Dark Heart

by Margaret Weis;David Baldwin

“I told you not to touch her.”

  “You will suffer dearly for this, Justin. The master will twist you into a bloody rope,” the first voice said.

  Sandra sucked in a pain-wracked breath and tried to see what was happening, but there was nothing to see. She could only hear the noise of a terrible fight between the two invisible creatures—their slashing, their biting, the rip of flesh and crunch of breaking bones. The ground shook with their battle. Something slammed into one of the Dumpsters, knocking it three feet back into the building on the far side of the alley. A huge dent appeared in its side.

  As she watched, mesmerized, dazed, she thought she could make out two barely perceptible shadows in the rain, charging each other, grappling, limbs pulling back and descending in fierce blows with blurring speed. The growls and ripping sounds came from that direction.

  “I don’t believe this…” she whispered, trying to collect her senses, trying to think what to do next. “This isn’t real. I’ve lost my mind. This can’t be real.”

  She pushed herself to her feet and lunged for the back door. Snatching up her gun in her good hand, she turned and concentrated again, was able to pinpoint the almost-invisible combatants. Bringing the gun to bear, she locked her elbow and began firing into the huge shadows. Two pain-filled roars split the night and blood spattered on the far wall.

  The shadows broke apart and one of the shadows ran toward her. She followed it, continuing to fire until the chamber clicked empty. A harsh wind slammed past her and she threw herself to the side. The footsteps suddenly stopped. They didn’t slow or scrape to a halt. They just ended. Sandra looked to her right, but she couldn’t make out anything. Just the wall and the two doors. She thought she saw the smaller, polished door rippling, but she concentrated on it and realized she must’ve been mistaken.

  A tremendous flapping of wings began down the alley. Sandra spun, even as she hit the catch on her pistol, letting the empty magazine fall to the ground. The flapping faded slowly upward. Then she heard nothing but the sounds of the city.

  She thrust her hand into her coat pocket and withdrew another clip, jammed it in the gun. With her back against the wall, she pointed her weapon outward as she slid toward the door. This was crazy! It was all crazy! She couldn’t think anymore. She let her body move instinctively while her mind reeled.

  “McKenzie!” she yelled, pulling on the cold metal handle, opening the grimy back door with her foot and slipping through. She butted shut the heavy door behind her, then turned the dead bolt. From what she had just experienced, it would hardly keep them out, but maybe it would give her a warning if they burst through. Like that would help. The strength of those things was unbelievable!

  They had been invisible!

  Lizard men…

  Dr. Simmins’s words floated through her overworked brain.

  No, she thought. Impossible. That’s not possible!

  Don’t think about it, she told herself. One step at a time. Find McKenzie. Find—

  Sandra looked down as she turned the corner into the kitchen.

  “No!” she cried out, falling to her knees. McKenzie lay chest down on the red tiles. His head was twisted all the way around, his dead eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  “No no no no no…”

  She grabbed a fistful of his jacket and laid her face against his back. He was cooling already. Already inhumanly cold. Rage and remorse slammed into her, and she gritted her teeth so hard she could hear them grind. A waitress came around the corner from the interior.

  She froze and screamed.

  Sandra could hardly blame her.

  “I’m a cop. Shut up!” Sandra snarled, fumbling for and then flashing her badge with her wounded hand, still clutching her pistol in her good one.

  “Just shut up…call the police and an ambulance. Tell them an officer is down. Got that? An officer down!”

  The girl scrambled away, her eyes wide.

  She leaned over McKenzie’s back again. The butt of her pistol smacked angrily into the tile, cracking it. She held her dead partner in her arms, cradling him, even though it was too late to save him.

  Tears ran down her face, spattered across Mac’s dead, staring eyes, a river of unbearable, unending pain.

  twenty-one

  Justin dropped in through the skylight and landed heavily on the floor of his apartment. He bled from a dozen slashes Kalzar had put into him, but he was sure that Kalzar was in far worse shape. His injuries were healing even as he watched.

