Beyond the Veil

by Tim Marquitz

  Longinus followed me down the street in brooding silence, trusting I knew what I was doing. We’d both find out soon enough. The first of the alleys came up quickly, and I just kept walking. A furtive, sideways glance told me I’d been right. An orange-ish shape crouched low, just a few yards into the alley, mostly hidden behind a pile of rubble. If this world hadn’t been so dull in comparison to its people, I might have missed the freak, but it’s hard to not notice a Halloween mask amidst the somber gray of wreckage. I kept going, making him think he was safe. As soon as we cleared the corner and were out of sight, I tapped Longinus on the arm and darted back into the alley at full speed. The ex-AC thundered behind me.

  There was a gasp as the alien realized we’d caught him, and he scrambled to get out of the debris. He tripped and went down face first with a grunt. I was on him a split second later with my gun pressed into the back of his skull. A quick flip rolled him over to face me, and I was struck once more by my questionable ability to distinguish gender as a pair of small boobs appeared to stand out under her shirt. He was a she, and a scrawny she at that. Had I been fishing, I would have to throw her back.

  Her face was longer than the other aliens I’d seen, the striping less apparent, subtler amidst the soft orange. There was a delicate, almost mousey look to her features. She couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, skin and bone layered in loose, nondescript clothing. The alien caught her breath and glared first at the barrel of the gun, and then her dark eyes shifted to me. She had a spine, this one.

  “Who are you and why are you following us?”

  “Are you here for the alien?” she countered, her voice nasally and proper through the translator.

  That got my attention. “You’re all aliens.”

  “Only to you.”

  “Tell us who you’re talking about, girl,” Longinus barked at her. Spittle peppered my shoulder and I did my best to ignore it.

  “Let me up first.”

  I eased back but didn’t lower my gun, letting her move to a seated position. She wasn’t going anywhere. “Tell us.”

  She nodded, the snarl on her face going from full burn to simmer. “The stranger: the one draining Desboren of its magic. Is that who you seek?”

  That sounded as likely a candidate for Gorath as any. “Yes, he’s who we’re after.” Longinus grunted an affirmative beside me.

  The girl crawled to her feet, dusting her knees. A delicate smile graced her lips. “Then I have someone you must meet.” She took a half step backward and pointed at my gun. “Now, if you don’t mind.”

  I shrugged and slipped the pistol back in its holster. The girl had stubby little legs compared to the out of proportion length of her arms and torso. She might swing like Tarzan, but with no trees around she damn well wasn’t gonna be outrunning anyone. “Lead the way, young lady.”

  She snorked and walked off down the alley.

  “She is most likely leading us into an ambush,” Longinus whispered as he came alongside me.

  “Probably, but seeing what you were looking to do to Jojo back there, do you really mind?”

  The traces of a grin brightened his face, and he started off after the girl without answering. I shook my head and followed, wiping at my sleeve. As lousy as it was, we were stuck waiting on Jesus’ boy to get the official line on where Karra had gotten to, but if we hit the streets hard enough, we might well scare up something sooner. It was worth a shot, and there was no arguing the fact that both of us were spoiling for a fight. Violence is a great distraction. There’s something soothing about punching someone in the face.

  I really didn’t want to think about what Gorath intended to do with Karra. If he was using her to draw me out in order to lure Lucifer to him, I felt reasonably confident she would be safe for a little while…at least until he achieved his goal, but the longer we waited, the more likely it became that something bad would happen. And with Karra, that could be every second she was conscious and breathing. There was no way she would sit there and let Gorath use her, even against Lucifer; too much of a scrapper for that. She would fight and all hell would break loose. A sigh slipped out, and I hoped she was all right. I couldn’t handle thinking otherwise.

  I still didn’t know how Gorath had captured her, how he’d managed to corral and knock her out without getting his ugly ass kicked. If he hurt her…

  My face warmed as I imagined the worst and shook the images from my skull before they could latch on. If Gorath had hurt her, what Longinus did to Mihheer was only a sample of what I’d do to the motherfucker when I caught him.

