by Greg Logan
There was something sad about her. Something angry. Something maybe a little scary. But Quentin found he could not take his eyes from her.
Then she said, “You mentioned a cup of coffee earlier. It’s kind of cold out here. A hot cup of coffee might just hit the spot.”
He nodded, and allowed himself a smile. “I know a little café just down the street.”
Thus was the beginning of what had become their little team, to somehow protect the world from Scott Tempest and Jake Calder. And it was the beginning of the love Quentin felt for Mandy.
She did not love him in return. He doubted she could love anyone in the state she was in. While his motivation to stop Tempest and Calder was simply an attempt to the do the right thing, he did not delude himself into believing hers was anything other than pure and simple revenge. He was fully aware of the monster revenge can turn a person into, and yet his feelings for her were in no way diminished.
As he stood in the hallway of their headquarters he allowed himself one more glance toward her closed door, wishing for just an instant he could be in there with her. Holding her. Consoling her. Making love with her. And then he continued on to his own room at the end of the hall.
“Good night, Mandy,” he said quietly, and started down the creaky floor to his own room.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The Darkness heard a gunshot. It had gone off in Chelsea. He had escorted Chloe back to the abandoned tenement where she was sleeping tonight, and now he was on his nightly patrol, moving through the city with the speed of darkness. This brought him to within hearing distance of where the gun had been fired for only a millisecond, but for him that was enough. He turned his course, and followed the sound of the gunshot.
Before the roar of the shot had fully faded, the Darkness was there. It was a liquor store, in a small seedy neighborhood. A woman stood behind the counter, looking scared to death. Two perps, white guys with baseball hats on and guns in their hands, stood facing her.
The Darkness was having to be more careful, these days. The authorities had set up some sort of trap for him a few months ago. As soon as those painful strobes began going off, he had gotten the hell out of there.
This was all due to his mistake. Revealing his existence to Sondra and her family in front of the cop. Now they knew about him. Mother had always said if knowledge of his existence became public, the authorities would hunt him down. And this was what they were apparently doing.
Before going into the store, he decided to take half a second – literally – to zip around the exterior of the building and make sure there were no agents lying in wait. No vans holding electronic equipment. Nothing that looked suspicious.
He found everything looked normal. Darkened alleys. Trash on the ground. A cat sensed his presence and screeched and took off for parts unknown.
The Darkness entered the store and did his usual thing. The room began to grow darker, and he said, “Put down those guns, or I will put them down for you.”
However, someone off to one side, someone he hadn’t seen when he first entered the building, gave a nod of the head, and suddenly the entire room came to life with a strange luminescence. It was bright. And it was painful. Like a strobe, but it was continuous. The two gunmen and the woman behind the counter were all pulling on dark glasses.
The Darkness tried to pull away, but the painful light was all around him. And he felt his power dissipating, almost like the light itself was somehow draining it out of him.
“No!” he called out.
He found himself corporealating, at least to some extent. To agents in the room, it looked like a dark silhouette of a man had appeared, and was falling to his knees. He then collapsed to the floor.
Davenport was one of the men in a baseball cap, holding a gun. He looked to Agent Quinn, who was behind the counter, and he pumped a fist into the air. “Got him!”
Cosmo pulled a cigarette from a pack he kept in his shirt pocket and slid it into his mouth. With flame suddenly dancing from the end of one finger, he brought the cigarette to a smoldering life.
“That’s so cool,” LaSalle said, “how you do that.”
Cosmo said, “That’s me. Cool.”
They watched the remainder of the movie. Prometheus, on the cable they were pirating.
When the movie was done, Cosmo decided to head upstairs.
“I think I’m gonna have one more,” LaSalle said, and went to the kitchen.
He took another beer from the fridge, and as he turned back to the doorway to the living room, Mandy Waid strolled in. She was in a tank top and plaid pajama pants.
“So,” he said, “you finally decided to come down here and mingle with us a little?”
“Get out of my way.” She stepped past him, on the way to the refrigerator herself.
“You know,” he said, “you think you’re better than the rest of us. But I’ll let you know something, lady. You’re not.”
She grabbed a bottle of beer, and on second thought grabbed a second. “You’re wrong, Bulldozer. I am better than you.”
“I hate it when you call me that.”
“Would you rather I call you Bumble Bee Man?”
She went to step past him, but he suddenly grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall. The beers she was carrying shattered against the hard tiled floor.
He said, “Listen to me, you bitch. You think you’re so superior. That you’re too good for me. Well it’s just you and me in here right now. Your boyfriend Snape has gone upstairs. He ain’t here to protect you. It’s just you and me. What do you think of that?”
“Let go of me or I’ll kill you.”
“You? You’ll kill me? Little you?”
True, he was much bigger than Mandy. He stood an entire head taller and his shoulders were wide enough that two of her could have stood side-by-side and not quite equaled his size. Yet she was not afraid.