  Justin’s Wyrm body wanted to find Kalzar and rend him into such small pieces they could never be reassembled. He trembled as he tried to control the rage that surged through him.

  Slouching over to the dais, Justin sat down and took a rapid inventory of his injuries. In addition to the gashes, he had taken three of Sandra’s bullets. They’d burned like fire—one through his wing, one through his forearm, and one into his upper side. The first two had passed through him harmlessly. But the third bullet was lodged between two ribs next to his breastbone, and he must remove it, or he would walk around with lead in his chest forever.

  As happy as his dragonling body was to do harm to others, it was not nearly so excited about ripping holes in itself. Slowly he used his claws to widen the wound. The shiny green scales of his hide resisted him. He growled. He could not easily reach the bullet. It was too far inside him and too awkwardly placed to get a grip on.

  He paused a moment, then growled again and punctured a new hole in his back, trying a different direction. There it was. His claws closed on the lead slug, and he plucked it out.

  Levering himself to his feet, Justin stumbled into the bathroom and brought out an armload of clean towels. He threw them over his chair to protect its upholstery, then slumped into it.

  He considered returning to human form, but the dragonling body would heal faster, and he must go out again soon. He had to find Sandra.

  The huge mirror behind the dais rippled. Kalzar’s scales were the color of Arabian sand, and he had a slighter build than Justin, longer and thinner. His elongated face resembled that of an alligator. Justin was pleased to see how badly he’d wounded Kalzar. Great lines of red crisscrossed his chest. A huge chunk was missing from his neck and the back of one arm. One of his slender wings hung at a strange angle as he picked at a gaping hole in his thigh.

  The bullet came free and he tossed it onto the dais. It clacked down the steps and came to rest on the carpet.

  “I haven’t been shot by anything that painful in a hundred years,” Kalzar said. “I’d forgotten how much it hurts. The last time I was hit this nasty it was a musket ball in Palestine. I had the taste of lead in my mouth for weeks.”

  Justin rose. Kalzar’s narrow eyes followed Justin’s progress as he walked toward the dais.

  “I am going to make something perfectly clear to you, Kalzar,” Justin rasped. “Sandra is mine. Don’t touch her again. I will fight the master himself if that is what it takes to keep her from harm.”

  Kalzar was unmoved by the threat. “Kill? Me?” His many rows of teeth shone in the light as his too-flexible lips peeled back in a smile. “You can’t kill me, Justin. And we both know it.”

  “We are both Elders, Kalzar,” Justin said. “But you do not know all things. If you were a studious man, you would never make such a statement. Try frequenting libraries for a century or two, rather than staking out stray kittens and peeling the skin from their bodies.”

  “Your bluffs are transparent, Justin,” Kalzar said.

  “And your ignorance is immeasurable,” Justin replied.

  “There is no way to kill us.”

  “Read your Beowulf, Kalzar. There is a way. Cross me again, and I will show it to you. I promise you that.”

  As he spoke, Justin again saw the thing in its hiding place. So commonplace a cache for something so deadly to one of his kind. He’d found it in the most unlikely of places, doing his master’s work; had found it, realized what it was, and bundled it up to take along with th
e artifact his master had sent him to fetch.

  The museum guard had interrupted him as he was doing this. The guard’s name had been Baxter, though he hadn’t learned that till later. But Baxter’s death had been a necessity, not only to protect the Dragon, but to conceal any possible knowledge of what he’d found in the room Baxter had tried to guard. To conceal that knowledge even from the master…

  Kalzar’s eyes narrowed, as he tried to determine whether or not Justin was lying. “The master will hear of this,” he said as he backed through the mirror and disappeared.

  Good, Kalzar, Justin thought. Tell the master. I have suffered your incompetence long enough, and now it is time for you to fear, for I have come to the end of my patience with you.

