Tortured Souls (Broken Souls Book 2)

by Richard Hein

  “Precisely,” Lockyer said. “You’re such a pessimist, Samuel. Once we regain our footing, imagine a world full of organizations like the OFC. No more hiding in the dark, but openly protecting the world in force. Global unity against the threat.”

  I gestured at Alvin. “Are you buying this? He’s your boss. Don’t you think this is crazy?”

  Alvin shifted. “It’s for the better,” he said, though the words lacked conviction.

  “My people have been priming the well,” Lockyer said, turning to face the tower of light. “I’m confident we’ll cover all of the county. All I have to do is walk down there and tap into it. Just like a normal exorcism, but with the poetic justice of these wretched creatures for fuel. We cleanse Seattle and make it a bastion of what should be, Samuel. We will march forward from this citadel and do the same for the whole world, teaching and educating as we go.

  “Anyone can do it, Samuel. Should I not be there when the fires are fully stoked, one of my employees will do it. Make no mistake, Samuel. This will happen.”

  “You’ve got to understand how bad this is,” I pleaded. “Picture every single apocalyptic movie crammed into a pot and stewed with all the religious paranoia and Lovecraftian-horror and crank it up to eleven.”

  Alvin made a face. “Hyperbole much? Mr. Lockyer is right, Samuel. There will be a period of change, but this will be better for the world.”

  The radio on both Lockyer and Barbarian Betty’s shoulders crackled. “Contact, south fence. Looks like—”

  The call cut off in a burst of static.

  Lockyer thumbed the mic. “Repeat last transmission.”

  Silence.

  A single scream filled the air, muted and diluted by the downfall. Barbarian Betty snapped her firearm to one shoulder, while Lockyer calmly dropped a hand to the hip holster containing the cattle prod. I doubted the gun would do much of anything, but I could feel the telltale traces of energy wafting from the prod — an enchanted device like our own batons. For a second I wondered where he’d gotten it. Ours were created by Sanctuary, and the only way to make such an item was through magic.

  Another scream shattered the twilight, followed by another. A macabre chorus rang out from beyond the mansion, unearthly shrieks mingled with the dying cries of Lockyer’s crew. Our host’s cheek twitched, his eyes closed, and he breathed a sigh tinged with sadness.

  “Our argument has been made moot,” Lockyer said, motioning for us to follow him. “Circe’s attack is nigh. If we don’t do something now, every life here will be lost. Who knows if these foul creatures will stop with us.”

  Against my better judgment, I followed. Kate fell into step beside me, Alvin and Barbarian Betty two steps behind. I shared a long look with Kate, my stomach flipping with liquid anxiety. Lockyer’s words were insane, violating everything I’d been led to believe about the Ordo and its mission. Ignorance is, at times, bliss. The world might not be safe, but it was safer not knowing what was out there, what was possible with a little will and effort.

  “Kate,” I said, right as the back wall of Lockyer’s mansion exploded outward in a shower of wood, plaster, and a horde of monstrous demons.

  Chapter 22

  “Run!” I shouted as a sea of otherworldly nightmares boiled out of the now-missing rear wall. The sharp reports of gunfire erupted into the night air, dulled by the blanketing snow. Twisted, vaguely animal forms poured from the mansion, dozens of Entities swarming out like a tidal wave of death.

  We ran.

  Ahead of us the purple light hummed and glowed, a pillar of brightness that punched up into the sky. It seared away the snow, leaving the area around it devoid of anything save crisp, cold night. I could just make out a couple of forms struggling with the enormous cages as we passed the pool. They fed a form to the light. It consumed and eradicated the figure, and the beam of amethyst brightened. The pillar towered over Lockyer’s property, many hundreds of feet tall, clear to see by all around.

  I couldn’t let this happen, but everything was unraveling so fast. I couldn’t lose Kate. I couldn’t let the world realize the darkness beyond it. Everything I cared about, everything I believed in… Lockyer's plan would sweep it aside.

  Yet what choice did we have? Behind us men and women fought and likely died. I’d never in my life seen a collection of demons as this. I’d fought a score of smaller ones in times past, with a team of trained Seneschals at my back.

