Drynn

by Steve Vera

  The two of them waited impatiently, Amanda’s body pinned beneath his in the soft light cast from a red-scented candle burning on his nightstand.

  The caller was relentless.

  With a groaning sigh, Gavin rolled off her. “I’m not getting it,” he said, arms behind his head.

  “You’re going to just let it ring until it drives me insane and I’m forced to sic my walrus on you?”

  The stuffed walrus watched ferociously from a pillowed rocking chair.

  “I think you’ve had too much coffee. I’m not answering it because I know who it is, and there is no way I’m giving up my next five days off.”

  Again and again the evil ringing continued, each digital shriek like broken glass on bloody nerves.

  “Then I’m going to answer it,” Amanda snapped, standing.

  Her romantic mood had been replaced with a sudden urge to commit a homicide. After thrusting her legs into her discarded jeans, she padded down the stairs on plum-polished toes, mumbling colorful metaphors to herself. She didn’t see the monstrous shadow until she reached the bottom.

  Sitting in one of the plush brown leather couches of Gavin’s living room loomed the largest man Amanda had ever seen. Two glittering emeralds that served as eyes burned out of the darkness and grabbed hold of her. Her reaction was instantaneous. She screamed. When she was done with that she launched herself back upstairs.

  From midway upstairs she heard Gavin’s startled scamper. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded, wide eyed as he caught Amanda before she could ricochet off the wall.

  “There’s a giant man sitting in your living room,” she stammered, out of breath.

  “What?”

  “There is a giant man with green eyes sitting in your living room!” she nearly screamed.

  In one breath the playful, dashing man that was her fiancé vanished, replaced with someone else. His eyes seemed to disappear beneath the bone of his brow, lost in its hooded shadow, while his full lips tightened to a line above his chin. “Stay here.”

  Armed with nothing more than jeans and a bare back, Gavin glided down the stairs with more grace then a cat, silent and fearless like a hunter. Ignoring him, Amanda followed closely behind.

  He stopped so suddenly, she nearly smacked into him. The three jagged scars that slashed across his bronzed back seemed to glimmer in the moonlight spilling through the skylight over the stairs. The phone finally stopped when the invader pushed a button on a cell phone.

  “Kawn-tra-dia ra-koosh law-kees uh-neh,” the man said in a rumbling voice. At least, that’s what it sounded like.

  Nothing about him made sense, least of all his words. Never in her life had she seen eyes so brilliant and green, as if he were some leopard from the jungle. Long, sable hair spilled down a heavily zippered motorcycle jacket like some Apache brave’s, framing a fierce, hawkish face the color of coffee and cream. He might have been handsome in an exotic sort of way, except he looked like he’d just strangled a family of koala bears.

  “Do you have something against doorbells?” Gavin asked stiffly.

  The giant tipped back his head and roared with laughter. It was a deep, belly laugh that might have been pleasant, if it had not been so out of place. “I remember when your chivalry was second to none,” the exotic rumbled in English this time, his accented words thick.

  “You’ve been drinking,” Gavin said.

  “I see your powers of perception have not waned. You are a hard person to track down, Gavin.” The exotic pronounced the name as if it were a joke to him.

  “Any particular reason you’re sitting in my living room in the dark?”

  The giant’s slightly angular eyes glinted. “Yes,” he answered. He offered nothing more.

  “We would have waited but it sounded as if you were going to be a while,” an entirely different voice announced from behind them.

  Amanda jumped.

  Gavin did not. Instead he smiled. “Jack Nyx. I should have known.”

  “Yes, you really should have. I could have carved you into a steak five times before you would have noticed.”

  The man leaning casually against Gavin’s refrigerator somehow scared her more than the behemoth behind her. He was short, compact like an acrobat, but his eyes were almost completely black, all iris and pupil. There was a hungry, predatory look about him that reminded Amanda of a shark. In the two years she’d known Gavin, he’d never mentioned anyone who even remotely resembled these men.

  “Little rust on the steel, eh, Stav?” There was an impish, mischievous quality about this “Jack” that his predatory bearing could not completely conceal.

  “I see you still have your flair for the dramatic,” Gavin observed.

  “Of course.”

  “This couldn’t have waited ’til the morning?”

  “No.” Jack’s already blackish eyes darkened, looking like stones set in a selachian mask. They seemed like old friends, yet there was tension in the room, an intensity that Amanda couldn’t put a finger on. Jack straightened from his lean and approached the taller Gavin with suspicious eyes. “You really have no clue, do you?”

  “About what?”

  The giant, green-eyed Apache who had scared several years off her life shifted behind her. Amanda glanced at him and was startled by the light burning in his eyes, by the intensity there.

  Gavin noticed it too. “What is it for crying out loud?”

  “We should probably talk in private,” Jack said with an upside-down nod at Amanda.

  “I’m not moving one inch until I know what’s going on,” she said, crossing her arms.

  Jack looked at her. So did the giant. And then Gavin did too.

  “I’m serious. Not one inch.”

  “Careful what you wish for, girl,” the giant said from behind her.

  “All right, that’s enough,” Gavin said. “You two go downstairs. I’ll handle this.”

