned his attention back to Dark for a moment, then body-slammed him into the ground. Dark felt the air smashed from his lungs, and his vision go gray around the edges. Shards of glass dug into his skin. Before he had a chance to recover, Dark was being dragged across the lantern room floor, all the way to Abdulia’s body. He was flipped over. Something that felt like an anchor pounded into the middle of his spine.

  “If you’re lying to me, I’m going to take my time tearing you apart. Then I’m going to find everyone you’ve ever loved and I’m going to cripple them right in front you.”

  “Just look,” Dark said.

  As Roger gingerly touched his wife’s corpse, Dark reached out, grabbed his Glock, bent his elbow, and fired blind—backward over his head.

  POP POP POP POP POP POP POP

  Ejected brass casings rained down on the wooden lighthouse floor.

  Within a second the weight on his back eased, then disappeared completely. Dark rolled over, coughing, feeling like his ribs were nothing more than a collection of hard white marbles in his chest. Part of Roger Maestro’s face was gone. His mouth was open, and he was still trying to form words, but nothing came out. Roger’s body weight had shifted back on his heels. Finally his eyes rolled down, but it was not Dark he was looking for. Roger wanted his wife. Dark could understand the feeling. He sat up and put five more bullets into Roger, all chest shots. The ex-soldier tipped backward and landed on the ground, his hand reaching out, fingers twitching. Seeking his wife’s hand.

  chapter 92

  After he cut Knack free, Dark went downstairs to the closet in the watch room. Hilda’s eyelids were fluttering open, her small eyes darting back and forth worriedly. Where was she? What was this heavy weight on top of her?

  Then she saw Dark and a smile broke out over her face. “Seems our fates are entwined as well.”

  “Guess so,” Dark said.

  Dark pulled aside the Kevlar vest and helped Hilda to her feet. She was pale and shaky, but otherwise unharmed. Hilda explained that she remembered falling asleep a few nights ago and waking up in the custody of the Maestros. Both had grilled her about Steve Dark, the kind of man he was, where his family lived—anything. Hilda had refused, expecting to be killed for her disobedience. Instead they kept her drugged. The last few days seemed like a hazy nightmare, sparked by the set of tarot cards. The Wheel of Fortune. The Devil. The Tower. Death . . .

  “Well, your nightmare’s over,” Dark said.

  Hilda touched his face. “Thanks to you.”

  “No,” Dark said. “It’s entirely thanks to you. You helped me understand.”

  Dark called Graysmith, but received no answer. No matter. He escorted Hilda outside, called 911. There would be explaining to do, but Dark was at peace with that. Even Knack could write what he wanted. It didn’t matter.

  “You said to me during our reading that you felt numb and helpless,” Hilda said. “You saw yourself reflected in the Devil card.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Do you still feel that way?”

  “No, I don’t,” Dark said, the hint of smile on his face. “You led me to the truth inside of me—the stuff I’ve been pushing away all of these years. I was lost inside my own head, and you showed me the way out. And I’ll always be grateful to you for that.”

  But as Dark stepped through the doorway, the smile died on his face. Someone was standing there, waiting, Sig Sauer in hand.

  chapter 93

  “Hey,” Riggins said.

  Dark froze. Hilda looked at up at him nervously.

  Riggins gestured with the gun. “I know you’re not going to try anything stupid, right?”

  “How did you find me?” Dark said.

  “Through your silent benefactor,” Riggins said. “She’s in custody right now. Just in case you’ve been trying to reach her. I may be an old man, but I still have some moves left in me.”

  Riggins tried hard to sound nonchalant, but he’d practically had to sell his soul to the devil—in this case, Wycoff—to get the clearance to bring Lisa Graysmith in for questioning. She might have had deep ties to the intelligence community, Riggins had argued, but that didn’t make her immune from a criminal investigation. Wycoff, to his credit, had seen the merit in the argument. He made the appropriate phone calls. Within thirty minutes Riggins was in a chopper with a SWAT team. They found Graysmith near Cape Mendocino. She went without a fight—almost without a word. Instead, she just smirked at Riggins. On the way to the chopper she told him: “You’d better go check on your boy.” Creepy bitch. When Riggins heard the shots, he’d made his way to the lighthouse.

