Tortured Souls (Broken Souls Book 2)

by Richard Hein

  Simon pushed up from behind the dumpster, spectacles broken and twisted. Wide eyes swept between myself and the spot Clayface had occupied.

  “I’ll talk,” Simon said simply, straightening its tattered jacket. Bits of black fuzz wafted from the ragged gouges along one shoulder. “Just… don’t do that to me.”

  My own eyes turned to the holes torn in the concrete where the golden chains had come from. I had no idea what I’d done, or how I’d done it. Was that you, or me?

  Lauren’s only answer was silence.

  Chapter 15

  “Where’s your first aid kit?”

  I peered around the corner of the bathroom at Simon and Kate, who were standing at the end of the hall in Simon’s living room. Simon stood, eyes sweeping the mess that lay knee-deep around them, a look of sadness etched on the demon’s face. Kate hovered nearby, tired and weathered in her dirty and torn clothes, looking like she wanted to reach out and comfort Simon but wasn’t sure how.

  Simon’s head came up, blinking a few times while trying to focus on me and failing. Could a demon grow sentimental? Was it that attached to all the stuff in the tiny apartment, feeling pangs of sorrow at having someone — or something — trash its home? I supposed anything was possible, but I’d never met any Entities that carried their hearts so openly.

  “Why would I have a first aid kit?” Simon said with a shake of its head.

  “Why would you have a microwave?” I asked, pointing at the appliance resting at the doorway to the kitchen. It looked placed there, rather than thrown. Who carried a microwave out of a room while ransacking it? “It’s not like you eat, given you don’t have a stomach, or taste buds.”

  “I… I don’t have a sufficient answer for that,” Simon said, turning away with a defeated collapse of its shoulders. I sighed and pushed past a plethora of towels on the bathroom floor and stared in the mirror. That, at least, was intact. My arm ached. My stomach burned. My everything else felt whipped, as if by barbed hooks. I needed something to bandage up my arm. It wasn’t terrible, but every time I bumped it against something the raw flesh hissed new agonies.

  With one hand, I loosened my tie. That would work. I stared at it in my hand, then back up into the mirror. Somehow it had come out of the battle unscathed. I still loathed the thing, but it had been a gift. Folding it, I slipped it into a pocket and fetched up one of the fallen hand towels, binding it around my arm.

  I hoped it was clean.

  “Okay, Pinocchio, start at the beginning,” I said, stepping back into the living room. I righted the recliner, kicking a bare spot for it to sit before dropping into the chair. It was, I should note, very comfy. “Who did this to you? Why were you breaking back into your own place? Where have you been hiding?”

  “Pinocchio?” Kate asked in a mild tone.

  I shrugged. “Not a real boy, but walks and talks and wants to be one.”

  “Be nice,” Kate chided. “Even if it’s apt.”

  Simon glanced between Kate and me in quiet trepidation.

  “There’s been a rash of missing people throughout the city,” Simon said. One hand reached up to straighten glasses that no longer existed, having been crushed and trampled in the fight. Unless the Entity had seen fit to craft itself myopia when it created this body, I knew full well they’d been for show. Sentimental and curiously attached to human affectations? What a weird combination.

  I held up a finger. “Ah, point of contention. People, or invaders from another dimension like a cheesy B-Movie? Important distinction.”

  Simon made a face. “Outsiders. Extra-Dimensional Entities, I suppose you call us. Non-reality visitors. Take your pick.”

  “Demon?” I asked. Kate gave me a look.

  “If you prefer.” Simon squatted and fished a book from beneath a pile of papers, straightening the creased pages within. “It’s just a term, a name. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “Stefan and Dieter would disagree,” Kate said, still glaring at me. “Words have power and meaning, and the intent behind them matters.”

  I waved dismissively. “So a bunch of your folk have been vanishing. Are you going to go postal if I say it’s likely because the Ordo Felix Culpa has been cleaning house around town of late?”

  “It’s not you,” Simon said. “I would know.”

  My eyebrows rose. “Really? How, exactly, would you be able to tell the difference between our work and random vanishings?”