  “This way,” the girl said, pulling me from my murderous thoughts.

  She slipped through yet another alley, not more than a couple blocks from where we’d cornered her, and into a valley created by the three and four story buildings that surrounded it. No lights flickered in any of the windows, deep crevices of darkness devouring the lower halves of the buildings at the back. A flat field of cleared rubble sat in between the towering wrecks with absolutely nothing to block the view from the apartments that looked down on us from every direction. It was the perfect spot for an ambush, and she strode right into the center of it all and waved us on. Common sense said to stay put at the far edge, but neither of us listened.

  “Stay here. I’ll bring him out.” The girl darted off into the shadows of the building ahead, her orange figure fading away into nothingness.

  Longinus glanced back at me over his shoulder, a grim smile on his face. “Still think this is a good idea?” His gaze strafed the hundreds of windows looming above. They made it impossible to know which way an attack might come from.

  “Never thought it was a great idea to begin with, we just didn’t have any other options that didn’t end in us killing the one alien who’s supposed to know something.”

  “It worked out well enough with Mihheer.”

  I had to admit he had me there. I just shrugged and kept my eyes on our surroundings. As much as I wanted to blow off a little steam, I’d been shot in the head by a sniper once and wasn’t looking for an encore. That shit hurt.

  The minutes dragged on, and I was starting to feel like a lobster in a restaurant tank waiting to be plucked. Longinus drifted forward with slow steps, putting some space between us. Every second that passed found me hunching just a little lower. My hands twitched inside my jacket as I fondled the grips of my guns. Just when I thought we were both gonna lose all self-control and start breaking something, the girl returned.

  An old man clung to her arm. As they slipped from the darkness and into the gloomy light, I spied the obvious. The man was blind. His eyes were a milky white, no apparent pupils squirming in their depths. The pair scuffed along the roughened asphalt—or whatever it was—and came straight toward us. The old man was hunched and wore nothing but a simple brown robe made airy by numerous holes. He’d worn the things out. My gaze snapped upward at seeing his coin purse bouncing free beneath the holey clothing.

  Longinus kept vigil while I stared—at the guy’s face, not is package. The girl brought him to a halt before us.

  “These are the aliens you foresaw, master,” she said, motioning to us with a wave as if the old cooter could see the gesture.

  “Thank you, Rala. Bring me closer.”

  Longinus stared down at the aliens, splitting his attention between them and the buildings. He shifted to put me in front as the two shuffled a step nearer. The old man sniffed the air right before me.

  “There is darkness inside your heart, stranger. What do they call you?”

  Tell me something I don’t know, grandpa. Longinus chuckled and shook his head to let me know he thought we were wasting our time. I was beginning to agree.

  “Yeah, I cheated on my taxes once,” I told him. “The name’s Frank. Now tell me who you are.”

  “I am Vol—”

  “Is your last name Vo?”

  His eyes narrowed, the hairy brows slumping down like caterpillars.

  “Never mind.” I
t’s hard to be me sometimes. “Why is your pet following us?”

  “Rala? She searched for you at my behest.”

  Longinus sighed, the sound like glass shards tumbling through a sifter. “Why did you bring us here, creature?”

  The old man’s blind eyes snapped toward Longinus. “You have come to destroy the other alien, the one who preys upon the magic of our world, have you not?”

  “We have,” I cut in quick. “What can you tell us about him?”

  “You must beware the pieces of the puzzle buried within the puzzle. There can be no trust. A dagger glistens in the darkness…”

  My head involuntarily shifted sideways on my neck as the alien droned on. I can haz crazy?

  “The Eidolon have come to devour us all. They lurk in the shadows, the dark phoenix arisen from the ashes of what once was,” he went on. “The enemies of friends are enemies no more, the circle coming about to encircle…”

  I raised my hand to wave him off and realized I was doing the same dumb shit the girl had. “Whoa there, gramps, you’re losing me.” Longinus huffed and turned away, clearly not amused. I tapped the spot where the translator worm had crawled into my arm, thinking it had gone haywire. “Maybe stream of consciousness is a valid form of communication here on your planet, but I don’t have the slightest idea as to what you’re rambling on about. I’ve had acid trips that were more coherent.”