She said, “I’m warning you. I have no use for you at all, but Quentin seems to think you have some value to the team. Let me go or we’re going to be one member short.”
“I think you can say please. In fact, I think you can give me a little kiss. What do you think of that?”
Without another word, she reached outward, her arms suddenly immaterial, pushing through his hands as though they were made of fog. She pushed her hands fully into his skull. And then she let her hands become material again, and she squeezed.
His eyes rolled in his head and his lips began fluttering. He released his grip on her, and staggered a couple steps backward, letting out a screaming wail. He then fell into the table, which collapsed under his weight.
Quentin and Cosmo came running down the stairs at the sound of Peter’s scream. As they crossed the living room, Mandy strolled from the kitchen, another beer in her hand.
“What’s happening?” Quentin asked.
“Peter’s in a bad way,” she said casually. Nonchalantly. “You might want to call nine-one-one or something.”
Quentin hurried to the kitchen doorway. LaSalle was lying on the floor, twitching. His eyes had rolled upward into his skull, and he was foaming at his mouth.
Quentin looked back to Mandy, who was casually climbing the stairs. She said, “The bonehead didn’t know where the boundaries were. His bad.”
Cosmo looked to Quentin. “What do we do now, Boss?”
“I don’t have the foggiest idea,” Quentin said.
Both looked to the twitching mass of super muscle that was Peter LaSalle, and stared in stunned silence.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Davenport sat at a computer monitor. On the display was a sort of glowing cube, and in it was a dark silhouette of a man lying on the floor of the cube.
Behind Davenport stood an older man, maybe sixty. White hair, a lined face. He was in a dark blue suit, and an old-school dark blue tie with subtle red stripes.
“This is good work, Davenport. I’m recommending you for commendations. There might even be a promotion
in the works.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The older man looked at the screen and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “So, what’s this cage actually made of?”
“Lights. Xenon lights, which is what strobe lights actually are. Except, these run continuously. They’re really nothing more than long, thin tubes, like long fluorescent lights. He’s in a cage any one of us could break our way out of with one hand. But because he is what he is, whatever he is, the luminescence alone has him unconscious.”
“Are you sure he’s alive in there?”
Davenport shrugged. “I hope so. No way to tell, really. We don’t know what he is. The scientists haven’t really gotten close yet, but they’ve said they don’t think he’s life as we understand it.”
“Something from space?”
Again Davenport shrugged.
It was late at night, and the building was mostly empty. Only Davenport remained, along with the man behind him, and the technicians necessary to keep the xenon cage operational.
“Fine work, Davenport. Fine work, indeed.”
He rose slowly to consciousness. He was lying in a room that was, as far as he could tell, made up entirely of light. And the light hurt. Like he was slowly burning up.
If only Mother could help him. If only he could reach out to her, somehow. Or to Snake. Or someone. Maybe Nate. But even then, if Nate could hear him, he had no idea where he was. Nate could maybe follow his thought transmissions and triangulate his location, but it might take Snake hours to get here. The Darkness didn’t think he had hours of life left. Not in this cage. It was slowly draining the life energy from him.
He had to think. He knew he had to do this himself, and he knew the answer was somehow within him. Mother had always said there is nothing beyond you, if you put your mind to it and believe in yourself.
He tried to increase his output of darkness energy, but could not. The lights were burning. Draining.
If only he could somehow revert back to what he once was, he thought. A flesh-and-blood human. The light tubes about him and beneath him felt quite brittle. A human of normal strength would be able to break out of here easily. Mother had said more than once she thought it might be possible for him to revert, if only he could find the trigger somehow within himself. He had tried and tried, and never succeeded.
God, it hurt. These lights. He might be able to smash them, if he could simply reach out, but his hands wouldn’t even move.
He then realized something. He was corporeal, at least to some extent. It had always been difficult for him to do this, to become solid, but now as he was lying under these deadly lights, he found he had become solid without even trying.
Maybe that was it. He had always tried too hard. Maybe the answer was not to try. Maybe all he had to do was simply let it happen.
He tried to clear this mind. To ignore the searing pain. To focus on something peaceful within. He conjured up an image of Mother’s smiling face. And he conjured up an image of Sondra. Not as she was now, in her eighties, but as she had been once. Young. Pretty. A smile that warmed his heart and made him tingle.
He calmed. He relaxed. He let the pain wash over him, but not be a part of him. He let it fall away. And he relaxed some more. Calm. Calmer.
He took a deep breath, and realized he was breathing. He hadn’t breathed since he had first changed, in that hospital room so long ago. You don’t need to breathe when all you are is a field of dark energy. He let the air out slowly, and then drew air in again.
Lungs. He had lungs. And he could feel his pulse banging in his ears. Which meant he had ears. He looked down at his hands and, squinting against the blinding light, he could see fingers. And nails.
He rose to his hands and knees.
Davenport wasn’t really watching. What he was doing was thinking about a cigarette. Someone had to remain in front of this monitor because their prisoner should be under constant surveillance, but without anyone actually being in the room with him. The creature, or whatever he was, had proven itself extremely dangerous.