  Simon glanced around, apparently looking for a clean and level surface to put the book on. Kate held out a hand, and Simon smiled as he handed her the tome. She cradled it in her arms, hugged tight to her chest as Simon moved to the collapsed bookshelf we’d glanced at earlier. Hunkering down, the Entity pawed through its contents.

  “My research,” Simon said, a note of pride pushing away some of the sadness there. “I’ve been able to track Outsiders through—”

  I sat up straighter. “So you can track them. We found tattered notes that pointed that way. That’s useful as all hell.”

  Simon nodded.

  “You’re telling us you have a means to track Entities?” Kate asked. She squatted down beside Simon and peered into the being’s eyes. “You can detect them?”

  “It took many years,” Simon said, handing her a manila folder thick with pages it had recovered. “It’s akin to magic. Those of you with souls can work around that limitation. It’s something my partner and I had been working on for quite some time.”

  “Partner?” Kate asked as she flipped through the notes.

  Simon stilled. “He is… no longer with us. When all of this happened…” Simon gestured at the sorry state of the room. “He was… how do you of the Ordo put it? Exorcised?”

  Kate put a hand on the demon’s shoulder. “I’m sorry to hear that. It’s…” Her face fell for a moment, a mask tumbling free and revealing the ache beneath. Kate swallowed and reattached her friendly smile. “It’s hard to lose the person that keeps you tethered to the world. I’m still having a hard time with the loss of my brother.”

  Simon gave a single shallow nod.

  “Okay,” I said, breathing out the word. “So, your research got your place tossed?”

  Kate stepped through the rubble field and handed me the folder. She sat on the arm of the recliner as I leafed through it. The same scrawl as the notes we’d pinned back to the wall covered most pages. My gaze snapped up to the web of names. Entities. The fruits of Simon’s research?

  “I fear as much,” Simon said. With one hand, the creature righted the bookshelf, a six-foot-tall solid wood behemoth moved with no more effort than I’d use lifting a cheeseburger to my mouth. I again wondered how such a creature could be afraid.

  “I don’t know how they heard about my research, but I have to believe that’s why they came for me. I escaped only because Bryce — my partner, that is — held them off.” Simon hesitated, eyes distant. “If not for him, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  “You’d probably have been sent home and be enjoying another reality with Bryce, sipping other-dimensional margaritas,” I said with a shrug. “You know. Home?”

  Simon’s eyes hardened to smoldering agates. “It’s not so simple as that. You don’t understand what it’s like. We’re not real.”

  I blinked.

  “Come again?” Kate asked.

  Simon blew out a breath, which was impressive for a creature that didn’t need to breathe. He waved a hand around, gesturing at the room. “This is Earth. Your reality. You humans have souls.”

  “Right,” I said, drawing out the word, “and demons cross over from one of the infinite dimensions that exist beyond ours and lash together bodies that look like whatever they want out of pure willpower.”

  “Unless a human gets possessed through opening a conduit to one of said infinite universes,” Kate added, drumming her feet on the side of the recliner.

  “No,” Simon said.

  “No?” I repeated, incredulous.

  “There�
��s no infinity of other realities. There’s no other universes, no other existences. There is Earth, and there is…” Simon paused, head tilted back, eyes closed in thought.

  “Call it the potential for existence,” Simon said at last. He brought his gaze back to us. “Instead of an infinite number of alternate dimensions, there’s simply the raw subconscious of the human race.”

  “Yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “You’ve lost me.”

  “I’ve done a lot of research on the human soul,” Simon said, leaning against the righted bookcase. The creature crossed its arms, the torn sleeves of its jacket looking like hippie fringe on the tweed jacket. “I’ve also spent a lot of time investigating we Outsiders. There’s similarities there.”

  “Humans power magic through their soul,” Kate said, “while Entities use their willpower.”

  “Yes, and the two are interchangeable.”

  I thought back to my talk with Lockyer. So Lockyer’s little super-exorcism wasn’t crazy. You could power an exorcism or magic by ripping apart an Entity and using its power as a battery.