  “You’ll handle this?” Amanda asked.

  “Just go downstairs and try not to break anything,” he said to the two, ignoring her outrage. “I’ll be right down.”

  “Hurry up,” Jack warned as he opened the door to the second half of Gavin’s house. Jack must have already prowled through Gavin’s house because he knew exactly where Gavin’s stupid light switch was, the switch that had taken Amanda herself a half-dozen times to remember.

  “I’ll be right down.”

  At that, the two strangers shut the door, leaving Amanda and Gavin to listen to receding footsteps and jingling zippers.

  Amanda rounded on him. “What the hell is going on, Gavin? Who are they?”

  Gavin took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “It’s complicated.”

  “Well, uncomplicate it.”

  He scratched the back of his head. “I can’t.”

  “Oh, yes you can. How come you’ve never mentioned them before? How long have you known them? They look like a couple of terrorists.”

  Gavin laughed. “They’re just old friends. Haven’t heard from them in a while.”

  “You and your secrets,” Amanda said.

  “How ’bout we talk about this later?”

  “How ’bout we talk about this now?”

  “I’m sorry, babe,” he said, shaking his head. There was an edge in his eyes that she had seen only once—just today, in fact, at the fair. “They wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t serious.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  An awkward silence fell between them; in fact, it was the first awkward silence that she could ever remember. “I’ll walk you to your car,” he offered.

  “You’re really not go
ing to tell me?”

  Gavin popped his lips in a big sigh. “Afraid not.”

  Amanda frowned and gnawed on her bottom lip. “You suck.”

  “Sometimes,” he said with a smirk, but Amanda wasn’t having it. She tossed her hair to the side and snatched her purse from his couch. Twice she turned to him to tell him what was really on her mind, but twice he seemed to be expecting it and shut her down with unfamiliar flat eyes. Potent. Serious. With the walrus in one hand, her keys in the other, she stepped out into the autumn dusk and thrust her feet into her flats. She could smell burning leaves on the wind.

  His saving grace was the kiss he gave her outside her car door. “You know I love you more than anything, right?” he asked, looking deep in her eyes.

  Amanda nodded, suddenly emotional. “Do you?”

  “More than anything, baby. Anything in the whole world.”

  She smiled, very much needing to hear that. “I love you too, Gavin. Give me a call as soon as you’re through?”

  “Of course, dahlin.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  “I love you,” she said again, stepping into her car.

  He smiled by way of answer, that everything’s-gonna-be-just-fine smile, then shut her door.

  Amanda stared at him through her window, suddenly sad. It would be the last time she looked at him in this light. She didn’t know how she knew, but she knew it as sure as the law of gravity. She backed her Volkswagen Beetle out of his driveway and gave a slow wave, absorbing his tender but stoic stare, put it into first gear and started down the road. Through her rearview mirror she saw that he stayed at the edge of his driveway until she turned the corner. And then she was driving away.

  Chapter Four

  Gavin stared down the empty, moonlit street. Even though autumn had arrived with its scents of burning wood and whispering leaves, he could still smell the last traces of summer underneath—faint fragrances of late summer flowers and drying grass, one last hoorah before their season was past.

  He turned and looked at his house. He’d done well for himself here. The golden lights that contoured his brick walkway beckoned in welcome. But he knew what was inside. Trouble. He’d seen it in Jack’s eyes, felt Tarsidion’s intensity. He glanced up at the single, pale moon that ruled the sky here, took a deep breath and started toward his front door.

  A stiff breeze followed his steps, rustling the leaves of the red maple that stood vigil in his front yard.

  *

  “This is a really nice sword,” Jack said, swinging Gavin’s prized possession in a tight, fluid arc. “Early Muromachi, is it?”

  Gavin descended the carpeted stairs of his basement slowly, wary of his brethren’s stares. There was tension in the air, hot and sticky. “It’s a mid-Kamakura tachi cut down to katana. Good guess, though.”

  Jack twirled and spun expertly within the confines of Gavin’s bamboo-floored dojo, cleaving the air with such dizzying speed that it hissed as he cut through the air. His shadow danced off the paper walls. “Now, where did you get your hands on a mid-Kamakura blade? Must have cost you several fortunes.”

  “It was a gift,” Gavin answered.

  “Some gift,” Jack said, gliding the gleaming blade back into its black-and-gold scabbard with the precision known only to swordsmen. He placed it back on the triple-tiered stand, where the medium-sized wakizashi and the smaller tanto rested underneath. “Love what you did with the place. Full dojo, pool table, and look at all those guitars—tell me that isn’t a seventy-nine George Benson,” Jack said, pointing to one of the eight guitars suspended from wall pegs.

  Gavin did not have to turn around to know that Jack was pointing to the second guitar from the left. “You know your guitars.”

  “Of course.” Jack did another scan of Gavin’s downstairs. “Not bad. Not as good as me, but not too shabby.”

  How had half a decade come and gone? Anger, resentment, that’s how. Even from Jack.

  Gavin glanced at Tarsidion, who was lounging on one of Gavin’s leather sofas, bright leopard eyes watching his every move. “All right already, what couldn’t wait ’til morning?”

