Shadows 2: The Half Life

by Graham Brown

  She turned further and launched a grenade. Christian dove to avoid the projectile as it whizzed past him, hitting a parked car and blasting it to pieces in a fireball.

  As she tried to pump another grenade into the launcher, Christian charged, hitting her in a flash. He knocked the weapon from her grip with one hand and grabbed her by the collar with the other.

  Alarms were howling up and down the street. New York’s finest would be on their way in seconds, armed to the teeth for a battle with terrorists. They needed to leave. And fast.

  “Come with me.”

  Her mind was overloaded and spinning. In that state, it gave itself to this command, welcoming the clarity that following orders brought. But before they could get far, police cars swooped into the area.

  Gun-toting officers popped out and took positions behind their doors. “Freeze! On the ground! Now!”

  Christian surveyed the situation. He was impervious to their bullets, but Kate was still mired in the Half-Life. She would die as easily as any human. He didn’t want to hurt any of the police officers, but they could never understand. Nor could they be allowed to stop him from continuing on.

  Christian looked down at his feet where the rifle had fallen. He flipped it up with his foot like a soccer player flicking a ball and caught it in midair and began firing before the police even knew what had happened. Bullets were streaking everywhere. Kate lay on the ground covering up. The police were diving for cover as the headlights, spotlights and blue and red light bars on the roofs of their cars were blasted out in quick succession.

  Streetlights went next. Up and down the road, one after another. In a moment it was dark.

  When the echoes of the gunfire faded, one of the brave officers risked a glance around the armored door of his cruiser. Aside from the burning car they’d been called to investigate, the street was empty. The suspect was gone.

  Chapter 13

  The sound of explosions rocked Ida Washington from her sleep. She struggled to get into her wheel chair, heaving herself from the bed into the seat and pushing forward. She raced towards the window to see what was going on, only to remember that in Christian’s lair the windows were covered by blackened steel plates.

  The security cameras!

  She wheeled over to the computer console, rolling across everything in her way like a monster truck. She flicked the monitor on, but the sounds of destruction had already died. She switched from one camera to another, there were police in the alleyway several blocks over, fire trucks on the main street. She saw a car burning and a crew preparing to douse it but nothing to indicate what had happened.

  The sound of locks turning in the stainless steel door came next. She turned to see Christian carrying a woman over his shoulder. As he laid her on the couch, Ida shut the door.

  “I should have known it was you!” Ida said. “Who else wakes an old woman up with explosions in the middle of the night?"

  “Not my doing,” he said, and then pointed to Kate’s unconscious form. “All her fault.”

  Ida’s brow went up. “Agent Pfeiffer.”

  “Yeah. The woman I sent you to find.”

  “About that,” Ida muttered. “I had a little problem getting her attention. And then it turned out the FBI was looking for her, so I stopped asking questions and came home.”

  Christian nodded, looking around at the mess, books and notes and empty cups were scattered all over the room. “Is that why this place looks like a tornado came thru here? It was neat and tidy when I left.”

  “I don’t have time to clean up,” Ida said. “While you were out gallivanting around, I’ve been working. Very hard, I might add.”

  “Gallivanting?” he said. “I’ve been stabbed, shot at, half drowned and almost blown up – most recently by her. You call that gallivanting?”

  She dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “That’s common place in your line of work. Now, like I was saying. While you’ve been off playing, I’ve actually been getting some solid work done and I have much to tell you. Now be a good boy, and make me some tea since you woke me up at this ridiculous hour of the night.”

  It dawned on Christian that Ida had been lonely. And that this little display was her way of telling him she was glad he’d come home.

  He went to the kitchen, wondering what Drake might think if he saw his mortal enemy being bossed around by a frail, seventy-year-old woman in wheelchair. Maybe, he thought, the King of the Nosferatu would die laughing.

  Before Christian could answer, Kate began to stir and Ida wheeled herself over to the bar.

  “Where are you going?” Christian asked.

  “Poor thing is going to need a drink once you tell her all your secrets of the night stuff.”

  “I already told her.”

  “Then I’ll make it a double.”

  “Well, that’s not a bad idea,” Christian said. “She seems to have lost her mind.”

  As Ida mixed a drink for their new guest, Christian went to check the camera feeds himself. He had a four block radius around his home under constant surveillance. He found the cops were still on the street that Kate had littered with shell casings. They seemed baffled and showed no sign of picking up the trail. The fire department had arrived and were dousing the burning car with foam. “There goes the neighborhood,” he muttered.

  “Where am I?” Kate said, coming out of her delirium.

  Christian turned. “You’re safe. This is my home. And you’re in luck. The police don’t seem to be coming our way. Although, I could call them if you’d rather go explain things to them than stay here?”

  Kate looked at him nervously.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “If that was my goal, I’d have done it while you were unconscious or before the cops came. Or I’d have let you die in the swamps, or in the 9th ward before that.”

  He sensed her searching him and calming down. “I’m sorry about the shooting… I wasn’t thinking.”

  As Kate spoke, Ida rolled up and offered her a tumbler of Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. “You drink this sweetie,” she said. “I even put some honey in it, because you sound like you have a sore throat.”

