What about Genie? Conrad actually looked from his feet and into his father’s eyes.
She’s going to live with Auntie. I have high hopes for that girl.
Don’t separate us. I’ll stay with Auntie too. Conrad began to fidget mightily. Sweat ran down his neck.
Dad chuckled. First, you make Auntie nervous. Second, you and Genie are entirely too close. That’s what comes of letting Mother practice all that fucking New Age child rearing bullshit on you two—way too much confusion. Not your fault, but all the same, it’s best you kids see other people for a while.
Where is she?
Gone, man, gone. They’ll be on the road a while. Out of the country.
Conrad didn’t say anything. He nodded and tore an x-ray machine free of its mooring bolts and broadsided Dad, sent him crashing through a domino row of shelves. He didn’t use his empty hand because he was enraged, not suicidal. A fire started and Dad came out of the smoke, laughing and swearing, ready for murder.
They destroyed the cellar and then the fight moved upstairs into the main floor of the house and they destroyed that too. Dad lifted the the big stainless steel refrigerator and rammed Conrad, bulldozed the whole living room wall, and then they were in the yard, ripping apart the lawn, tearing up lawn sprinklers and whacking each other with them.
Conrad thanked god Dad was dead drunk, because it slowed the old man down a little. He threw some dirt in Dad’s eyes and while he yelled and blindly pawed the air, Conrad managed to tear the Citroen’s passenger door off its hinges. He raised the door overhead and slammed it down across Dad’s back. It took three tries, but eventually Dad stopped trying to get on his feet, and lay there, muttering. Dad eventually crawled over to the car and got a half-full bottle of scotch off the floorboard.
The two of them slumped on the ruined grass and drained the bottle and watched the house explode in a Hollywood-style ball of fire. Dad wiped a tear from his cheek and explained that Conrad was a special case because he’d been engineered via a cloning process and that his DNA didn’t derive solely from his loving parents, but there was other source material. Material of a basic, primitive stock, an atavistic stock. That was why he looked a tad more brutish than the other lads, and why he could wrench car doors off their hinges, and why he could probably regenerate a non-lethal gunshot wound to soft tissue in a few hours. Maybe they could test that hypothesis one day…
That was also the first time Conrad got drunk. It became a trend. Turned out Dad was right about the gunshot wounds, too.
Chapter Four
I
DeKoon’s men swooped in and plucked Conrad off the street as he limped out of a tavern in the industrial district a few minutes after last call. He saw them coming, decided that discretion was the valorous course, and went along for the ride in a big black limo.
DeKoon sat across the way, immaculate in his white suit and hat. A heavily painted girl in a see-through blouse cuddled him, her hand inside his jacket and circling. She wore peacock feathers in her tightly coiled dark hair and silver eye shadow. A man sat on either side of Conrad. They too wore nice suits and hats, black ones, and sunglasses. Another guy rode up front with the driver and at least two cars followed the limo.
“You appear remarkably improved since our last encounter,” DeKoon said. “Still, only three weeks until the ludus. Not long to prepare for what I assure you shall be a nightmare. The Greek is hell on wheels. And, of course, he’s bringing some associates and pets. A pity for you.”
“Three weeks is an eternity,” Conrad said.
“Yes. You’re a special case. I said the same to Uncle K many, many times. We’ve made a small fortune on people underestimating you. You have the most remarkable endurance and fortitude I’ve ever witnessed. The ghost of Rasputin inhabits your skin.”
“Rasputin had nothing on me. I am going to slaughter the Greek, and his pets, and his associates.”
“I almost believe you.”
Conrad closed his eyes and tilted his head back so the blood and mucus drained from his sinuses down the back of his throat. DeKoon was correct, though—he felt far better than he had any right to. He said, “Uncle didn’t have any heirs. He left you the empire?”
“Let us say I’m the executor. I represent the spirit of his interests. Your incessant meddling with the greater powers that be alarms me and conflicts with said interests. It has to stop.”
