Darkman ground his teeth. The rage was still there. But so was the fear, and if it were up to him, he would flop down on the girder and hang on until the crew arrived in the morning.
But . . . it wasn’t up to him. It was up to a man named Rangeveritz.
Darkman jumped for Strack, launching himself skyward, a flying wonder in a cut-rate suit, parts of his face disintegrating in the cold wind. He smashed down onto the girder where Strack had been, but Strack was gone and Julie was alone on this bleak beam, wavering and bobbing to stay in place, her eyes twin lamps of terror. Darkman swung around, hands ready to stab and claw, but Strack was in the moon shadows of the interior, chuckling.
“Bravo, Mr. Westlake. I applaud your clumsiness. I would love to shoot you right now, but for all the trouble you’ve caused me, I will wait to hear your screams when you fall. Know how long it takes to reach the ground in free-fall? A long time, Westlake. A long, long time. Plenty of time to consider what I did—with Julie—while you were away. Did you know about the mole on her inner thigh, the left one? I know. I know a lot of things.”
Darkman jumped toward the voice, a ragged scream of hate barreling past his lips. He landed hard on a stack of plywood, breaking another finger bone. He went up on all fours and searched the dark with Skip-eyes that were small and slitted.
“Look around yourself, Westlake. Look at the new construction going up. Remember when this place was a pile of filth where the drunks came to puke and sleep and get rolled by teenage punks? All of that is changing. Someday this river will run pure and clear, good enough to stick your face in and drink forever. This is the dream. And here you are, a circus freak let out of its cage, a murderer, a destroyer trying to crush my dream. What do you really look like, Westlake? As bad as the riverfront used to be or worse?”
Darkman swiveled his head, noting that Julie was sidestepping back off the plank, retching on the red cloth with saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth, moving slowly. For now, at least, she was okay.
“You want to know how I look?” Darkman shouted into the darkness. “I look like you, Strack. You hide behind money and lies and false faces, and all I’ve got is the false faces.”
There was a pause. Then, gently: “I guess we both belong to the same club, Westlake. Let’s call it the pretenders’ society. I pretend to be nice and admirable and generous. You pretend to be human. I live a lie, you live a lie. Who’s worse?”
Damn, Darkman thought, damn, damn, damn. The bastard had brains, unlike his partners, and he knew how to use the shadows. “Why are we arguing morality, Strack? I believe you said you don’t like the word.”
Silence. Julie came to a vertical beam and leaned against it, a white ghost against the sky and the stars. Strack was silent, possibly moving, possibly not, possibly anything.
“Strack!” Darkman shouted.
The reply sounded weary. “You are a killer, Westlake. I live only to build—skyscrapers, malls, office buildings, whole towns. I put stuff up, but all you can do is tear stuff down. But you know what?”
“What?” Darkman answered, swiveling his head to find that voice. “Go on, what?”
“No one ever said being bad didn’t feel good. It grows on you, gets better every time. Pretty soon you’re hooked on it, needing to shape the world just the way you want it, eliminating anybody who stands in the way, feeling oh so fine. If I guess right, you’ve killed all five of my men. Skip was the last one, right? What did you do to him? Stab him? Smother him? Does it even matter to you?”
Darkman kept his mouth shut, looking without seeing.
Seconds passed. A minute. Two minutes.
Strack sighed. “I’ve got a little job for you over in Atlantic City. I want you to do your mask thing, impersonate someone for me. If you do it right, I’ll pay you a quarter of a million dollars and give you Julie as a bonus. Sound good?”
This time Darkman waited, still madly trying to pinpoint that voice.
Something winked in the darkness just to the right, some golden metal touching a moonbeam. A cuff link? A belt buckle? A ring? The gun? “Not even if you could give me back my life, Strack,” he growled, then gathered himself and pounced toward the light.
His fingers brushed against soft fabric, and then there was nothing but air. He snatched out wildly and caught the side edge of a girder. The moon was a cold white beacon, the man in the moon looking on without interest as Darkman tried to keep his artificial finger pads from slipping. Strack leaned over and began pounding his hands with the butt of his revolver. Slivers of bone burst past the slipping skin, raining down on Darkman like ghostly sawdust. He looked down, looked for something to land on, but there was only cold air and steel and one hell of a drop.
He tried to pull himself up. Strack kept pounding his fingers. It was a minor irritation, not painful at all, but when Darkman brought his head into range, Strack started pounding it too. It didn’t hurt much, but it was growing very tiresome. He swung out and captured one of Strack’s ankles with a fist. Strack let out a whoop and grabbed a vertical beam while Darkman clambered onto the girder, breathing hard, balanced between rage and fear.
Strack jerked, trying to free his foot. Darkman pulled, managing to tear Strack’s shoe off. It tumbled out of sight. Nice going, Darkman thought sourly, chiding himself. The poor bastard will certainly miss that wing tip.
He tore Strack’s sock off, just for the hell of it. Strack grunted, stretched taut between his captured girder and Darkman’s hands. The artificial skin ripped free with a squelch, and the mushy Skip-hands pinwheeled out of sight. Strack looked at Darkman’s scorched claws, his eyes growing wide in the moonlight.