  Kate’s eyes grew wide. “You!”

  “Yes me,” Ida said. “A lot of chaos could have been avoided if you’d have just slowed down and talked to me. You young people are always in such a hurry.”

  Kate took a quick drink. Her mind grew more focused. “What about the cameras in the squad cars?” She seemed more worried about getting arrested than anything at this point.

  “The video will be blurry at best,” he said. “And I took us the long way around before doubling back. If they pick up our trail at all, they’ll be going the wrong way.”

  Kate sat back. She was shaking, but her mind had finally stopped spinning. She almost felt as if something beyond her had stopped it, like a foot dragging in the dirt off the edge of the merry-go-round.

  “Who are you people?” she asked.

  Ida spoke first. “My name’s Ida,” she said. “He has a lot of names, but he prefers to be called Sonny.”

  “And she lies a lot,” Christian said, before giving his name and explaining the situation in the best way he could.

  Kate took it all with surprising calm. After an hour of back and forth, she ran out of deeper questions and sat there numb and still.

  With Kate seeming to understand what she found herself in, he explained who Drake was, what had really happened in the swamps, and why he needed to hunt for Drake now more than ever.

  “I can’t wrap my head around all this,” Kate said. “But I guess I’m not going to wake up and find out I’m dreaming.”

  “It’s not a dream,” Christian said. “For any of us.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “The only way back is forward,” he said. “You have two choices. If you this think this messenger of forgiveness is out there somewhere, you’re welcome to go look for it. But I can’t tell you how to search or where to start,
and I can’t come with you, even though you’ll be a danger to yourself and everyone around you before too long. I have to find this weapon before Drake does. If I don’t, it won’t matter whether this angel is real or not, because Drake will turn everything to darkness.”

  “And where do you start that quest?” she asked.

  “I know someone, like our friend Ida here, who’s spent all his life studying the past, collecting books and records and knowledge.” He glanced at Ida. “You should meet him actually, you two would hit it off I think. He lives in Germany. He’s the caretaker of a vast, secret library. If anyone has a clue that can lead us to this weapon, it’ll be him.”

  Kate sat back. Christian didn’t pry into her thoughts but she was broadcasting them unconsciously. She was thinking of going back to Washington and turning herself in just to see her son once more. She was also considering going to New Orleans since that was where everyone had expected to find this healer. But now that she’d seen Drake through Christian’s eyes, she could not shake the image of him conquering and destroying, turning all to slaves whether they were human or members of the Fallen.

  “I suppose I could go down south,” she said. “But if it’s all the same, I’d rather go with you.”

  “To Germany?”

  She nodded. “To Germany. Together.”

  Chapter 14

  Port au Prince, Haiti

  The sun beat down on the roof deck of a small hotel in the city of Port au Prince. The hotel was a ramshackle place with rusted iron railings, cracks in the plaster and a faded yellow coat of paint that looked worse from all the touch up jobs that had been attempted on it.

  It was late afternoon. The heat of the day was slowly passing, and the air was thick with the promise of thunder.

  Sitting in the shade of an orange umbrella, Terrance sipped his ice tea, fanning himself with a straw hat. “And I thought New Orleans was nasty in the summer.”

  Across the table, Leroy wiped the sweat from his face with a towel but didn’t reply.

  Terrance could feel the tension in Leroy. He could feel the conflict and the dread. He heard Leroy stand and take a few steps.

  “Why are we here?” Leroy asked.

  “Because there’s work to be done,” Terrance replied.

  “But why this place?” Leroy asked. “It’s depressing. Makes Compton look like Beverly Hills.”

  Terrance had seen Port au Prince years ago, before he went blind. Funny, he thought, it smelled the same, sounded the same, even hummed with the same vibe, but he knew it looked completely different. Even years after the earthquake, crumbled buildings lay where they’d fallen. Weeds grew everywhere because of the weather, but there wasn’t a single tree in sight—not in the city, not up on the hills. They’d all been cut down for wood to make fires and charcoal. Every time it rained the hillsides washed away, and the water became putrid and bacteria ridden once again. All of which meant more wood was needed to boil it and make it drinkable.

  “Did God forget this place?” Leroy said. “It’s like He washed his hands of these people.”

  Terrance understood that thought. Between the earthquakes, the mud and diseases, not to mention the dictators, and the Tonton Macoute—a para-military group that committed so much evil their leader was once called the Vampire of the Caribbean—it certainly seemed as if this place had been abandoned by the Almighty.

  But if that was the case, it didn’t explain the presence of hundreds of missionary groups and charity organizations that struggled here every day, most of which were affiliated with one church or another.

  “Not God’s fault,” Terrance said. “Human choice ruined this half of the island. The other side is the Dominican Republic. Clean beaches, plenty of trees, nice houses and paved roads. Poor in some places, but not destitute, not given to endless violence and anger like in this place.”

  Leroy turned. “Maybe we could go there.”

  “Some other time,” Terrance said chuckling. “When your work is done.”