  “He warns of the beings who claim to war for the sake of the universe but whose true desires are far more dangerous, whose machinations are disastrous for the whole of existence.”

  “Couldn’t he have just said that?” I sighed, looking at Vol. “Do you mean God?”

  “Who is this…God you speak of?”

  I glanced at Longinus and shrugged, turning back to the old man. “You know, the big guy in the sky who created this world and all the rest of the ones floating around in space, the leader of the army that has come to free Feluris?”

  Vol shook his head. “I know of no such being. There is only the darkness in the light, the assassin in the--”

  I groaned, cutting off his tangent. “Since we’re not talking about the same thing, do you have names, buddy? Addresses of the Eidolon bad guys, maybe?” Having dealt with Chatterbox, I was fairly used to incoherent rambling. The zombie head only had a couple of interests—porn and sex—so we had enough in common we could understand each other. This talking head, however, was on a whole other level of out there. If he’d have tossed some tits into the mix, I might have something to latch onto, but no such luck.

  I stiffened at a metallic clang and the sudden buzz of a wasp zipping past my ear. For a second there, I thought I’d blown a gasket. My head swiveled around to see Longinus’ sword hovering just inches behind me, my face reflected in the wavering steel. Wisps of smoke cast tiny ripples of distortion in the image. Beyond the blade, I spied a couple dozen aliens charging toward us. Each wore a mismatched set of riot-type armor over their clothes, helmets with clear facemasks and thick plates draped down their torsos. Spears and swords seemed to be their main weapons, but the largest of the group held what looked like a small, hand cannon. It was pointed directly at me. The alien grinned as he pulled back a lever on the side of the gun. The click of its motion struck a chord in my dimmed sense of self-preservation, bringing everything into perspective

  He was trying to kill me.

  Eight

  “Oh, hell no! You did not just try to shoot me.”

  “He did, actually.” Longinus twisted his sword so I could see the other side. A hint of sooty blackness marred the surface where he’d blocked the blast aimed for the back of my skull.

  “Son of a…”

  Longinus shrugged as Rala bounced into action. She grabbed the old man, hugged him tight against her, and raced toward the shadows at our back. They were all assholes and elbows, leaving us to deal with the would-be hit squad on our own. I looked to Longinus, and he motioned for me to go first. So generous.

  I pulled my guns and ducked as another bullet—damn near the size of an acorn—zinged overhead. A quick glance behind told me neither the girl nor her master had been hit, the pair still hustling for cover, so that was something. My fingers twitched on the triggers, and I returned fire. The first shot slammed into the facemask of one of the aliens. It turns out the thing was mostly bulletproof.

  The mask spider-webbed under the force of the blow and snapped his head sideways. His body caught up a split second later, and he wobbled on his feet but didn’t go down. My second bullet grazed his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Impressive,” Longinus commented as he met the first wave that crashed over us. One of the aliens was split in half from stem to stern from the upward slash, the green stew of his guts splashing to stain my boots.

  Longinus was clearly jealous that I got more mileage out of my toys than he did. A spear zipped past my cheek in a silvered blur. I batted away the thrusting arm and stuffed my pistol up under the facemask and squeezed the trigger. The helmet muffled the report, but it was like sticking a bullfrog in a blender. Blood and chunks of indefinable mush exploded inside to coat the mask. It gushed out from underneath as I kicked the body aside to shoot the guy behind him.

  Up close and personal, the D/A slayer punched a hole straight through the makeshift breastplate. There was the dull thump of the bullet impacting the armor at his back and another meaty thunk followed right after. He grunted and stumbled forward with his eyes rolling in their sockets. I matadored him aside, picturing my bullet bouncing around in his squishy bits, trapped by the steel plates on either side. It wasn’t a pretty way to die, that’s for sure.