“If your face looks as bad as your hands,” he said, noisily straining to stay in place, “I’d sure hate to see it. You are just a damn carnival freak.”
Darkman growled. It’s not nice to call a freak a freak. He pulled one hand free of Strack’s bare foot, beginning to feel the extra strength, the partner to his anger. He considered twisting Strack’s foot until something snapped, but a better idea surfaced, a more fitting punishment for this creature made of money and lies.
He tore the Skip mask and wig off, glad that the moon was shining directly in his face. Strack let out a loud gasp.
“Go ahead.” Darkman sneered. “Pass out, go blind if you want to. You did this to me, Strack, stole my future and my girl. I hope you’re happy with the results.”
Strack put on a false smile. “They have a carnival going in town, part of the Octoberfest. You could get a job, a free cage, straw to sleep on.”
“Never lose your nerve, do you? Mr. Smart Guy to the end.”
Strack nodded, his own face strained as his grip on the girder weakened. “Get yourself a bag, cut an eyehole in it, and you can be the Elephant Man. Of course, a big jug of formaldehyde would preserve you longer.”
Darkman twisted his foot. Strack groaned, his hold on the girder getting weaker. Anklebones crunched as Darkman rearranged them. Strack gritted his perfect white teeth, the pistol still in his fist but quite useless unless he let go.
Walking practically on tiptoe, Julie edged toward them, the front of her white blouse stained from the flow of saliva, the wind blowing her hair, making it shift and billow. Darkman turned and saw her. He turned his head quickly away, not wanting her to see him unmasked.
“Stay away,” he said, unconsciously easing his hold on Strack’s foot.
With a huge jerk Strack pulled himself free. He aimed the gun, hopping on one leg. “Say good-bye, Westlake,” he crowed triumphantly. “This bullet’s for you!”
Darkman ducked in time. The bullet thunked against steel and bounded away, whistling crazily. Both Julie and Darkman went into a squat while Strack fired again, and again. Julie wobbled, retching against the cloth, almost ready to fall. Darkman reached out and caught her elbow, steadying her.
The moon showed her eyes as they shifted down to his hand. She emitted a bloated, terrified screech.
“Do you see now?�
� Strack shouted at her. The wind picked up, whooping past the unyielding steel, moaning with a hundred cold voices. “He isn’t a man anymore, Julie. He isn’t even human. Look at him!”
Darkman snatched his hand away from Julie and covered his head and face with his arms.
“A freak, Julie. A nightmare, a spook. Is that what you want? Come back to me and we’ll forget that this Peyton creature ever existed. Forget, too, that damn Bellasarious memo that caused all this.” He extended a hand. “Together, Julie. You and I, just us. All grudges set aside. In other words, a declaration of peace.”
She stared at Strack with her hugely gaping mouth drooling, her hair tousling back and forth. Darkman peeked through his arms and saw her nod. She sidled toward Strack, stopping where Darkman blocked her path on the beam. Strack reached out and steadied her as she stepped past him. Strack was smiling gently. He pulled her close and jerked the soggy cloth out of her mouth. He tossed it away while she recovered.
“Mr. Westlake,” he said, “I believe our business is almost ended. There is only one more thing to do and we will all be released from this silly bondage.”
Darkman turned his back. Julie should not remember him as Darkman but as the Peyton she had loved.
“Only one thing left to do, Mr. Circus Freak,” Strack said. “Julie will live, but only if you can prove your love for her.”
Darkman shuffled around, uneasy, shielding his face from the light.
“You will take an extended hike off this building, Mr. Nobody. I want you to jump.”
He spun Julie around and hooked an arm around her neck. “Either you jump or she does. Which will it be, Romeo?”
Darkman stared at him.
Anger . . .
“Once you are in the coffin you deserve, I will make Julie my bride.” He stroked her breasts with his free hand. She stiffened but said nothing.
ANGER . . .
“These are my treasures now, a bit wet, but still mine, you ugly son of a bitch. Remember that mole on her thigh? I will be seeing it again and again and again, while you rot in the hell you came from.”
RAGE!!!
He jumped at Strack, no longer afraid of the height, no longer afraid that Julie might see his face, no longer afraid at all. Strack swung the gun up, too late. Darkman smashed it aside and tore Julie from his grasp. She wobbled, arms pin-wheeling, a high-pitched scream of terror slipping out, but Darkman pulled her so she could regain her balance, and stood face-to-face with Strack, boiling with hatred for this human swine.
“Now who jumps, asshole?” He snarled in Strack’s face and grabbed him by the hair. With one overpowered move he yanked him some ten feet in the air. For a moment Strack was outlined against the moon, a windblown scarecrow with its legs and arms wildly flailing, a thin scream of fright bursting out, and then he was falling and falling.
Darkman reached out as he passed. He snagged him by one ankle, the bare one, gloating inside that as Darkman he was stronger than Charles Atlas, stronger even then Schwarzenegger, the victim of a mutation that had made him powerful and deadly. He laughed at Strack.