  Terrance had brought Leroy here for several reasons. To begin with, he knew that this was the city foretold in the prophecy. The church had guessed wrong, as had Drake and everyone else. The angel’s work was to begin in the new world, in a city by the sea, whose heart was French, whose people had suffered from a natural disaster. Everyone who’d read the prophecy thought that was to be New Orleans still recovering from Hurricane Katrina, but Terrance knew differently; he knew it was Port au Prince. He’d known it for most of his life. And with that in mind, who was he to take a detour?

  More importantly, the city became the darkest of places after nightfall. Because of its people’s voodoo and pagan backgrounds, Port Au Prince had been a haven for the undead even before the earthquake. But afterwards... Afterwards a flood of vampires had entered the city, settling in its ruins and festering sores as they always did in lawless areas of the world. With so much death, chaos and destruction they could go unseen and uncountable. Here they could feed to their dead heart’s content and so many did. People went missing in the city nightly and no one looked for them.

  “This place is filled with evil,” Leroy said. “With vampires. I can feel them gathered together in dark spaces, hiding like rats.”

  “Yes,” Terrance said. “Being near the equator this city is not greatly suited for the undead, but the devastation makes up for that.”

  Leroy came back and sat next to Terrance in the shade. “How are we gonna find them?”

  “Finding them won’t be the problem,” Terrance said. “The ones in the Half-Life will seek you out. They’ll call to you. Most of them want to return to their human form. But those who are long passed have grown set in their ways.”

  “Like the two in the warehouse.”

  Terrance nodded. “It takes an extraordinary soul to want to return to the light once they’ve transformed totally. The longer they live in total darkness the more completely it consumes them.”

  “Why not leave them there,” Leroy asked. “Go looking for more who want to change. Seems to me that would be a far better use of our time.”

  “Because the power of light still hides in most of them. In some deep place within their souls. Some of the demons can reach it. Some still remember their humanity.”

  Leroy listened intently but he still had questions. “And what about the ones who can’t, or who don’t want to find it?”

  Terrance took another sip of his iced tea. “Well Leroy, I’m afraid they will probably try to kill you.”

  “What?” Leroy stood in shock.

  “You’re freeing their slaves,” Terrance explained. “You think they’re going to like that? Just take it lying down? You’re the enemy. The light to their darkness. The music to their love of cold silence.”

  “But I…”

  “But nothin’,” Terrance lifted a hand testing the air. “The sun’s setting. It’s time to get moving. Are you ready?”

  Leroy nodded, a nod which Terrance couldn’t see and then said, “As ready as I’m gonna be, I guess.”

  Leroy’s nerves were on edge, but Terrance wasn’t worried. Tonight would be the easiest test of all; it was what happened after that worried him.

  A short time later Terrance and Leroy walked from their hotel, taking the lane that ran beside the ocean. Leroy marveled at the sunset, the way the light caught the tops of the waves and sparkled and flicked like diamonds floating out at sea. Even though he lived in LA all those years he rarely ventured out to the beach. And when he did, the Pacific was always dark and cold.

  They passed by the bars and dingy nightclubs, went past the brothels, drug dealers and the thieves who stood on every corner. No one bothered with them; no one gave them trouble. A fact which surprised Leroy. “In South Central, we’d have been mugged three times by now,” he joked. “What’s the deal?”

  “They know me here,” Terrance said.

  “All of them?”

  “Most,” Terrance said, tapping his walking stick on the ground.

/>   Leroy glanced at the stick and realized it was a different cane than the one Terrance had used in New Orleans. Carved into the staff was a snake and dagger intertwined. Around its center was a chain of small bones. “Oh... They’re afraid of the voodoo.”

  “Not afraid,” Terrance told him. “Respectful.”

  Knowing that, Leroy began to walk taller, looking over his shoulder a little less. He suddenly felt a burst of confidence, they were important people after all.

  The spring in his step lasted all of five minutes, at which point they came to an unlit intersection.

  “Which way?” Terrance asked.

  “How should I know?” Leroy replied.

  “What do you feel?”

  Leroy looked around. The street turned to rubble a short ways down and a track had been worn in the weeds, where cars and trucks avoided the broken pavement. To the left, a road snaked up hill and between buildings that were nothing more than caved-in shells. More casualties from the earthquake.

  “Do you feel it?” Terrance asked.

  Leroy could feel a heart beating somewhere in the ruins.

  “The young ones.”

  Terrance took a step backward and Leroy stepped forward. He closed his eyes. He felt their fear.

  “Three of them,” Leroy said. “They’re afraid. The boy is thinking about killing himself. He doesn’t understand what he’s become.”

  “Then it’s time.” Terrance said.

  Leroy took a deep breath and took Terrance by the arm and stepped forward.

  As they got close to the burned out, broken building, a human yelled from the street. The words were French, in a Haitian accent.

  “What’d she say?” Leroy asked.

  “She said, you’re entering the house of the dead. All those that go in never come out.’”

  Leroy gulped at a lump in his throat but continued on into the crumbling building. The old wood boards creaked under their feet. Stairs led up into darkness and a hall beckoned in front of them. The smell was unbearable. Flies could be heard buzzing around something in the corner.