  As he stood there, staring at the disappearing Kalzar, Justin felt the mirror catch hold of him. He tried to turn away, but he was caught. Letting out a breath, he waited for the long-fanged face to appear. He waited to see the enormous dragon’s head, a head as large as his own body.

  Instead, it was Justin’s reflection that began to talk to him, except that the eyes were smoldering red. The voice was deep, low, and tinged with enormous age.

  “My servant, tell me,” the master said to him, “do you not think the time is ripe to put aside your small amusements?”

  Justin closed his eyes and fought the impulse to immediately cry, Yes! I will kill her now, for you, my master!

  His defiance took every bit of strength he could muster.

  “I would ask you, master, to give me time—”

  “Time? I have given you enough time, Lord Sterling. Such a response is unacceptable. How much time do you require when all of eternity is before you?”

  “I wish to turn her, my master. She is worthy, resourceful, intelligent. I want her to become a disciple, to serve you as I do, forever.”

  The master narrowed his smoking eyes. The Dragon made no quick response to the request, but studied its disciple. It was the first time Justin had ever known the master to hesitate.

  “What kind of offer is this, Lord Sterling?” the Dragon asked at last. “I have a purpose of my own—a noble cause. That purpose requires all my attention—and all of the attention of my servants. It is not in me to offer boons to you for your idle enjoyment. The trappings already bestowed upon you are sufficient for the work which needs you as its champion.”

  “She would be a great asset to you, I assure you. I have watched her. Have you not watched her, as well?”

  Again, the master paused. When the Dragon spoke, its voice was barely a whisper, “As I do watch you, Lord Sterling.”

  Justin said nothing.

  “You have served me well, Lord Sterling,” the Dragon continued. “Under this consideration, I do give you a single day to accomplish this. If she looks in the mirror with welcome in her heart, I shall make my own decision upon the span of your lady’s life.”

  Justin gulped and nodded.

  “One day, no more,” the master said.

  And then Justin’s reflection was his own again. His own blue eyes looked out at him, blinked once, and looked at his clawed feet.

  One day, no more. Justin rubbed his finger, looked down in curiosity at the sapphire ring the old Chinese man had given him so many years ago. It was an enigma to him—the only item of his apparel that had ever survived the transformation from his human form to his Wyrm form and back again unscathed. He’d left it on ever since he retrieved it from the trunk—it seemed to speak to him sometimes, to calm his rage, to flare with internal fire at each change of his emotions. It burned his flesh now as though someone had put it in an inferno…

  twenty-two

  The cathedral was practically empty, but it was always open for those who needed to come in and pray. Because it was in a big city, the hours of this church bent to the strange schedules of its inhabitants. The priests kept the sanctuary open twenty-four hours a day, even though they risked the worldly evils of looting and other urban dangers.

  Sandra’s priest said that God was present at all hours—therefore, his house should be open to those who needed him at all times. There was no organized ceremony tonight. A few people wandered the side aisles, admiring the rows of sculpted apostles, prophets, saints, and patrons in the Gothic structure and lighting candles in the lady chapel. The building was filled with that wonderful smell—a hundred years’ worth of incense and holy candles—common to all old Catholic churches.

  The nave—richly ornamented with gold leaf and mosaics—was a hand-built cavern, all perfect curves and right angles. Intricate stained glass windows glowed with jewel-like colors. Carefully positioned lighting outside the church made the windows nearly as beautiful in the evening as they were in daylight. Fluted stone columns speared into the vaulted ceilings. Sandra stared at their tops. The columns, reaching to become a part of the sky, always calmed her. The medieval artisans who had built the soaring stone churches of Europe had managed to paint the emotions of religion in stone. This New World imitation of their art captured that spirit. The very stones of the church cried out the convictions of those who shaped them—that the impossible was attainable. God is near. Reach for him, and perfect yourself for his coming. Work hard. Dedicate your life to the light.

  She took comfort from her surroundings. She needed that comfort. It wasn’t the first time she’d sought relief from a crisis here. The church had been pivotal in her escape from Chuck. Those fluted columns had spoken to her then as well. From them, she gained the idea that she could be more than she was, that she could strive for a better fate than life as Chuck’s punching bag.

