by CM Raymond
“You are weak. You and your questions and your fear. You are nothing more than a child, crying for his mother. This city doesn’t need your kind. It needs me, needs my strength. I will bring justice to my people.”
The creature raged as it spoke, smashing at the brick wall and throwing whatever it could find.
“Who are you?” Elijah asked.
“Once, they called me Gabrijel. But no longer. That man has died.”
“But...but…” Elijah hesitated. Afraid to ask the question. “But what are you?” Elijah finally spat out. “Is it true? You really are what the old lady said. A zduhać?”
The creature stopped and fell to its knees. “That...was what they called my father. I never believed it, never believed the legends were true. Instead, I trusted in what strength my human body could muster. But then that bastard Alarawn and his men...what they did to me. It must have unlocked the power within. The strength of my heritage. And I will use it to crush them all.”
“But why now? Why return after nearly a century? And why...why me?”
The creature shrugged. Steel rippled at the motion.
Its voice lowered and became almost calm. “I do not know how it works historian, but I do know that this body is mine now. You’ve had your chance, and you chose to bury yourself in books. But I’ve set us both free.”
“No.” Elijah’s voice was barely a whisper. “This body, it’s mine. You can’t have it.”
The voice laughed. “I can’t? And what are you going to do little man? You can’t stop me. I will destroy the line of Alarawn and everything he ever loved.”
Elijah saw what the creature imagined, saw the hell it wanted to unleash on its crusade. He pictured Brooke Alarawn dead, nothing more than a crushed, charred body.
“No!” Elijah’s voice grew in strength. He tried to gain control, but the creature resisted. They thrashed about in the darkness, pitting will against will.
To an outside observer, it would have looked like a volcano fighting itself.
The creature’s strength was incredible. Its will forged through a century of rage. And yet, Elijah refused to give up. The body he never cared for was now the only thing he wanted.
The creature fell to a knee. Elijah could feel the voice’s strength falter. For all its anger, the thing couldn’t compare to Elijah’s desperation.
“Get out of my body,” Elijah shouted.
“You can’t survive without me,” the voice replied. But it was growing fainter.
“Get out of my head!”
As Elijah shouted, the creature’s voice melted together with his own. He fell to the ground. Steel rushed off of him in a wave. The pain was surreal, but it couldn’t compare to the relief of the cool night air on his skin.
You are weak!
Elijah collapsed naked on the ground, crying over and over: “Get out of my head.”
Nothing and no one responded.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Brooke walked back and forth between her living room and her kitchen. The spacious apartment offered plenty of room for pacing, an activity Brooke found herself engaging in more and more as of late.
Stress required action, but at this hour, there were few options.
In college, she played soccer. It was the perfect escape. On the field, she was no longer Brooke Alarawn, heiress to her parents’ empire. She was simply a girl with a ball and the will to drive through anyone standing in her way. On the pitch, she had power not given to her by her name but crafted through diligent work and endless determination.
She took another lap, but her frustrations failed to dissipate. After reviewing the hopeless quarterly report, Brooke couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss. Her instincts had saved her from failure on more than one occasion, so she placed a great deal of trust in them.
She asked Rex to sniff around, see if anything was brewing, but he had yet to report back in. Hence the stress, and therefore, the pacing.
Her apartment came equipped with a state of the art gym, but she seldom could muster much enthusiasm for working out for its sake. Soccer was a competition, a battle between opposing forces. Working out was nothing more than a necessity.
Her phone buzzed and she snapped it off her concrete countertop.
“What did you find?”
Rex’s voice crackled in reply.
“Nothing good. Van Pelt has scheduled an emergency meeting of the executive board for tomorrow. He’s going to call for a vote of no confidence in your leadership.”
“That’s bullshit,” she replied. “He doesn’t have the votes for something like that.”
Rex waited a second, and then said, “You’re the expert, but I don’t imagine a guy like Van Pelt bluffs.”
He was right, and she knew it. She ran through the board members in her mind. If Van Pelt had the numbers, then someone must have flipped.
“Dammit,” Brooke shouted into the empty apartment. Rex was silent on the other end, waiting for her orders. But she had none to give.
This was the end, she knew it. She had failed, and tomorrow would bear the fruit of that failure.
“Ma’am, there may be a solution.”
“What do you mean?”
“Project Cold Steel was an honorable move. But there are other...ways. To deal with men like Van Pelt. I could take care of it for you.”
Silence. Brooke took a breath, amazed at what he had just suggested. The callousness in his voice, like he was offering to pick up her dry cleaning, stunned her. She wondered about Rex, and what unspeakable deeds he had accomplished for her father.
She’d be lying if she said it didn’t pique her interest. There was a certain simplicity in it all. Van Pelt was trying to ruin her. She would simply beat him to it.
“No.” She spoke the word quickly, willing it to erase the thoughts she just had. “No, you’ve done enough. Tomorrow, come what may, I’ll confront the board myself. If we lose, we lose. It’s not the end of the world.”