  And now, for the second time in a matter of days, Riggins found
himself pointing his Sig at the man he used to consider a son. They tell you that you should never point a weapon at anything you don’t intend to kill. Is that what he was preparing to do? Kill his surrogate son?

  That would depend on whether Dark was still the man he knew. Or whether he’d allowed genetics to take over, and he was slowly becoming a monster.

  “Constance almost died,” Riggins said. “This has to stop. You and your sick, crazy games.”

  “I’m not playing games,” Dark said.

  “Come on back with me,” Riggins said. “You’ll have the chance to explain everything.”

  “No,” Dark said. “I’m going home to my daughter.”

  “You’re crazy if you think that’s going to happen.”

  “I’m not, Tom. I’m as sane as I’ve ever been. I think I’ve spent the years since Sibby’s death looking for some kind of sign. For a while there, I thought these tarot cards were that sign. But no. You make your own promises. You set your own goals. You create your own fate. As long as you do that, there’s hope. Even when the cards are stacked against you.”

  “What have you been doing?”

  “My job,” Dark said. “Just not for you.”

  Riggins lowered his weapon. He knew Dark better than anyone. He also knew serial killers better than anyone.

  The psychos they chased? They all had this iron compulsion to kill, the unquenchable thirst for blood and violence. Dark had the same compulsions, the same thirst . . . only for justice. For vengeance. Special Circs had been able to channel those gifts for a while, but Dark had grown restless. He needed to do this his own way.

  Mind you, this way was ridiculously illegal. The law had no room for vigilantes. Riggins knew there may come a time when he’d have to put Dark down. But now wasn’t that time. For now, Dark was a force of good in the world. And it was best to let him go home to his daughter.

  He’d sort it out later.

  Riggins tilted his head up at the lighthouse. “I’m guessing they’re both gone.”

  Dark nodded. “The reporter, Johnny Knack, is still alive. You might want to talk to him. He saw everything that happened up there.”

  “He okay?”

  “A little banged up, but otherwise fine.”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to him,” Riggins said. “But I think it’s better for all concerned if you weren’t here at all. Let’s just say that Special Circs followed the trail here. An agent got inside, took both of them out. How’s that sound?”

  “The husband did the wife,” Dark said. “Forensics will show that.”

  “We’ll figure it out. Knack will tell me all of the gory details, I’m sure.”

  “Will he? I mean, think you can count on him to keep things quiet?”

  “I eat these little pissant reporters for breakfast.”

  Riggins now turned his attention to Hilda, who’d observed their conversation in amused silence.

  “You okay, ma’am?”

  “You’re just like Steve described you,” Hilda said. “I’m honored to meet you.”

  “No offense, but who the fuck are you?”

  Hilda grinned. “Have you ever had a tarot reading before?”

  To watch Steve Dark’s personal tarot card reading, please log in to Level26.com and enter the code: life.

  EPILOGUE

  Santa Barbara, California

  “Sorry I’m late,” Graysmith said.

  Dark was only half surprised to see her at his in-laws’ front door. “It’s okay. I heard you were detained.”

  Graysmith frowned. “Yes, thanks to your former boss, who’s a real . . .”

  Her voice trailed off, mainly because Graysmith didn’t seem to be able to find an acceptable word to use in front of a five-year-old. Little Sibby, who was hugging her daddy’s legs, peeking from behind them.

  “You must be the beautiful Sibby,” Graysmith said, crouching down. “I’m Lisa.”

  Sibby smiled for a moment, laughing wickedly, then ran back into the house.

  “She’s shy,” Dark said, still uncomfortable with the idea of Graysmith being here, around his daughter.

  Graysmith seemed to sense the tension. She smoothed out her skirt as she stood up again. “Or she’s an excellent judge of character. Look, is there somewhere we can talk? Somewhere quiet?”

  Dark’s father-in-law took command of the barbecue grill; his mother-in-law continued chopping a salad; Sibby returned to dressing her dolls, which Dark had finally driven up from West Hollywood. Now Dark walked with Graysmith down a path to a beach entrance. He had to admit, beaches were a place he did his best thinking. The crashing waves, the soft sand—it all calmed him. As if it took something as powerful and violent as an ocean to drown out the turmoil inside his mind.