“Been talking with my spook buddies.”
“Those two are bad eggs, Conrad. You really should get shut of them. They can’t help you. They are doomed.”
“I suspect our arrangement has run its course,” Conrad said, remembering the sweetly evil voice of the woman, the cloying darkness. “Why the hell are we having this conversation? Unless you hadn’t noticed I’m pretty goddamned drunk. My face hurts. I could use some sleep.”
“Where is the woman you were with the other night?”
“Which one? Nah, I’m kidding, they’re all the same. They come and go.”
“My advice to you is to pursue asceticism and celibacy, at least until after your match. Strange women are no friends to a man such as yourself.”
“Thank you. I’ll shoot the next one who tries to hop into bed with me.”
DeKoon smiled coldly. “It’s like this. The Pageant is a lucrative hobby, a diversion. You are a tiny part of that diversion. I never shared Uncle K’s familial regard for you. The scrutiny from one such as Dr. Drake is so unwelcome, despite your entertainment value, I’m tempted to have you diced so fine you could be sprinkled over a goldfish bowl. End of problem.”
Without opening his eyes, Conrad estimated the angles of his shoulders and elbows relative the vital organs of the men who bracketed him. Both of them had their hands in their pockets, ready to draw pistols. He didn’t like their odds in the confines of the limo. “Then why don’t you?”
“Because I received a package this morning—an exquisite birch hamper of the sort used by the daimios of feudal Japan. The hamper contained several items, including a handwritten missive penned upon obscenely opulent vellum. The details are tedious. The gist was, you are not to be pureed or otherwise molested. The package was sent compliments of one R. Lorca; your sister’s lover. My nephew’s severed head nestled inside the box and the letter was inserted into his mouth. I am of the distinct impression the lad died quite painfully and in much terror. The threat to my remaining family seemed implicit.”
“Well,” Conrad said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks, old chap. As I said, Uncle K was very fond of you. He feared you would come to a bad end. Personally, I hope you do. The sooner the better.”
“Been one of those days,” Conrad said. “Nobody loves me anymore.” And he chuckled.
The limo slowed and stopped on the corner where they’d originally nabbed Conrad. “Your sister is dead,” DeKoon said. “We would know if she were among the living. This phantom that teases you with ciphers and notes and well-placed rumors isn’t her. You are in a web, Conrad. The spider is coming.”
II
Connie, come to the house. Hurry. The note appeared in an email from Imogene’s old account, but he knew in his bones it wasn’t her who pushed send. He didn’t care because the beckoning plea aligned with his mood of desperation and a conclusion he’d already reached. The only place left to go was the one place the poets said a man couldn’t: home.
Three days of steady driving got Conrad across the desert and the mountains and sent him along the shadowy Oregon coast and into Washington—it had been years. He looked over his shoulder the entire way, hypnotized by the chain of headlights in his rearview mirror, wondering how many of them belonged to Dr. Drake, the NSA, or whatever sinister forces were aligned against him.
He spent a night in Olympia at the Flintlock Hotel. He could’ve gone the extra couple of hours to his ultimate destination, the abandoned family home on the Peninsula, but despite his strength and experience with mayhem and death at the hands of brutes and the claws
of beasts, he feared the dark. The darkness of the Olympics at night was particularly oppressive—the ape in him responded to it with bared teeth.
Courage bolstered with a half bottle of whiskey, he opened the package Singh had given him at their farewell rendezvous and viewed the disk on the room computer. There were hundreds of files containing government aerial and satellite surveillance photos, a few motion picture clips, mostly ancient, and primarily concerning remote military installations in regions such as Mongolia, the Amazon Basin, Siberia, and Afghanistan. He kept clicking, certain of where it would lead, certain of what was coming—this was similar to the material he’d retrieved from Imogene’s caches, except for a handful of files buried deep in an unmarked subfolder. These last, labeled CLOISTER c. 1982-83, were muted surveillance feeds of Dr. Drake’s Pyrenees sanctuary.