“If you can’t fly, you’d better learn how, Strack,” he said, chuckling. “Better learn pretty fast too.”
“Wait,” Strack screeched, upside down, the change in his pockets clattering out. “Listen to me! If you kill me, you’ve become as bad as I have. Maybe worse. If you drop me, you’ll be the monster you look like. I know you. Julie told me a lot. If you kill me, you’ll never be able to live with yourself. Right?”
Darkman dropped him. “Wrong.”
Julie gasped.
Strack screamed for a remarkably long time before stabbing through the re-bar and splatting against the cement that his own men had poured just two days ago.
“I’m learning to live with a lot of things,” Darkman whispered, and covered his face as he walked to the elevator, afraid only that the moon would show his face to Julie and end forever the memories she already had.
Epilogue
Nobody
JULIE WAS WAITING by the crude elevator, tears sparkling on her cheeks, her hands still tied behind her back. Darkman walked toward her, his emotions draining, replaced by a numbing weariness and dread for the future.
She unhooked the chain and backed inside, her face becoming a black mask. Darkman stepped in beside her and turned his face to the plywood wall, feeling that even in the darkness his mangled features could be seen. He reached to the lever on the wall and the elevator started down.
“Peyton?”
He didn’t respond.
“My hands?”
He turned a bit and untied her. The thin white rope dropped to the floor. She wrapped cold fingers around his forearm, trying to pull him close, but now he had become a statue.
“Peyton, look at me. I can help. The burns don’t matter to me.”
He laid a claw on her hand. Sudden nausea rose up her throat as the cold, pointy things touched her skin, skeleton fingertips that were broken and spiky and smelling vaguely of rot.
“Look at me,” she said evenly, almost sternly. “Peyton, turn around and look at me.”
He shuffled around. Bars of light and shadow swept upward on his . . .
face?
She clenched her teeth together to capture the gasp that had welled up in her throat. In the stuttering darkness a savage monster was encaged beside her. She gave herself a mental slap.
“It’s only a burn,” she said, hoping to convince herself as well.
He let out a miserable chuckle and spoke. “Don’t you think I’ve told myself the same thing, night after night? A burn. Only skin-deep. I could make masks to fool you, but it only made the disaster worse. I wanted you to love me without pity. But just when I got the masks down pat, something strange happened.”
“What?” she asked. “What happened?”
He clutched his head, groaning. “I’m not Peyton anymore, Julie. I live in the dark like a vampire. I have no future left, nothing. I won’t drag you down with me.”
The elevator jerked as it touched the ground. Julie unhooked the chain and guided Darkman out of his cage, pulling him by one elbow. He had begun to make wrenching sounds of despair. Her stomach gave another lurch. He was crying.
“I want our old life back, Peyton,” she said, pressing herself close. That aroma of slow decomposition enfolded her and she nearly retched. “I want our lives, our careers, our nights—Peyton, wear a mask if you must, but for God’s sake don’t leave me again.”
He sighed heavily, shaking his head. “Ninety-nine minutes, Julie. A chance to pretend nothing happened, no fire, no explosion, no nothing. But I can’t spend the rest of my life making Peyton masks that self-destruct every hour and a half. I don’t belong in the real world anymore. I’ve changed—been changed—and I can never go back.”
He started to walk away. She grabbed him and flung her arms around his neck, crying herself. “You can’t leave me again. I can’t take it anymore! Jesus, Peyton, I can’t live without you!”
He pushed her away gently, stroking her cheek with what was left of his fingers. “These hands used to caress you, but now they can only kill and destroy. Julie, Peyton did die. He will stay dead forever. I do not know who I am, but I do know who I was—and never will be again. Good-bye, Julie.”
“No! Don’t leave me!”
But he was already walking away.
It began to snow, but by then she had crumpled to her knees with her hands clasped over her face, and didn’t notice the snow, and didn’t care.
Winter was here at last.
Table of Contents
Back Cover
Titlepage
Copyright
DARKMAN
Prologue: Eddie
PART ONE: Destruction
1: Yakky
2: Peyton
3: Julie
4: Stracks
5: Julie
6: Peyton
7: Durant
8: Peyton
9: Julie
10: Robinson
11: Peyton
12: Darkman
PART TWO: Revenge
13: The Party
14: Night Sweats
15: Bosco Delivers
16: A Nervous Breakdown
17: Lab and Light
18: An Interlude at Millings Supply
19: The First Move
20: What a Ruckus
21: Requiescat in Pace, Rick
22: First Kiss Foiled
23: A Ghost from the Recent Past
24: Eavesdropper
25: A Brazen Robbery and Happy Times at Chin Fong’s
26: A Confusing Situation
27: Later That Same Day . . .
PART THREE: Unmasked
28: Julie
29: Louis and Julie
30: Durant
31: Smiley
32: Martinez
33: Darkman
34: Martinez
35: Grouchy
36: Durant
37: The Man on the Flying Trapeze
38: Skip
39: Darkman and Julie and Louis
Epilogue: Nobody
Darkman Page 24