Davenport looked about, ready to ask Quinn to fill in for him for a moment, but she was not in the room. He reached for his cell phone, about to call her, when he glanced at the monitor, and froze in motion.
The creature was on its hands and knees. The first signs of motion it made since it had collapsed back in the liquor store. And it seemed smaller. Also, it wasn’t simply a black silhouette. There seemed to be some color appearing. Almost a flesh tone.
Davenport dialed Quinn’s number. “Quinn, get in here. Something’s happening.”
He was on his knees. He opened his eyes, though he had to squint. These lights hurt his eyes. He brought a hand up to shade his face, and then realized he had a face to shade.
He touched his face. Eyebrows. A nose. Cheeks. He couldn’t believe it.
He reached down to the light bars beneath him, which made up the floor of the cage. Simple, brittle glass.
Glass can break. Broken glass can cut you, and if he was again human, he could bleed. But it would be better than dying in here.
He reached out with a fist, and struck at the glass it broke. He struck out again and again. Glass broke. His fist was cut and was bleeding, but he continued to strike out, now using both fists.
Davenport and Quinn and Carter ran along a corridor. Alarms were going off, and lights were flashing. They each ran with a gun drawn.
They came to the door. It was made of steel, with no windows. Davenport quickly keyed the password into a small box on the wall.
He hit a wrong key. The door wouldn’t open. He keyed the password again. The door was still locked. He banged his fist against the door, then entered the code a third time, and the door opened.
They stepped in, and found a boy standing in the room. He was maybe middle-school age. He was naked, and blood was dripping from his hands. Their xenon cage was behind him, most of the light tubes shattered.
Davenport stopped, and motioned for the other two to do the same.
“Who are you?” he said.
But the boy didn’t answer. Instead, he simply stared at them.
He found he could not hold this shape. He had been his old self now for maybe two minutes, but it was all he could maintain. He found himself feeding off the darkness of the dim lighting in the room about him, and pulling it in from the corridor, through the open doorway.
He was fading, he realized. His human body was fading away into darkness. Just like the first time.
“What are you doing?” one of the agents said. The one apparently in charge. “What’s happening to you?”
He continued to fade. The stronger he got, the more he faded. He was becoming once again the Darkness.
The one in charge said, “Shoot. Shoot to kill.”
They each unloaded their weapons on him, but it was too late. There was no longer any solid shape to stop the bullets. They passed through him and ricocheted against the concrete wall behind him.
Time to get out of Dodge, he thought.
He burst from the room, charging out the doorway with violent force. He was out into the corridor, now moving with the speed of darkness. Within a fraction of a second he had scouted the entire building, and found his exit through a ventilation shaft, which led to a fan which led to a vent on the roof. And he was out into the night, once again free.
The following morning, Davenport reported to the captain. The man who had been standing behind him for a while the night before. The older, white-haired guy. Captain Sherwood.
Davenport had been knocked unconscious as the Darkness exited the room, the night before. So had Quinn and Carter. After a visit to the ER, they were sent home. They had each suffered a mild concussion, so they were on medical leave for the next two weeks. Except, Davenport came in voluntarily to meet with Sherwood.
Davenport was sitting in front of Sherwood’s desk. Sherwood was behind the desk, looking like his usual foreboding self.
“He got clean away,” Sherwood
said.
Davenport nodded. “The trap, the xenon cube, apparently could hold him only for a little while.”
“What looked to be a resounding success has turned into a colossal failure.”
“It’s my fault, sir.”
Sherwood shook his head. “No, Davenport. The fault belongs to all of us. And to none of us. This is a creature we know nothing about. Nothing at all. For all we know, it doesn’t even play by the same laws of physics as we do. I think we should be thankful we had it captured for as long as we did. We did some spectral analysis. That might be all we’ll have to go on, at least for now.”
“I still can’t help but thinking there was something different I should have done. Something I might have done that I overlooked.”
Sherwood smiled. Maybe he wasn’t so foreboding after all. He said, “That’s the sign of a good agent, Davenport. Never accepting failure. But you did all anyone could have done. More than most of us. Look at it as a lesson. Try to figure what he can learn from all of this.”
Davenport nodded. He appreciated the kind words, though they really did nothing to help him feel better about himself.
He said, “Thank you, sir.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Morning came, gray and windy. Quentin and his team stood on the roof of a building, across the street from their headquarters. Quentin was in his long coat, and the wind from Boston Harbor was catching his hair furiously. His hands were thrust in his pocket, as he looked down to the street below.
Mandy stood beside him, the wind making her long hair dance. She wore a jean jacket, and her arms were folded across her chest. Beside her was Cosmo, his baseball cap in place, and a cigarette between his pursed lips. Chloe was there, also. A long scarf twirled about her neck. Her hair was pulled back into a tail, and her eyes were decorated with black mascara.