  In the vault of my mind, Lauren stirred. It felt like cold, coiled scales sliding across my consciousness. The demon, however, remained silent.

  “Is this boring you?” Simon said. “I’m sorry if so. I find all this fascinating, but if you’d like to report back to Stefan and Dieter I’d understand. I would like them to know I am, at the moment, unmolested.” Simon rolled one damaged shoulder, clawed by Clayface. “Mostly.”

  I glanced down to the phone in my hand. A dizzy energy flushed through me as both Kate and Simon’s eyes watched me. “Sorry,” I said, snapping it closed and stuffing it into a pocket. “Habit. Checking for messages from Daniel. Only partly bored, don’t worry.”

  Kate glared at me from the arm of the recliner. I stared down at the papers she’d handed me and leafed through them.

  “We only exist because of you,” Simon continued. “I’m convinced of it. We’re not externally real, we’re extensions of the human imagination. There are no other realities out there, simply an untapped potential that’s caused by the subconscious collective minds of humanity.”

  “That’s a pile of horse shit,” I said. “When we exorcise a demon, the conduit between here and there is open, and we get glimpses of the shithole you call home.”

  Kate put a hand on my shoulder. “You once told me belief is key in magic,” she said. “If someone believes in a bunch of mumbo-jumbo words or in prayer, they could summon up whatever it is they’re focusing on. What if we create that instead of calling it forth?”

  “What if we don’t exist,” Simon said, “and have form and thought and power by human belief? What if you’re not calling us, but creating us? I wouldn’t have a home, just the memory of one while I’m here.”

  I snorted. “Stefan and Dieter have talked about their home dimension, Kate. They came from somewhere. It exists.”

  “Or do we just pop into this universe believing we existed previously, memories create as a whole?” Simon ventured.

  “Last Thursdayism,” Kate said with a grin. “The idea that existence just popped into reality last Thursday and we’d have no way of knowing because our memories are created at the same time.”

  “Oh good,” I said, “armchair philosophy. As if getting my face kicked in by Tall, Dark, and Ugly earlier wasn’t bad enough.”

  She slid from the recliner and spun to face me. “You once told me I could summon up Gozer the Gozerian or a flesh-eating demon-pony if I wasn’t careful.”

  “Well, yeah,” I said, a little defensive, “there’s an infinite number of universes out there, and you’d tap into one where a flesh-eating demon-pony already exists and…”

  I trailed off with a frown.

  “No,” I said. “This is… if not outright dumb, it’s getting off track. You were doing research on your kind and our kind, found a way to track Entities, pissed someone off and they kicked your ball over the fence.”

  Simon’s face contained disgust, as if I had just poured garbage all over his breakfast cereal. “I… I suppose that’s accurate.”

  “And these,” I said, flipping through more pages, “are the notes you kept about this?”

  “Some of them,” Simon said, deflating. “They took much, it seems. Bryce always said I was thoroughly disorganized. Not everything was in one spot.”

  A title snagged my eye. My breath caught. I read the page. I read it again. I swore.

  “The idea for this research,” I said, voice distant to my own ears. “Did it come from a book?”

  Simon’s eyebrows rose. “Yes, I admit much of my research was—”

  I shushed him and held the page up for Kate to read.

  “Vitae Superno,” Kate read, “by Issac Day.”

  I surged from the chair. “You based your work on Vitae Superno? You have a copy?”

  Simon sniffed. “The original. It’s an interesting work. Day discusses the similarities between soul-energy and Outsider-energy at length, and their differences.”

  My steps crunched across the detritus of Simon’s living room as I paced, rusty cogs of my brain slamming into gear as I racked my brain. “Okay,” I said, glancing at Kate. She wore a puzzled frown, eyes distant. My pacing resumed. “First, how in the Nine Hells do you have the original? My understanding is that a member of the OFC wrote it.”

  A member of the OFC committing a little light heresy, Lauren said, amused. Research into Extra-Dimensional Entities? Doesn’t that remind you of someone else?