  This went beyond madness; it was pure insanity.

  “Phone,” I snapped at Barbarian Betty. She glanced at me, calm and impassive as we ran. One hand held her firearm; the other snaked into a pocket and produced my ancient folder.

  With trembling fingers I tried three times to call Daniel. The adrenaline, the vicious worry tearing away at my gut, left me shaking. Finally it rang. He hadn’t answered before, and I prayed he would pick up now. If there was a benevolent god somewhere amid the infinite realities, I prayed they were listening.

  “Samuel, enough with the phone calls,” Daniel said as the call connected. “I’m working on your assignment, okay? I took a break to—”

  “Daniel, listen,” I said, panting as we ran. The cut across my stomach burned like a brand. Halfway there. Behind, the cries had died off. I hazarded a glance over my shoulder and saw much of the mansion had collapsed, a scything frenzy of demons setting about to topple anything they could find. Many, many more followed in hot pursuit.

  I wasn’t sure we would make it.

  “There’s no time to explain. There’s a horde of Entities here at Lockyer’s. Lockyer has an amped exorcism primed and ready to go, and we may have to do it. Shit’s going to go south in a bad way if we do though.”

  “Jesus,” Daniel breathed. “How bad?”

  “Are you outside?”

  “Well, yes, but—”

  “Look east.”

  A pause. Behind me, Barbarian Betty paused long enough to take a knee, fire off a burst of rounds and rejoin the frantic egress.

  “Sweet Mother of God,” Daniel breathed. “What… uh, what is that?”

  “Trouble.” I swallowed down the knot in my throat. “Look. I don’t know what this will do to Sanctuary. If this thing goes off, will it cut Sanctuary’s tie to Earth?”

  “You can’t let that happen,” Daniel croaked, voice cracking. “Oh. Oh God. What have you done?”

  “I wish I knew. Be ready for this.”

  Without waiting for an answer I cut the call. Another twenty yards. My body burned and ached with the effort and adrenaline, with the fear and trepidation of what was to come. The beacon of light pulsed brighter still, a vertical slash drawn against the night sky. It illuminated the clouds far above, and I could see them swirling away, disappearing like cotton candy to a sugar-hyped child. The electric tingling scraped at my nerves, my skin. Lauren thrashed within my mind, bouncing off my mental faculties, gibbering with words just below my ability to hear.

  I glanced down at the phone in my hand as we ran. “Crap,” I said to no one in particular. “I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

  My thumb flicked the phone open once more and dialed. It rang and rang, until on the fifth one someone picked up. Again I didn’t wait for someone to talk.

  “You’ve got to get out of here,” I said. The electric hum of magic scraped at me, charging the air like a thousand bolts of lightning searing down around me. It was getting hard to focus with all that power resonating within me.

  “Samuel?” Stefan said. “What, pray tell, are you babbling about? I just got back to the shop and—”

  “Short version,” I snapped. “Lockyer’s super-exorcism? He’s sacrificing an absurd amount of your buddies to charge up a widespread exorcism.”

  “Oh, double dicks,” Stefan breathed. “Like a big battery.”

  “More like a nuclear capacitor. He claims it’ll scour Seattle and more clean. You and Dieter need to get out of here.”

  “Samuel, I’m touched, but there’s no way we can leave the city that
quickly.”

  “Will your little pocket dimension get wiped clean? Will Sanctuary survive?”

  “I… I don’t know,” Stefan said. “It’s likely that it’ll be like with Kate, that it would just be yanked from the universe because it’s an external emanation. Oh, triple dicks. Kate. Is she in the city?”

  I glanced at her. “About ten yards from ground zero. I’m trying to stop this, but just in case, you two should hide in your little chalet and hope it’s not cut free.”

  “I understand. And Samuel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you. I’m sorry about earlier.”

  “Hey, I’m not doing it for you. I’m sure your hosts would die instantly if you were kicked out on account of being like a century old. I can’t be responsible for that.”

  I could hear Stefan’s smile. “Of course.”

  The line died.

  Out of the darkness, something tackled Lockyer.