  His buddy must have thought me cruel because he stabbed me in the shoulder.

  The blade sunk into the meat until it hit bone and came to a grinding halt. I twisted away but the bastard hung on, grunting and swearing as he tried to push the sword in deeper. The wound burned like a feral case of the crabs—not that I’d know anything about that. It wasn’t a magical weapon, but it still hurt like a bitch. Before he could sink the blade in any further or yank it out, I placed the barrel of my .45 to his wrist and blew the joint out the other side in bits and pieces. He shrieked and stumbled back. That’s when I shot him in his baby parts.

  Oddly fortunate—unfortunate?—to have noticed the Felurians had external genitalia, I was guessing they were every bit as sensitive as humans. Alien-boy squealed and collapsed to the floor like a deflated balloon proving my guess to be painfully accurate.

  Another of the Felurians ran up alongside me, and I spun, slamming him in the side of his head with the pommel of the sword still stuck in my shoulder. It stopped him cold though I was pretty sure it didn’t hurt him anywhere near as much as it did me. He stared at me with wide eyes, full of offended surprise, their swirling color distorted behind the mask. I aimed the pistol in my left hand at his crotch and winked. He hunkered down to cover his nuts with the armor and his hands, having seen what I’d done to the last alien. That was fine since it was all a feint, anyway. I pressed my other gun against the top of his head. This close, the helmet would need to be made of Bill Clinton’s ego to shrug off the shot.

  It wasn’t.

  Steel warped and tore away, and the alien slumped, a waterfall of brains and blood spurting downward to stain his chest. His spear fell at his side, unused.

  A gunshot that wasn’t mine drew my focus from the corpse. The big alien, more leopard than cuddly zebra, fired over the crowd at Longinus. The ex-Anti-Christ cleaved through one of the others just before the shot ripped into his arm. He hissed as the bullet cut a groove across his biceps and careened off his ribs as he spun away. The look he gave would have puckered assholes even in a bathhouse, but big boy must have been a special kind of dense. He just giggled and stood there, at the rear of the pack, cranking the lever of his gun back into place. Several of the little folks leapt at Longinus while he was distracted. They hacked and slashed, yanking his attention away from the gunner who hadn’t forgott
en about Longinus. The alien clacked the chamber home and aimed. I shot first…a couple of times.

  The rounds hit him square in the side and knocked him over. He fell out of sight behind the others. His gun spit its smoking wad into the air as he went, but I wasn’t given a chance to see if I’d killed him. Another Felurian dove at me, trying to skewer me on his spear. He missed by about a half inch. The sharpened point hissed by, and I locked my right elbow over the shaft, pinning the weapon against my ribs. I grinned and shot him in the shin. The Felurian screamed as I fired into his other leg. He dropped, and I let his spear go, driving my knee into his chin, just below the facemask. The alien grunted as he went out. I put a bullet in his neck to be sure and then yanked the sword from my shoulder. It stung as it pulled free, but it wasn’t too bad. With it out of the wound, I’d heal up quick enough. The skin already tingling, I glanced over at Longinus.

  Bodies lay scattered all around him, but there was something different about the way he fought. He’d leapt into the fray quickly enough, even confidently, but I hadn’t noticed how sluggish he seemed before. There should have been nothing but dripping corpses left by now, but there were still a bunch of the enemy throwing themselves at him. A quick head count told me the majority of the aliens had gone after him. He certainly looked the scarier out of the two of us, but why would anyone leave the demon with ranged weapons for last? It didn’t make sense.

  Or maybe it did.

  A light went off. As rough as the journey to God’s plane was, Longinus had been protecting me. That was what the dread fiend blood was for. He didn’t need it to power the gate, but had used it so he could use his own energies to buffer the impact of the trip on me. Despite it, he was exhausted and drained of his magic, and we weren’t getting shit from the Felurians in the way of soul transfers. That’s when it hit me.