  And now where was she? She was back in the same place. Her lover was a monster, just as Chuck had been. A monster with claws and teeth and wings. A mythical being. A dragon. Her lover was a dragon.

  She’d finally placed that strangely familiar voice in the alley. Even distorted by a transformation into who knew what kind of monster, she’d recognized the cadences of her lover’s voice. The stories Justin had told her and Benny at the restaurant were not the products of his mind or his arcane reading. They were true. In his apartment was a mirror surrounded by dragons. Between the cycles of their lovemaking in that long, wonderful night, Sandra had stood in front of that mirror, bathed in her own sweat and Justin’s, and studied the medieval carvings on the border, entranced. An heirloom, he had said. The oldest, most prized possession of his family. He had brought it from overseas because he had always loved it, he had said.

  Did his master speak to him through this mirror? She was sure it did. What was Justin? Was he truly some sort of demon?

  She rested her head in her arms against the back of the next pew. What was she going to do now? She had fled the crime scene as soon as she could, after she’d surrendered her weapon for testing, had her hands swabbed to prove she had indeed fired shots, answered the questions for her captain and Internal Affairs. She’d had the paramedics patch her up but refused to go to the hospital to have the claw marks on her shoulder stitched. She was held together by butterfly bandages, medical gauze, and some painkiller the paramedics had given her. Good stuff, whatever it was. She’d have to look at the name when she had the prescription filled. Nice to know for the next time her life fell apart.

  She was on medical leave, according to her boss. Don’t come into the office, he’d said. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.

  None of it had penetrated the soft, fuzzy cocoon of her shock. She left as soon as she could to come here, stopping only to retrieve the small Chief’s Special revolver that was her off-duty weapon. Now it pressed reassuringly against her bruised ribs, fully loaded. She was going to get the first priest she saw to bless it. Maybe dragons were like vampires or werewolves, vulnerable to bullets dipped in holy water or something.

  It was too much. And who could she tell? Who would believe her? Mac might have, at least some of it…but Mac was dead.

  She almost didn’t believe it herself. She had no proof. Not a shred of evidence. Certainly not an eyewitness. No
t that an eyewitness would have helped. If nobody would believe her, a cop, why would they believe anybody else?

  That made her want to laugh, but she clamped down on the impulse. At this point of emotional exhaustion, laughter opened the gates to hysteria. She could not afford that. Her lover was out there, somewhere, with his claws and his invisible body and his irresistible strength. And his friend was out there as well, waiting for her. Waiting to do Justin the favor of killing her.

  She was going to have to file a report. What would she say? There would be an office full of questions for her, and she had no answers. She had discharged her firearm nine times. She had slow-bleeding punctures around her left breast, a three-clawed gash on her shoulder and on her hand. Her partner was dead.

  And Linda…and McKenzie’s kids…What could she tell them? What could anyone possibly tell them? She would never again hear Mac arguing with Linda. Linda would never again call him at work. Never.

  “Oh, Mac…,” she whispered, fighting her tears. Soft footsteps intruded on her private pain, and she lifted her head, though she did not look behind her. She heard the steps move into the pew just behind her and stop. Somebody settled into the seat with the swish of fabric brushing across wood.

  Fear rustled across her skin. She knew who it was, who it had to be. She didn’t even need to turn around. Somehow, she’d known he would come.

  “Tell me the truth, Justin…,” she said quietly. “Tell me I’m going insane. Tell me everything I saw was a hallucination brought on by stress, brought on by something. Tell me that.”

  “That is not the truth,” he answered, his voice soothing.

  Still she did not look at him. She stared straight ahead, her eyes fixed on a statue of the Virgin Mary.

  “Your friend said I look like your wife. Is that the truth?”

  “Yes.” Justin paused, then said, “He is not my friend.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She died a long time ago.”