She hung up the phone and relief began to take the place of stress. Her family’s company had consumed her life since her parents passed. And she accepted that without complaint. She did everything she could—no one could fault her effort.
Some things just weren’t meant to be.
She grabbed a glass and began to pour herself a drink when another idea came to her. She smiled, grabbed her coat and turned toward the door.
It had been a long time since she went on a real date.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Sean’s apartment had changed little since Willa had last been there. Someone, probably a landlord, had taped cardboard over the window in a meager attempt to keep the cold at bay. It was failing miserably.
Paper still laid strewn across the floor, with shards of broken plaster now adding to the chaos. Willa could see the truck-sized dent in the cheap wall from where her one good spell had slammed the man in the mask.
There was no sign of him. Or Sean. No matter how hard she tried, her thoughts kept returning to him.
So much had happened in the last few days, and yet the world moved on. Like no one even cared. Maybe it was better that way. Keep your business to yourself. Stay out of trouble. Her grandfather would sure be relieved.
But what would have happened to Elijah had she refused to help? She could have stayed in, gotten her grading done, laughed with the rest of the city about the monster hoax.
Maybe everything would have been fine. Or maybe he would have burned Mount Washington to the ground. Who’s to say?
But the truth of the matter was that she did get involved. Now their lives were woven together. She could feel it—even if Elijah refused to answer her calls.
No matter how hard the historian tried to doubt, he couldn’t deny what he was. The monster would emerge again, and she might not be there to stop it.
Willa knelt and stared at the superhero comics littering the floor. She picked one up and a piece of paper slid out from it, floating to the ground. Willa grabbed i
t. It was a page, torn out of a textbook Willa assigned this year. In the blank spaces along the margin were words carefully written in Sean’s handwriting.
It was a poem:
There is a place where no one knows me,
a town where no one sees,
a city, both cold as sin and smokey,
a home where brave hearts freeze.
But in this place, I am stronger,
under this town I thrive,
through this city my reach grows longer,
and with my home I rise.
Willa held the scrap of paper, refusing to let the tears flow. The simplicity of Sean’s words couldn’t detract from their honesty. She looked back at the comic, and it was then, staring at the garishly dressed defenders of justice with a student’s poem running through her mind that Willa realized the truth.
She couldn’t deny who she was either.
Edwin had made his choice—to give up his real power, to hide from his responsibilities. But Willa couldn’t follow her grandfather’s path. Even if it meant becoming the kind of person she despised, even if it meant provoking The Guild, she couldn’t leave the ones she cared about to their own fate.
There was no other choice.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Elijah stood under the shower, letting the steaming water wash away the grime and blood and gravel. He couldn’t help but smile, couldn’t help but hope that the haunting was finally over. Finished. He was free of the demon from beyond.
The voice had been silent ever since the mugging, leaving Elijah alone with only his own thoughts and his own emotions.
He toweled off, pleased that the pain had somewhat subsided. Either that or he had become numb to the sting. Chem’s creme continued to do wonders for the burns, and he could deal with the few remaining cuts and bruises. Even his face began to look like his own.
Elijah threw on a loose fitting shirt and pants, then looked around his bedroom. It was a disaster. Charred and bloodied clothes littered the ground, and his research was spilled out on the bed.
He started there, grabbing every note and photocopy he had made since coming to Pittsburgh and shoving it back into its file folder. Then he placed the stack within the drawer by his bedside.
Elijah hesitated, grabbed the Alarawn medallion and threw it in as well.
He bundled all his clothes and found a spot for them in the closet, then changed his sheets.
Looking around the room, Elijah was pleased with its new ordered state. He had never subscribed to the clean house, clean mind mantra, but there was a first time for everything. With all evidence of insanity packed neatly away, he hoped his mind could relax for good. Soon it all would be nothing more than a distant memory, one he could deny even to himself.
His phone buzzed.
He didn’t need to look to know who it was. Willa had called him several times, and now Chem was getting in on the action. He grabbed the phone and added it to the drawer in his nightstand.
Elijah felt a little guilty. It turned out the other academics were more or less telling the truth about what had happened on Mount Washington. Which meant that they very well may have kept him out of prison or better yet, kept him alive. He owed them at least a conversation.
But tonight, he was sick of monsters and magic. Sick of chaos. Sick of Pittsburgh.
He fully intended to do nothing but drink, watch TV, and enjoy a thoroughly uneventful evening.
A knock at the door stopped him from turning on the television. He considered ignoring it but decided to do the neighborly thing and see who it was. Then he could get back to the boring.
But the person standing behind the door was anything but boring.
“Brooke?”
She smiled as she leaned in the doorway. A bottle of whiskey dangled from her hand. “Hey. This thing is heavy. Want to help me lighten it?”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Before coming to Pittsburgh, few things caught Elijah off guard. He had developed a way of rolling with the punches and being shocked by nothing. Maybe it was the academic in him and the way his mind analyzed bits of historical data and then synthesized them into meaningful units. Maybe it was the no-nonsense, drama-free Scottish stock on his maternal side.
Neither his cognitive superpowers nor his family heritage prepared him for the knot that twisted in his stomach when the heiress of Pittsburgh steel came knocking.
“Well?” Brooke asked, standing in front of him. She finally gave up on waiting and squeezed between Elijah and the doorjamb. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
Clearing his throat, Elijah spun to follow her into the kitchen just off the foyer. Brooke dropped the bottle on the island and looked around. “This place isn’t bad,” she said, taking in the room.
“Yeah. It is yours.”
Brooke laughed. “I guess it is. Maybe I should take a day and have Rex show me all the properties.”
“How many are there?”
Brooke shrugged. “Damned if I know.” She peeled the wax off the top of the dusty bottle and pulled out the cork. Holding it to her nose she drew in the aroma. She closed her eyes and let out something like a purr. “Whiskey. I love the damn stuff. Could drink it all day long.”
She opened her eyes and watched him, but all Elijah could do was grin like a schoolboy standing in the presence of the prom queen. “You?” she asked tilting the bottle toward him. “Or do you prefer something more Eastern European.”
“What?” he mumbled, still a little in shock.
“You know. The pastrmajlija, or whatever the hell that stuff was at the restaurant. The thing you ordered right before you turned green and ghosted me.”
Elijah’s face burned. He pushed his hand through his kinky dark hair and tried to smile, but it felt all out of place. “About that…”
Brooke waved him off. “Water under the bridge, Elijah. I didn’t come to bust your balls. What I really need is a little time to unwind and have drinks with someone who really doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Alarawn Industries for one night.”
“Well, I am writing your history.”
Brooke turned to look for glasses in his nearly bare cabinets. She found a mismatching pair of tumblers on the top shelf and blew out the dust. “Yes. But I read one of your papers on research methodology before I hired your ass.” Her voice dropped an octave and slipped into a monotone. “The researcher, above all things, must maintain a stance of objectivity toward the subject at hand.”
“That’s not what I wrote.”
She laughed, then continued, “When it comes down to it, the mature historical researcher can’t give a flyin’ fuck about that which he studies, or else the apocalypse will come. Fire and brimstone will rain down upon historians everywhere and the riders of the—”
Elijah held up his hands, trying to hold back his smile. “Okay, okay. I get it. I’m a cold bastard. Now stop already.”
She tilted her head and smiled. A dimple popped into view on one cheek, a detail he had failed to notice before that night. “Our cold researcher. Detached. Exactly what we needed. Someone who cared little enough about reality to be able to bend the truth in our direction.”
“Or desperate enough to be willing to.”
“Speaking of being a cold bastard,” she held up the bottle, “rocks? Or do you want to save the ice for your face?”
Elijah’s hand instinctively shot to his cheek. “Neat. Like my scholarship.”
“The hell does that mean?”
“No idea.” He laughed again. “Sounded cooler in my head before I said it out loud.”
Brooke poured two fingers of the Gentleman for each of them and added a splash of water to open up the flavor. Without a word, she sauntered the few paces out of the kitchen area to the living room. She landed on the leather couch that was only a little bigger than a loveseat and patted the spot next to her. “Come, Squire. Amuse your queen.”
He crossed the room and bowed deeply before taking a seat next to her. Their legs were inches
from touching, which only increased the knot in his stomach. “Amusement was nowhere in my contract, my lady. But I serve at the pleasure of the sovereign.”
“And serve you will,” Brooke said with an eyebrow raised.
They sat like that, just looking at each other for a beat. Each of them waiting for the other to cut through the silence. Finally, Elijah raised his glass. “You came to me with the bottle. What are we toasting to tonight, Brooke?”
She clinked the lip of her glass against his and took a sip. “I’ll toast the next one. This is just an appetizer. Why don’t we start with how your face got mauled?”
He shook his head. “Sorry. The first rule of Fight Club.”
“Oh. That’s hot.”
“Yeah, just me and a bunch of other sweaty academics. Shirts off, abs out. Rolling around on a concrete basement floor for hours on end.”
Brooke furrowed her brow. “I always wondered why old Doc Thomas would go to three conferences every semester.”
Elijah nodded, stroking his beard. “Tenacious Thomas. I remember him well. Old as dirt but had a mean right hook. Dirty, too.”
Brooke laughed. “Okay. That image is the best. Doc Thomas wouldn’t have been able to fight his way out of a preschool. He was my Econometrics prof.” She sighed and looked up at the ceiling, a smile spreading on her lips as the memories of college rushed back. “Now, that man was the epitome of the absent-minded professor. One day he came in with his button-up on inside out.”
“Bullshit. That’s just some cliche you saw in a movie.”
Brooke sipped her drink. “Cliche’s have to come from somewhere. He always had chalk covering the back of whatever he was wearing from leaning against the blackboard.”
Elijah laughed. “Sounds like my kind of guy.” He took a long pull on his own drink, and added, “But give the man a break. I mean, we all have to trade something in to make room for all of the extraordinarily important information we’re cramming into our brains.”