  Jack stepped off the bamboo floor. His shark-like eyes lost all light of mischief and swagger. Gavin couldn’t remember a time, at least not here on Earth, when his childhood friend had seemed so serious. Jack pointed to a manila folder resting on the minibar with a tilt of his head. “Go take a look.”

  Gavin scrunched his eyes in suspicion, glanced at Tarsidion, who continued to study him with expressionless curiosity, then walked toward the bar. Gavin turned the folder around with his fingers and calmly opened it.

  In that instant, the life of Gavin Blackburn ended.

  He staggered back with his hand on his mouth as if someone had hit him with a two by four. His eyes felt hot and watery, and for a second he saw sparkles at the corners of his vision.

  Before anything coherent could tumble out of his mouth, he lurched toward the sink behind the bar and spewed out a brownish mess of shish kabobs, cotton candy and caramel apples. Vaguely, out of the corner of his eye, Gavin saw Tarsidion hand a bill to Jack, who accepted it, unsurprised.

  “Told you he was gonna puke,” Jack muttered.

  Gavin wiped a long, gooey strand of drool from his mouth with the back of his hand and stared dumbly at his brethren. No smiles. “How—no, I don’t…impossible.”

  “Always did have a way with words, Stavengre. Very eloquent.”

  “It’s not possible,” Gavin was finally able to croak.

  “Evidently it is,” Jack said with a shrug. Tarsidion’s face was inscrutable.

  “I have the only key,” Gavin said in a hushed whisper, his hand going immediately to a phantom hilt attached to his waist. “There is no other way to open that grave.”

  “Kinda blows that theory out of the water, huh?”

  Gavin stared into oblivion. “Wizards?” he ventured in a whisper.

  “No way, he hates them as much as he hates us. This was something else.”

  “What about the guardian? What about—”

  “Hey, I just work here. Noah’s in Montana right now, checking things out, and Cirena’s on a red-eye from Berlin. She’ll be here at seven tomorrow morning.”

  “Noah and Cirena? How long ago did this happen?”

  “The fact that you don’t know any of this really scares me, Stav.”

  “Just answer the question, Juekovelin,” Gavin snapped, coming back to himself.

  “Seventeen hours ago.”

  Gavin lurched again as another stream of vomit burst through his mouth. Only half made it into the sink. “This is so, so bad,” he whispered, sliding to his knees.

  Jack walked over to him and stared down with his black, beady eyes. “I think ‘fucked’ sums up our situation more appropriately.”

  Chapter Five

  Even though the whispers were gone, he could still feel their aftermath. His mind was like the tender flesh of a finger recently freed of a splinter. No longer a sterile wasteland devoid of any feeling, Donovan had emotions running around like the newly freed animals of Noah’s Ark. One by one he chased them down and shoved them into the divided habitat of his mind. He’d rather have just slaughtered them.

  Donovan passed a slow-moving Sentra without using his blinker. The driver—an over-made-up skank with bags of clothes in the backseat—made as if to share her middle finger, only to drop her hand and roll up her window when she locked eyes with him. She changed lanes and gunned it.

  That’s right, flee.

  Traffic was light on Interstate 94 in the middle of North Dakota. Just sunshine and a sky made
pale by a thin, fibrous layer of cirrostratus that gave the sun a halo.

  The creature didn’t like the sun. That wasn’t to say that it couldn’t deal with it; he’d seen it in daylight, but briefly. It preferred the darkness, which was fine by Donovan—“For men’s hearts love darkness rather than light.”

  And none more than Donovan’s.

  After tracking it for the last thirteen hours and eleven counties, Donovan had gleaned a few things about its behavior and general disposition. He was taking notes. The first and most notable fact was its appetite for human flesh. That was unusual, since most animals preferred less contaminated prey, but then again, this was no animal. Donovan wasn’t sure what it was.

  Yet.

  The second thing he’d learned was that it had two modes of travel—physical and spirit. With a middle finger to physics, he’d seen the creature morph into a black cloud of vapor and race hundreds of feet above the tree line like a fast-moving storm cell. Donovan could smell its acrid wake for miles—wet metal, oily musk and the sweet cloy of decay. There were other odors woven into its wake as well, alien and bitter, but he had no frame of reference for them. Donovan took note, however, that it didn’t maintain this spirit-state for long, perhaps five, ten minutes at the most. As if it were draining.

  Lastly, and Donovan could appreciate this, the creature moved with purpose. It was pissed. It was hungry. It wanted revenge. Whoever had stuck it in that tomb was going to have some “splaining” to do.

  Day or night, whenever Donovan closed his eyes, the creature’s presence lit up behind his eyelids as if he’d just stared into the sun—a side effect of the war that had been waged within the battlefield of his mindscape for the past five years—like radioactive wreckage.

  A war that had begun the day Donovan had been murdered.

  According to his medical reports, and he’d read them, Donovan had been officially dead for thirty-seven minutes, nine seconds. Stabbed twenty-six times, shot five and a slit throat. No pulse, no breathing. Chalk outline. When he woke, he’d punched through a zipped body bag, evoking a variety of gasps and shrieks from the medical and police personnel still around the crime scene. Drinking coffee.