  After a few minutes of silence, Graysmith turned to face Dark. “I’m being reassigned,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Well, without breaking any security clearances . . . let’s just say it’s some other place with a lot of sand.”

  “Nobody knew about your extracurricular activities, I’m guessing.”

  “No idea. I’d told them I needed a few months’ leave of absence. The gear, the equipment, the sources . . . all of that I supplied on my own. You get in deep somewhere, you learn their tricks. It’s not hard to pick up.”

  Dark nodded. “How much trouble are you in?”

  “Not enough to have me shot for treason, if that’s what you mean. And apparently I’m too valuable to be fired. So the best punishment is to keep me around and keep me in constant deployment.”

  “You never told me exactly what you do, or who you work for.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t.”

  Behind them, the Pacific smashed into the golden beach, which was part of one long stretch of east-west coastline. Most of California bore the brunt of the Pacific head-on; Santa Barbara was a little haven. Ocean to one side, Santa Ynez Mountains to the other. A cradle. Dark definitely understood why Sibby’s parents lived here, and felt comfortable raising their granddaughter here.

  “So I guess this is the end of ...” Dark’s voice trailed off. What the hell was it, anyway? Some grieving intelligence type goes off the deep end, teams up with a burned-out manhunter, they stop two psychopaths, and what? Was he supposed to kiss her under the setting sun? Was music supposed to swell? No. That was only in the movies.

  “Yeah,” Graysmith said. “Unless I quit.”

  Dark raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s still a free country, last time I skimmed the Constitution,” Graysmith said. “I can pick up the phone and pull the plug now. Just give me the word.”

  “And then do what? Catch serial killers in our spare time?”

  Graysmith took his hand and squeezed it. “Yeah,” she said.

  Dark didn’t respond for a while. He watched the white foam on the water, the families making their way back from the beach to cook dinner or play games or do whatever it was families did in Santa Barbara.

  Later, at her hotel, Graysmith made an untraceable call on a prepaid cell phone she’d picked up at a drugstore. First she dialed the relay number, which recorded the incoming number. Then she waited. Poured herself a glass of chardonnay. Half of it was gone by the time her disposable cell phone rang. She picked it up and listened for a moment.

  “Yes,” she said. “We met earlier today and I explained the situation, just as you recommended.”

  More listening.

  “I assure you. He’s ours now.”

  EPILOGUE II

  Hollywood Cemetery / Wilshire Boulevard

  White roses seemed appropriate. Though Dark never understood the idea of laying flowers on top of a grave. The roses were cut, packaged, soaked in water to maintain the illusion of life—but they were already dead, or dying. Here, death. Have more death.

  Not that he would share these thoughts with his daughter.

  Dark was being morbid though. His wife, Sibby, wasn’t here, in this cemetery. This was merely a m
arker to note that she had, indeed, lived. But his wife, her essence, was alive in his mind, and always would be.

  “Where should I put them, Daddy?”

  “Anywhere you want, sweetheart.”

  The important thing was that Sibby had a physical reminder of her mother, who had died the day she’d been born. His daughter had no memories of her mother; nothing to keep alive in her mind. Of all the things Sqweegel took from Dark, this was the most heart-breaking. A daughter’s right to know her own mother—the smell of her skin, the kindness of her touch.

  “That’s good, sweetheart,” Dark said, watching his daughter place the bunch of roses right next to the grave marker, in the corner where the stone met the earth.

  “Is Mommy down there?”

  Dark shook his head and crouched down. He placed his hand over her chest. “She’s right there. And she always will be.”

  West Hollywood, California

  Today was move-in day. Dark had spent the previous four days finishing the paint job and assembling furniture before driving up to Santa Barbara to retrieve his daughter. Hello Kitty figured large in the design scheme—not that Dark knew what the hell he was doing. He figured Sibby would set him straight with other suggestions along the way. After the cemetery and a quiet dinner and a trip to an ice cream parlor, Dark tucked his daughter into her new bed, kissed her forehead, and wished her sweet dreams.

  He waited in his living room and listened. There was the hum of traffic on nearby Sunset. Someone laughing—drunkenly. The faint click-clack of high heels on concrete. A car horn, muted and distant. Normal L.A. night sounds. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  After he was certain she was asleep, Dark went downstairs to his basement lair.