First, a steady stream of images from the main grounds, then disjointed pictures of the interior corridors, culminating in a two minute recording of events in a large hall. Dozens of children were seated upon the floor in small groups. A pair of braziers smoked and blazed upon a dais at the fore of the assembly. The overhead lights dimmed and then the hall was illuminated by the shifting flames. Two figures entered the room and ascended the dais. Their features were hidden by cowls. Perspective was unreliable, yet the figures appeared freakishly massive, slightly bowed so the crowns of their hoods didn’t scrape the ceiling. They lowered their hoods and Conrad recognized both faces, before the faces changed and became something other than human. The children panicked and tried to flee. Apparently the doors were locked, because none of them escaped the hideous fate that awaited.
Conrad watched the proceedings twice. He removed the disk and snapped it in half and sat for a time, thoughts null.
Olympia’s tree-shaded streets were almost empty at dusk. He bought a steak dinner at a restaurant down the street, then drank a couple of beers in the hotel lounge; nothing stronger because he’d decided to at least attempt a pretense of professionalism. The lounge was a cozy, mirrored enclosure, lightly populated as it was a weeknight, and mostly by tourists. A blonde and a brunette who could’ve been sororal twins perched on the leading edge of the bar where the light illuminated them to best advantage, reduced their surroundings to a background blur. The women wore vintage 1960s dresses and vintage 1960s eyeglasses, slippers and stockings. Probably Evergreen coeds. They sipped mixed drinks in tall glasses and watched him while pretending not to. He bought them another round and one thing led to another and he learned it wasn’t his animal magnetism alone that attracted them, but the fact they were hooking their way through college.
Later, the trio lay tangled on his bed. He sprawled naked on his back and listened to them breathe. Light from the street illuminated the sleeping women, their soft, white curves, his dark and brutish hands draped against that pallid flesh.
The phone rang as he’d known with an unerring instinct that it would. The line hissed. He felt the weight of a presence on the other end. He said, “Is it you?”
“Yes, it’s me,” she said into his ear.
“Are you alive?”
“Are you?”
He squeezed the sumptuous ass of the brunette. The woman groaned and tucked her forehead against his chest. “Yeah, looks like,” he said.
The voice on the phone said, “You met the Brazilian. You took a hit. Jesus! You’re shining like a klieg against the old psychic skyline.”
“I followed your instructions. Watched the films, memorized the triggers. Something’s happening. I’m not certain what.”
“Caterpillar to butterfly, baby.”
“Is this a good thing, or a bad thing?”
“Depends, Connie. The Brazilian’s serum is bad juju. All those Rorschach patterns and evil home videos are also bad, bad juju. Mind-fuckery of the highest order. Put ’em together and it’s a recipe for a mini singularity. You gotta be of a certain genetic predisposition to survive and thrive. Our family tree possesses the recessive genes that react and activate. When this shit you’ve done to yourself finally kicks in for reals, it’ll be the biggest motherfucking trip you ever been on. Those dress up battles of yours… No human will be able stand against you. No beast will lay a paw on you. We’re talking godhead in a needle, brother.”
“Well, sort of sounds all right, you put it like that,” Conrad said.
“Sure, except that your change is a beacon to much bigger fishes cruising the deeps. You know who wants to eat you. He will eat you. Just like he munched Ezzy. Just like he munched thousands of others. He’s been around since before the ice covered the Earth. Doing his wicked deeds, striving to get larger than large. He eats the strong to get even stronger, and to eradicate the competition. He has to, because as big and terrible as he’s become, there are worse. There are frightful things beneath the mountains, beneath the oceans, beneath your bed. Things even the devil himself fears.”
“Fuck Drake. You slipped him. He must have a blind spot.” When she didn’t answer, Conrad said, “Drake is a man. I know how to kill men.”
“His name ain’t Drake, and like I’ve been trying to tell you, he ain’t a man. You won’t be for long, either. Nobody who survives the serum stays human.”