  To his credit, the dignified man went down without a scream. His hand snapped to his belt and freed his prod, jamming the electrified prongs at a beast that looked like a chitinous pig. Instead of tusks it had rows of jagged teeth that tried to bear down on Lockyer’s neck. Black fuzz swirled as Lockyer jammed his weapon against the thing’s eye. Barbarian Betty threw herself onto its enormous back and hooked an arm around its throat, wrenching back with all her might.

  It wasn’t enough. The beast lunged and bit down on Lockyer. The man screamed at last as crimson marred the snow.

  “Go,” Lockyer snarled, stabbing the beast over and over again, raking great gouges in its black carapace. “Samuel, go. You have to do it.”

  Another beast hurtled out of the darkness, lanky and lithe and the color of dried blood. A spider on two spindly legs, it slipped one barbed, rope-like appendage around Barbarian Betty, a dozen little needles in its skin pressing into her flesh. She shuddered, twitching soundlessly and tensing as if someone had plugged her nerves into a wall socket. The creature twisted, retracting the appendage, dragging her still-trembling body away from Lockyer.

  Alvin met my eyes for a moment before he let loose a feral roar and entered the fray.

  Kate pulled at my arm, and with reluctance I let them go, the screams of the humans and shrieks of the beasts urging me on.

  At last we arrived. The light was overwhelming and hypnotic, glowing with a fury beyond the sun. It seared at my eyes even when closed. The lightning crackle of energy against my senses was beyond intense, and for a frantic moment I thought my nervous system might just burn out in a single burst of static by proximity. My head ached, like a thousand tiny gnomes picking away at the inside of my skull. The last of Lockyer’s employees had vanished, their leaving obscured by the all-blinding light. Kate and I stood alone. A marble altar lay amid a tasteful arrangement of stones, likely a slab meant for sitting and relaxing in the summer sun. Now, it was the harbinger of the doom about to become my life.

  “I can’t do this,” I said to Kate. “You can’t ask me to do this.”

  Kate grabbed me by the shoulder, firm and comforting and trembling all at once. She pulled me close, until only inches separated us. I could see the fear in her eyes, and my heart broke.

  “You have to,” she said, voice nearly lost to the roar of the ritual. “Save them all, Samuel. Save yourself.”

  “I killed Lauren,” I said, feeling a knot form around my heart, squeezing like a giant’s hand crushing my life. “I can’t kill you too.”

  Her smile was beautiful. Understanding. Sad, full of the finality of it all. “This isn’t the end.”

  I heard the lie there, tainting the words.

  “An infinite number of realities, Kate. A needle in haystack among an infinite amount of haystacks. I’ll never find you again.”

  I sucked in a ragged breath as if it would be my last. “Please.”

  Kate brushed my chin with a thumb. Her eyes shimmered with barely restrained wetness. She held up her knuckles for a fist bump, and with one trembling fist I met it with my own. “I know. This is for the best.”

  Her short hair danced in the wind cast off by the ritual. Her normally blue eyes burned with a reflected amethyst glow as she stared into mine.

  “I just wanted you to know,” Kate said, voice thick, “you are such an asshat.” Her sudden grin rivaled the blinding light beside us. “But you were the best asshat I’ve known.”

  I had been told I needed to lead a different OFC instead of repeating the failings of the old. I had no idea if this is what that had meant, but as dark shadows bounded toward us, I knew I couldn’t condemn Kate like this.

  “I can’t,” I said, defeated. “I can’t do that to you.”

  I saw understanding and sadness in Kate’s eyes. I pressed my eyes closed against what I saw there.

  You have to be stronger than that, Samuel, Lauren said. You can purge Seattle of the inferior. Together we could keep the shit from clogging the streets of our city. The World. I’d show Circe what it meant to be a true ruler once the weak have been purged.

  I won’t, I thought back.

  My left hand shot upward. My eyes snapped open as it moved of its own accord. Something pressed against my thoughts, pushing them aside. I felt my hand move forward and slap against the stone of the altar amid the searing light. My heart lurched into a panicked gallop as I tried to wrest it back, but it was like trying to move a mountain.

  I couldn’t control my hand. Couldn’t stop my will from completing the ritual.

