by Gavin Green
"Oh, that," Ragna replied as she began handing out dog biscuits to each of her pets. "The veil, the facade, the charade; all those terms apply to the same thing. It is a way to describe concealing our existence from mortals, sometimes in plain sight. One of our rules is to not reveal ourselves, or we are all in danger. You couldn't figure that out on your own?"
I treated the insulting question as rhetorical and ignored it. "Okay, one more question."
Ragna stared at me with those big, icy eyes and said, "It's about your master, yes? You want to know how the Veleti became a legend . . ."
"Well, yeah. I mean, just the name made the Doyenne nervous. Oh, and Edward Galloway actually prays to him. Fine, Ed's a whack job, but somewhere he got the idea that Viggo is a fucking god."
"Ah, and you don't think your numen master deserves such high acclaim?"
I took a deep breath to stop myself from saying something rash. "Please don't twist what I'm trying to say, ma'am," I managed to state calmly. "I know my commander is powerful. It's just that I have no one to compare him to, no gauge to understand." I planned to look up what 'numen' meant later on.
"I doubt that few truly do," she said frankly. "Your master's progeny is strong; I daresay he is a fifth scion from the source, perhaps even fourth. Those with blood that strong have the potential for pushing their Gifts to heights I can barely imagine. Add that to the rumor of the Veleti's age - some estimate fifteen hundred years or more. Try to grasp what I say next: those Eidolons of such power and age eventually tire of prowling the night. I'm told it's about the time they reach a millennium."
That made me concerned. "What do you mean, tire?"
"Exactly what I said," Ragna answered sharply. "Most ancient ones have seen enough, experienced enough, I suppose. They find safe places to sleep for centuries or more. Who knows if any of them will rise again? I've heard tales of others going mad from their long, dark existences, and step out into the day. But those tales are rare. My point is that most Eidolons as old and strong as your master are in slumber. For reasons I do not know, the Veleti has never rested. And because he has remained active, his Gifts have been given that much more time to strengthen, nearly into myth. Some mortal children are told of monsters, of a boogeyman. Elders and scholars of the other factions are told of the Veleti."
SEWER
The realization hit me; the oath Viggo made to watch over my line was the reason he never rested. I felt sort of sick. I didn't want to ask any more questions. I wanted away from that alley. I wanted to talk to Viggo, and at the same time I had no idea what I'd say.
Ragna's raspy voice got my attention. "Hold on a moment, Beck. I've thought about it . . . I may have been too lenient with the misguided Adept you visited today. Go follow through with my threat."
I wasn't expecting that. "Whoa, wait a second. I told Galloway that he should pack up and leave town. You don't expect him to do that in a matter of hours, do you?"
"I expect you to do as I say. Your master has left you in my charge, and I doubt he'd object to my order."
"That's pretty much murder, Ragna," I said with restrained emotion. "That Edward guy might be nuts, but he hasn't really hurt anyone that I know of."
She stepped closer and glared at me. "His teachings are a lie. His sermons are profane! Edward Galloway is a beguiler who preys on the weak and the lost! His so-called religion is the product of a demented mind, and he will spew false hope wherever he goes! What I call for will be saving other unfortunates from the Sentinel fallacy!"
That little rant made me and the dogs nervous. For some reason, the whole Sentinel church thing had gotten under Ragna's skin, but she'd quickly gone from irritated to right on the verge of bat-shit crazy. I did not want an unbalanced elder hemo getting pissed at me. Maybe she saw the doubt and fear in my expression, or maybe she just took it out of my head. Either way, Ragna used a slightly different tactic when she added, "He slanders the name of your master, and you hesitate? You know this is right, Beck! Do not make me force you!"
At that moment, I thought she was ready to do just that. Yeah, the slander bit was true, but I thought the warning for Edward to get out of town - and shooting him - was equal punishment. I backed away from Ragna, avoided eye contact, and told her I saw her logic. When that seemed to calm her down a notch, I excused myself and hurried back to my car. I abused the engine with how fast I rocketed out of her neighborhood, more than once making sure there was no dog in my backseat.
On the drive home, I called the ShadoWorks number. Viggo answered on the third ring. "I need to talk to you as soon as possible, sir," I blurted. "It's very important." He said he'd come to my house in an hour or so. I wanted to stay sharp and clear-headed to explain the situation, but I also needed to smooth out my nervous edges. I compromised by slamming only three shots of whiskey.
A little while later, Viggo knocked on my back door. I unlocked it to let him in, but he waved me out onto the patio. The wind had picked up, and a thin drizzle had begun. "No offense to your home, Leo," he said with that voice that made me think of grinding rocks, "but I am concerned with it being monitored by listening devices. You have become an interest to various parties. We can discuss your topics in a safer location." He held an arm out to his side. "Come travel with me."
Oh fuck, I thought, here we go again.
Viggo's strong hand reached around me and gripped my shoulder. A sudden spin and I no longer felt the uneven patio blocks under my boots or cold drizzle on my face. I tried to forget the first time he'd taken me on a 'void walk', and not very successfully. The second time wasn't quite as horrific; maybe it was because I knew what to expect. The caresses of the black tongues weren't as eager, like they'd already had a taste of me and had lost curiosity. As a result, I was sure I didn't scream like a little girl. Don't get me wrong, though - the second experience was nearly as disorienting and disturbing as the first.
Just as I felt solid ground under my feet, a gagging stench flooded my senses. My eyes started watering immediately. I wanted to breathe through my mouth to give my nose a break, but I was afraid of getting a taste of the fumes. The sound of flowing water made me blink through my tears to see where I was at.
Viggo pressed a small flashlight in my hand. Surrounded by stained concrete, he and I stood in a sewer alcove. Behind us were algae-caked metal rungs set into the wall that led twenty feet up to a manhole cover. A tunnel was few steps in front of us; the obvious source of the stench. I stepped out and looked from left to right - the light didn't penetrate very far into the darkness. The drainage tunnel was maybe six feet wide with a barreled ceiling, and a cluster of small pipes were secured to the far wall.
Half of the sewer's floor was a sunken channel for water to drain, although I had trouble thinking of the lumpy grayish-brown liquid as water. The other half - the near half, thankfully - was a walkway full of cracks and loose chunks of cement. A thin film of sludge covered most everything, and tufts of algae filled any cracks. In the few seconds that I held the light on the flowing sewage, I saw a broken milk crate and a shit-stained Aqua Man doll float by.
"It is pleasant, no?" Viggo asked with a lilt in his craggy voice.
I coughed and tried to spit out the tang of sewer that had quickly gathered in the back of my mouth. "Uh, no sir," I managed to say.
"It is an acquired odor, I'll admit," he said. "Follow me. You won't have to endure it for too long." Viggo made a strange noise, sort of like how Ragna lured her dogs for a treat. He then stepped past me and began strolling down the walkway to the left. I followed behind, fighting the urge to retch. "You should feel fortunate, Leo," he commented airily. "For those who are desperate enough for information to come visit us, this is not one of the passages that we avail to them."
"Are you saying that you make your visitors use other tunnels that are somehow worse?" I asked over the constant run of the wastewater, hearing my voice echo in the dark.
"Oh, quite - the tunnels we reserve for them don't have walkways."
Just the thought of that made me stop and try to cough up my last meal. Right after I cleared my throat I heard another noise, a low din of shuffling and soft scraping. I turned the flashlight behind me, and wished I hadn't. Starting about twenty feet behind us, the walkway was filled with rats as far back as the light would shine. The horde of dirty fur and red eyes was moving toward me, slow and steady. I pulled my Glock and said to myself, "I am so screwed."
ILLUSION
"What are you doing?" Viggo calmly asked me. I was training my sights on one of the rats in front, a big black bastard about the size of a housecat. I hesitated with an answer, figuring my commander wouldn't want to hear the smartass reply that came to mind. "Those are my other minions," he said right behind me, "and I would be displeased with you shooting any of them."
I immediately lowered my gun, and saw that the vermin army had come to a stop in front of me. No shit, they just . . . stopped and waited. It was pretty cool trick for a huge pack of overgrown sewer rats.
"I called for them as soon as we arrived," Viggo said. "They are needed for a chore. You have no need to fear them, Leo. Now come along. It is a short distance further to one of my dens." He turned and continued down the pitch-black walkway.
I reluctantly turned and shined the light on Viggo's back. When he started walking again, so did the horde of rats. I had to pick up my pace to stay ahead of them. A minute later I heard gurgling and splashing in front of us. I was nervous about the sound until I saw that it was just water draining from ports cut into the far wall. Another twenty yards beyond those, the tunnel spilt into a Y. The bad part was the walkway ended there. I was not dressed to go wading through a canal of human waste.
Viggo stopped before we came to the end of the walkway and turned to me. "Leo, this is a good time explain how some Gifts work. The physical powers - strength, speed, endurance - they merely build upon themselves if one desires to increase them. Other Gifts, however, allow for a range of abilities as they increase. Take the Gift of Shadows, for example. First let me state that it is not the same as the Gift of the Void, which I use to travel. The Gift of Shadows is a power that all Deviants possess to some degree. It allows for supernatural abilities in illusion and stealth."
"Okay, that makes sense," I said with a nod. For most of the deviants I'd met so far, they'd have a tough time looking like they did and going to a concert or hitting the bars. That is, unless they wanted to make people simultaneously scream and shit their pants. All except for Pedro, though - I wasn't sure about him. Most of the time he looked like a regular guy, except when he knocked me out with chloroform. For a second when he was on my back, he looked like a red-faced demon. Oh, and that girl Clara looked normal too, but maybe her disfigurement was mental.
"The initial abilities of that Gift," Viggo explained, "begin with going unnoticed, using darkness, blending into the background. Progressing abilities include creating an aura of illusion to mask one's true form and appearance."
"Yes sir, I wondered about that. Does Pedro - uh, Mr. Viera - does he have that ability?"
"Quite so; he is fairly proficient with it. Mr. Viera's most common guise is of that of a young Hispanic man, although he occasionally takes one or two other convincing, forms. Now, to continue," Viggo said after a moment's pause. He gently grabbed my arm and made me point the flashlight at the wall right next to us. "Extensive use of the Gift of Shadows - far beyond simply hiding or using illusive guises - has led me to an ability that I refer to as a permanent cloak. Look at the wall, feel it."
It looked like the same ugly wall I'd been walking next to for the last ten minutes - splotchy gray cement with a thin crack here and there. My palm felt what I expected; cool, clammy, sort of slick. "Is there something I'm not seeing, sir?"
"It is what you are seeing that makes my point, