by Jon F. Merz
Warsaw chuckled. “You think that what you see in the mirror is all there is to you, Declan? That you’re just some warrior with a code stalking the landscape of this crummy world with a two-bit mission to try to right things?” He shrugged. “I mean, I might agree with you. But then I heard some stuff as told to me by someone I think happens to be fairly credible given her background and, shall we say, history.”
“Yeah? And who is this person?”
Warsaw shrugged again. I found the action annoying. “Same person you came here to find. Same person who is spending some quality time with…Ares, as we speak. Seems like she knows an awful lot about you, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” I said. “I won’t ever be your friend. And chances are really good that you’re going to die by my hand in a lot shorter time than you think.”
Warsaw sighed. “You certainly know how to spoil an evening, Declan. The least you could do is try to be pleasant.”
“I don’t have time for pleasantries. Now, where is the Source? Where is Ares?”
“I’ll bring you to her,” said Warsaw. “But I’m going to need your weapons. All of them. And especially the staff.”
“You’ve already got the M4.”
“And a pleasant piece of work it is, too,” he said. “But the others…now.”
I smirked. “Not a chance.”
“It’s your choice, Declan. You can opt to go see the very thing you’ve been searching for, or you can be difficult and make this a whole lot worse than it has to be.”
Kort shifted and I tracked his movements. His hands were too loose for my liking. I expected he’d be the one to move first since I considered him the best trained of the bunch. But still, I couldn’t afford to make assumptions. Knowing Warsaw, he probably had some trick up his sleeve.
The thought of giving away my weaponry was ludicrous. I’d never survive an encounter with the Source, especially since I considered that she would be tougher than any other sucker I’d hunted previously.
But what to do?
I made the decision just as Kort started to move. I’d missed the signal that Warsaw had given - if there even was one - and even as I brought the gun up and shot twice, taking out the closest target of opportunity that was the henchman to the right rear of Warsaw - Kort was already on me, knocking the pistol offline.
I abandoned the desire to wrestle the gun away from him. That would take too much time and narrow my focus. Instead, I let the gun go and dropped, punching Kort in the gut and groin as I dropped.
Kort’s head came down on top of mine as he pitched forward from the groin shot, grunting as he did so. I saw stars as his chin collided with my skull, but I’d been knocked out before and shook it off as I came up, trying to knee him again.
I scored a shot to his inner thigh which didn’t have the maximum effect, but I was pleased to see my pistol come toward me as his hands loosened. Now, I fleeced it back from him, pivoted as the third henchman rushed me and I squeezed the trigger three times point blank, dropping him fast.
But it gave Kort the opening he needed to send a punch from deep left field all the way into the side of my jaw, just close enough to the sweet spot that I fell back and away, thoroughly stunned. If he’d landed that thing more on the button, my brain would have shut off and I would have dropped to the floor out cold. As it was, I was staggered.
And Kort followed up with a front kick to my solar plexus that had me sucking liquid fire as it made contact. I fell to my knees gasping, trying my best to clear my lungs and get them working properly again.
Kort wasn’t done and somewhere far off in my head, alarm bells were ringing, but I just couldn’t get to the phone fast enough. I thought I saw an elbow arcing toward my head but when I turned to see it more clearly, it had blocked out the sun and the eclipse was in full effect as it impacted and sent me falling ass over teakettle backwards, slamming the back of my head against the door jamb.
I sat there in kind of a slumped-over position, aware of the stench of cordite and blood in the room. The violence of action had been short, staccato, brutal. Two men were dead and two more injured. And I was the worse of the two. A heavy fog settled over my brain and I thought I heard words being spoken but they kinda sounded like someone was talking to me underwater and I couldn’t understand a goddamned word of what they were saying.
Which was probably just as well. Warsaw finally decided to stand. I think. I saw vague shapes moving. And I got the impression it was Warsaw coming over to see if I was really out of it or not. Maybe he thought I was planning a surprise comeback. Which I was. But definitely not at that moment. I just hoped by the time I was able to mount a resurgence, I wouldn’t already be dead.
I didn’t think I would be. Even as the fringes of darkness closed on my blitzed skull, I felt fairly confident that the Source would want a word with me. After all, if she knew so much about me, why would she ruin the chance to gloat without first seeing me for herself?
I wished Rask was there. Nothing like taking on the bad guys with an extra set of hands. And Rask and I would have been spectacular together. I’d seen him in action before and he knew how to kill with the sort of economy of effort that I’d always been jealous of. Guys like Rask had been born to kill. Not in some bloodthirsty way, just in the way they were able to cut a life off without giving it any thought. It was just another something to do, another skill to perfect.
I saw more shapes and I groaned. Things were moving far too quickly for me to really process.
I caught a whiff of something that smelled pretty bad and then I realized, I think, that Warsaw was peering into my eyes. His fingers yanked my eyelids open and he leaned closer. I caught a whiff again and nearly retched.
“Brush…your…teeth,” I said.
Laughter. “He’s really messed up.”
Someone agreed. I couldn’t tell who. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was Kort.
Bastards.
“What do you think she’ll do with him?”
“Keep him alive for now.” I think that was Warsaw. “Maybe she’ll bleed him out slow. All I know is she told me that he is to be kept alive.”
“That’s far more than he deserves,” said Kort. “Wasted two of my best guys.”
“We knew he would. Men like Declan don’t survive by being easy targets.”
“We should have just ambushed him,” said Kort.
Warsaw sighed now. “He never would have fallen for it. He’s been trained to spot ambushes for years. The only way to get the drop on him was to do exactly what we did. Play it straight up until it was time to take him down.”
Why was I so sleepy? The thought of closing my eyes seemed so utterly exquisite that’s exactly what I did. I felt my jaw go slack and a line of drool slid out of my mouth toward the floor. I didn’t even have the willpower to slurp it back in to my mouth.
Hell with it, let these guys clean it up.
“That last shot took him down for the count.”
“Let’s not waste any time then. The sooner we get him down to her, the better. One thing is for sure: Declan is not going to be a happy man when he wakes up from his nap.”
Nap.
A nap.
That sounded really like a good idea. You know, just a couple of winks to make me feel right as rain again. I didn’t think anyone would mind if I just sort of turned over and started snoozing. It would make my head hurt less, I thought. Like that time I was blown off my feet in Iraq by an IED. That nap felt great. I don’t know how long I was out for.
And then blackness came and I forgot about absolutely everything.
25
I don’t know how long I was out. That’s the thing about getting your bell rung like that: it fucks with your sense of timing. Minutes feel like hours and vice versa. For all I knew, I could have been unconscious for a day or more and it might have felt like only a half hour.
When I came to, I kept my eyes closed deliberately, trying to take in as much information as I could wit
hout letting anyone know I was back. I could hear things; movement, hushed voices. But nothing substantial.
Until.
“Awaken him.”
The voice was female, cultured, and had an edge that told m she tolerated no hesitation on the part of whoever she’d given that command to. Which is why I was deluged with water in the very next instant and popped wide awake, sputtering and coughing as the water found its way into every part of me.
I shook my head, trying to clear my vision enough to see. I was in some room. I sensed it was underground. I don’t know why, it just felt that way from the coolness of the air and the way sound bounced off the walls.
Before me stood Warsaw and Kort. Beyond them, I saw someone else, but they were still bathed in shadows.
Kort grinned at me. “Helluva shot you gave my balls.”
“Surprised you have any,” I said. “Judging by how you didn’t even seem to react to that shot.”
He grinned and glanced at Warsaw. “Will we be allowed to watch?”
Warsaw shrugged. “I don’t know. It depends on what she wants to do. Her rules, not mine.” He smiled at me. “Nice to have you back with us. I was wondering how long it would take you to find your way back to this world.”
“Longer than it would have in the past,” I said. “But I’m getting older. That’s what happens when you age, I guess.”
“Shame,” said Warsaw. “I could have used a man like you.”
“Yeah, I heard you had a few job openings.” I grinned. “Just down to you and Kort here now that I rained on your parade?”
“Men like the two you killed aren’t hard to find,” said Warsaw. “All it takes is the mere promise of a marginally better existence in a place that doesn’t frown on them for slaking whatever peculiar desires they might have.”
“Sounds like a helluva work environment.” I shook some more water off of my head. “But I’ve already got a job.”
“Not for much longer,” said Kort. “Not once she gets done with you.” He let a chuckle escape his lips and I really wanted to kill him. I would have too, if not for the fact that my hands were bound behind me and I was laying on some sort of slab of stone.
I glanced around. “So what happens now? You guys stand around and jerk each other off while Queen Bitch does her thing?”
The movement was so fast and sudden, I didn’t even have time to register it before her face was over mine with deep crimson eyes boring into my crying soul as if she’d driven her fingernails right through my eyeballs, reached down, and yanked loose everything I was.
I gasped as she formed some sort of link with me that I couldn’t ever hope to explain. One moment, I was the master of myself and the next, I was putty in her twisted claws.
The scent of copper hung on her breath and dripped down to my nostrils as she kept the link between us. I’ve smelled blood before, many times, but never in such quantity as it was then. The stench of it seemed to ooze out of every pore of her being. She’d fed recently and taken a lot if I judged it correctly.
A wave of nausea crashed over me as she kept probing my mind with hers. I wanted to vomit and then I didn’t. It was like she was flicking a switch on and off again, over and over. I almost managed to retch once, but then she killed the sensation and I sucked wind instead. I had the feeling that she was playing with the wiring in my head as if it was some sort of experiment. And there was nothing I could do to keep her out of it.
I closed my eyes and saw a million images of my past playing like a film on the back of my eyelids. All the combat I’d seen, all the times I’d fallen in love, the cherished memories of my son, they all spilled out of me and I couldn’t stop the avalanche of pain that accompanied them.
“So much agony,” she said then. “So much delicious heartache. Your life has been a smorgasbord of intense experiences that have ill-prepared you for what lies ahead.”
I blinked and felt the connection snap free. She stepped back and I could see that she was swathed in some sort of black fabric that swam around her body with no discernible logic. She had the appearance of a disembodied head amid the blackness of whatever she was wearing. Her crimson eyes were liquid fire perched atop a mouth lined with razor fans and deep red lips. Every once in a while, her tongue would snake out as if she was tasting the air.
The blackness that surrounded her enveloped her head as well. It looked as though she had no hair, just a smooth scalp from which protruded her eyes and her mouth, as if that was all she needed to survive. I knew she had to have some sort of body, but the effect in the dimly-lit subterranean room combined with the black fabric swirling about seemed magical.
“So, you’re the One.”
“I am called Isella. I am the one from which all others have sprung forth. I am endless. I am infinity. I am without limit.”
Her voice almost echoed off the walls, such was the tonality of it. It made my skin crawl, and despite the fact that I was a seasoned operator with untold numbers of kills, I felt small then. Tiny. I was unarmed and completely at her mercy.
She didn’t strike me as having any.
“I’m Declan,” I said because it seemed like the thing to do. “I’m from Des Moines.”
She said nothing but just stood - floated? - there watching me for several long moments. Maybe she didn’t like guys from Des Moines?
“You know nothing about yourself, do you?”
I tried to shrug but it was hard to with my hands pinned behind me. “I know enough. I know I can jump out of an airplane at 35 grand and execute a pretty spot-on landing at night with full oxygen and kit. I know I can love a woman and create an incredible son with her. And I know I can kill when I need to. Something tells me I might need to again very soon.”
She smiled now for the first time and it repulsed me. There was a sickening aspect to it, just an awful serpentine demeanor. “Yes. You kill. And you kill well. I suppose you should be congratulated on that aspect of yourself, if nothing else.”
“Thanks?”
“But all you know is what you have found in this lifetime. And that is a paltry amount indeed. I have spanned many lifetimes, Declan. Do you know how many?”
“No. But you’ll probably tell me in the next minute.”
Again, she moved so fast that I couldn’t even detect it. But I felt the effect, because she raked her hand across my chest and the front of my shirt simply fell away as if it had been sliced open by a hand-forged katana. The pain didn’t even register for almost twenty seconds, until I felt the blood running free and spilling down the sides of my chest. She’d cut me open without even a second thought. And now I was losing blood because of it.
Isella loomed over me then. “I will see you destroyed Mortal Maker, but not before I destroy every last bit of happiness you’ve managed to find in this pathetic world.”
“Is that going to take long? I’m worried I might die from the loss of blood here.”
Isella waved her hand over the claw marks on my chest and they disappeared. The blood vanished as well. I shook my head and looked again, expecting to see it all back. But it wasn’t.
“How did you do that?”
Isella laughed lightly. “I can do anything I want. Once I touched your mind, you became mine. There is little you can do to combat the effects, Declan. And trust me when I tell you: your world of pain is only beginning.”
26
I steeled myself for what I thought was coming next: endless torture before Isella finally decided to kill me.
Or drink my blood.
I didn’t know which was coming, but as a SEAL, I’d gone through some of the most horrendous training the military could devise, including as close to actual torture as they could get when I attended SERE school. SERE stood for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape and anyone who was prone to capture by the enemy went through it. The culmination of the course was a simulated period of imprisonment and interrogations that often bordered on torture. Anyone who went through that school came out with a ren
ewed appreciation for freedom and also the knowledge that no mater what anyone tells you: everyone has a breaking point. And the instructors were all very skilled at pushing just the right buttons so that you got a pretty honest assessment of yourself and your vulnerabilities.
Then you spent the rest of your life either hoping to never be caught or die quickly so you didn’t have to endure the torture that would be coming.
But Isella merely stood there looking at me for several minutes. I knew this technique: it was an old tactic interrogators used to make you uncomfortable in the silence. Often times, people would rush to fill the void and start babbling about pretty much anything under the sun, including sometimes giving up the sort of information that the interrogators were looking for in the first place.
I enjoyed the silence and smirked at the fact that the song used to be one of my favorites by Depeche Mode. Those days were long gone, however. Hell, the band was either dead or a group of suckers now. Who knew what the hell was going on across the pond? Not me. I didn’t know if anyone had figured out how to rig up communications with the outside world.
If there even was one anymore.
When the suckers came, they fell over everything and everyone in waves of death and destruction. With the exception of the International Space Station, anyone who was in their path was killed or turned. One or the other. The folks on ISS were probably dead, too. If I’d been in their shoes, I don’t know if I would have wanted to come back down. I mean, I would have for my wife and son, but otherwise….
My thoughts trailed off as I struggled to contain the images that forever haunted me about their deaths.
“You should have been there to save them.”
I blinked and saw Isella looking at me. A sick grin on her face made me hate her all the more. “Stay out of my head.”
She smiled broadly now. “That would be killing all my fun, Declan. And I have no wish to stop now just because you’re getting uncomfortable. I told you I could unleash a world of pain upon you. And I can do it over and over again. I can dredge up memories from deep within you that you might have forgotten about. All of it is open to me. All of it is mine to toy with for as long as I choose.”