  The pillar of light collapsed, as if it had been an enormous column of glass that had finally grown to a height it couldn’t support. Purple light exploded outward, a torrent washing through everything with a cold, cleansing wave.

  Yes! Lauren cried as the radiance bathed us. I watched, wide-eyed as the light blanketed Kate. Our eyes locked. Something twisted inside of me, a terrible shearing and an ache beyond anything I’d ever felt. For a moment, it looked as if the world between Kate and I distended and stretched, as if the air between had expanded and pressed us apart.

  With a pop, Kate vanished from the universe, and something withered in me.

  My will lashed out, guided by Lauren’s hand, ripping at the boundaries between worlds, but instead of pulling something through I tumbled into the rift that opened. With every ounce of my will, my anger, my very self, I tried to stop Lauren. It felt like clawing air. Everything went numb as my consciousness and mind parted. I watched from within myself as Lauren took hold of my will, shifting me out of my universe and into another. Distantly I knew I was cold, a wet and cloying sensation scraping across my skin, but I knew that my body was experiencing it. Lauren was in the driver’s seat now. I hammered at the darkness partitioning me from my mind and rebounded against the iron will of the demon within me. She’d swapped out the space I’d been kneeling in for another universe, and I was no longer on Earth.

  The cold vanished as quick as it had arrived, and I collapsed down into cold grass. Earth. I lay there, shuddering and gulping down air, suddenly overwhelmed by the return of sensation. I was in control again, and the shock of ripping from my consciousness and being pushed to the back of my mind left me dazed. Overhead I could see the cloudless night sky tinted by a fading purple glow.

  I’m not sure how long I lay there. Thinking was a chore, a conscious effort of piecing together each thought without dropping the whole stack again. Lauren had wrested control of my body from me. I could remember the feeling of it, of being aware of everything that had been happening but unable to feel it, like someone reporting all my experiences in a dull, monotone voice. Lauren had moved us to another reality and back again, switching the bit of reality containing me with another and then again to Earth once more. Just like I’d done unconsciously with Daniel’s gun.

  When it came to fight or flight, Lauren had seized control and saved itself.

  My eyes squeezed closed. Kate. She was gone, blown from existence like a candle snuffed out, and it had been my fault. If I hadn’t toyed with
magic, Lauren couldn’t have worn me like a puppet and finished the ritual.

  I’d have no way of telling where she’d gone, no way of knowing where to cast my will in an attempt to summon her up. A haystack in an infinite amount of haystacks, Kate lost within one. Would the universe she wound up in even have breathable air? Food she could eat? Wetness rolled down my cheeks as I tried to pull my thoughts away from the odds of her survival.

  What have you done? I snarled into the darkness of my mind. Why? Why her, of all people?

  It had to be. You’ve grown weak, Samuel. You should stand astride this city, this world, the apex predator. You alone—

  I tried the breathing exercises, the meditations that Sanctuary had taught me. Lauren grew distant, but the words continued to rail against me.

  I pushed up to shaky feet. A numb, cold nothingness rested in my chest. I stood in the middle of someone’s yard. All up and down the street, people were standing in doorways and on the grass, staring in the same direction. I turned.

  On the horizon, a purple glow receded. I couldn’t make out any of the buildings of Seattle, but the amethyst color lit against Mount Rainier for another few seconds before night came sweeping back. Everywhere I looked, people stood wide-eyed, hushed whispers discussing the strange phenomenon.

  I stuffed my hands in my pockets and walked, having no idea of my destination. I didn’t care any more.

  Epilogue

  The eastern sky had licks of color as my ride pulled into the desolate parking lot of Sanctuary. I thanked the guy who’d picked me up and slid from the car into the frigid winter morning. I couldn’t even remember his name as he pulled away, giving a friendly wave. I didn’t bother to wave back.

  For long minutes, I stood in the empty lot. The wreck of my car still blocked a few parking spots. It’s not like it mattered. The OFC wouldn’t ever have enough members to use all its spots again. The single orange bulb burned above me, pushing away some of the gloom. Daniel’s car was the only other one present.

  Kate’s car was absent, left near the zoo. Kate’s car, never to be claimed. Like her home, like the universe itself, she would never grace them again.