  I swallowed the bile that threatened to claw its way up my throat. Lauren had done experimenting of her own, and I’d gone along with her. She figured that somewhere, among the uncountable number of realities beyond our own, there had to be something altruistic. Good.

  It had only cost her life to be proved wrong.

  “I'll check the employee handbook,” I continued, “but I’m certain there is no chapter titled ‘Write a book on your enemy and give it to them’.”

  “Isaac Day was a member of your… esteemed peerage,” Simon said, glancing anywhere but at me. “I'm not sure how such a novel became loosed on the world. I bought it from a vendor of rare tomes. I have no idea how she came by it.”

  I sighed and rubbed at my eyes. “I can’t think with all this stupid going on.”

  Simon sagged. I waved a hand at the demon shaped like a poor professor. “Not you. The world. The world is stupid, Simon, and it’s a distracting sort of stupid. I need…” Alcohol. I pushed the thought away with effort. “I need coffee.”

  Gingerly stepping through the debris, I wandered to the kitchen. Then into the hall where the coffee machine lay. A minute scouting the mess and I found what I needed. I swept a small tower of cans from the counter, slapped the life-giving machine down, and worked a more mundane style of magic. A short time later we stood in silence, nursing mugs of steaming coffee.

  Damn it all. The demon, it seemed, knew a good brew.

  “So, Issac Day pens a book on your kind,” I said, cupping the mug between my palms for warmth. As I shifted, the towel around my arm peeled free and tumbled to the floor, at home amid the rest of the trash. “Within these pages, he waxes intellectual about how souls and demon-flavored willpower can be used interchangeably.”

  “Which sets the groundwork for your method of tagging creatures that wriggle into our reality,” Kate said, glancing at Simon over her steaming mug. “Someone doesn’t like this and tries to silence you.”

  “Or,” I said, “someone wanted the research.”

  We three shared in a moment of silence.

  I glanced at Kate, eyebrows raised. Her expression matched mine. “You’re thinking what I’m thinking,” I said.

  Kate nodded. “Lockyer. It can’t be any coincidence he’s got a super-charged exorcism he’s showing off not long after someone kicks over Simon’s sandcastle and steals the research.” She glanced at the demon. “Was Vitae Superno taken as well?”

  Simon looked chagrin
ed. “I haven’t found it yet. It appears so.”

  “Lockyer notices Simon’s experiments,” I mused. “Comes to deal with the problem.”

  “Finds useful research,” Kate continued, nodding, “appropriates it for his own use.” She met my eyes, then glanced down the hall with a question in her eyes. I savored my coffee for a moment, then nodded.

  “We’re going to go talk behind your back,” I said cheerfully to Simon.

  “I… um…” Simon said, frowning at Kate and me.

  We left him standing and retreated to the bedroom. I shoved the door closed with one foot, driving it through a pile of clothes liberated from an enormous wardrobe.

  “Is this a problem?” Kate asked. “Lockyer stealing Simon’s research?”

  I blew out a breath and leaned against the wall.

  “Hell no,” I said. “I would have done the same thing had I known. The research was originally ours. Simon just…” I shrugged.

  “Unethically tested his theories on the homeless about the city?” Kate suggested.

  I grunted. Yeah. There was that.

  “I’ll deal with that,” I said darkly. “Are you fixing to start a crusade against our possible new ally because he trashed an apartment and stole? Because, I’ve got to say, I’ve done a lot worse in my time on the clock. Bottom line, Simon is an Entity, and this Issac Day fellow did all the legwork.”

  Kate crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked away. “I get that. I just feel weird about this. If we ally with Lockyer, we’re implicitly condoning the sort of people that just take what they want and leave a trail of destruction in their wake.”

  My breath blew out in exasperation. “Yeah, okay, I get that on some level. Simon is a demon creature and is fair game, but… Well, Daniel keeps saying we have to be a better example. It bears consideration at the very least.”

  Kate turned, eyes wide. “Oh sweet Jesus, you listened to someone besides the little voice in your head? Why, Samuel. Are you growing up?”

  I grimaced at the mention of voices in my head. That was one I didn’t want to be listening to, though it seemed I had little choice.