“What about Dad?”
“He didn’t take it. You see, the alchemical formula comes from Drake and Souza, which is akin to Satan handing the Apple to Eve, or Prometheus teaching some Greek how to make fire. For them, the inkblot cards and the serum are trappings of science designed to enthrall and enslave modern minds. A charade of rationality. Drake could simply breathe on you and transform you at the cellular level. He could snatch your brain and show you some cosmic horror that would turn your soul black. The Drake Technique is a joke, the mechanical rabbit greyhounds chase. And when Dad glimpsed the true nature of Drake and Souza, when he realized he’d made a deal not with high priests of a demon cult, but the fucking demons themselves, he opted out. Hilariously enough, he sent you to train with Kosokian, never cottoning to the reality that Uncle K was another of the diabolical set.
“I’m sure Drake had a good laugh at Dad’s expense. He loves games. That’s why you’re still alive. Oh, and because he’s swollen to such gargantuan dimensions he doesn’t get around much. He’s got plenty of servitors…and if one of his agents drags you to the master’s lair, you’ll be sorry.”
“Kosokian is involved,” Conrad said. “He faked his death. He’s mutating.”
“Took you long enough to add two and two.”
“I caught on a while ago. Didn’t know what I’d caught on to, though.”
“Kosokian’s deathbed act is just a snake slithering out of its skin. Happens every few centuries after the first couple of cycles. Uncle K is a monster. Your patron has been on the scene for an eon or three. He’s mortal enemies with Drake, by the way.”
“There’s a video of him and Drake taking a walk on the wild side together. At the Cloister.” He swallowed bile at the memory of the images he’d witnessed. “Seemed like peas in a pod while munching on kiddies.”
“They’ve got rules of engagement. Fuckers plot to destroy each other, but still get together for tea and crumpets on occasion. Lonely being a god, you see. Whole world is against you. Nobody understands you except your nemeses. I figure there’s fifteen or twenty of these dark lords scattered around the world hatching their evil plans—three or four others are elsewhere in the solar system hiding in moon lairs. There’s a reason the Apollo program avoided the dark side of the moon, is all I can say. The really old ones like Kosokian and Drake hate each other like fire, but they don’t get it on directly too often. Nah, they fight proxy wars. How’s it feel to be a proxy?”
“I don’t get it. Kosokian is using me as a proxy? Kosokian’s lieutenant has been warning me off Drake.”
“DeKoon is a patsy. Renfield to Kosokian’s Count. Except, being a dupe, he doesn’t have a clue regarding the identity of his boss. Hapless bastard thinks he’s protecting Kosokian’s estate. Bet he thinks the master is
really dead. Sad.”
“There’s more.”
“Yeah, there is. The real reason poor DeKoon doesn’t know shit, is Uncle K likes to play mind games. Drake, Kosokian, that ilk…they get a rush from sadism, inflicting terror, instilling confusion and dread. They don’t give a rat’s ass about hierarchal efficiency. Hell, half the reason these things even establish organizations is so they can torture and torment their minions. Their own personal larder. To eat, fuck, and cause suffering is their reason to exist. The simple pleasures.”
“Where are you?”
“Let’s just say this is a long distance call and leave it there.”
“I miss you.”
“Yeah, me too. It’s nice hearing your voice. But you gotta forget me.”
“Not a chance, sis.”
“This is goodbye. My situation is… Let’s say it’s not pleasant. Raul tried to kill me and he may as well have considering where I jumped to. When that knife went in I didn’t stop to ponder, I reacted, made a leap across time and space and like the ol’ bottle, went round and round and stopped here, in this place, and I’m stuck. One way trip, folding the fabric of the universe to beat a hasty retreat. See, going back in time is actually to travel forward, which is the way the river flows. There’s no swimming against the current. I don’t want you to get into a similar fix—and you will, you keep fucking around with the ineffable.”
The Light is the Darkness Page 11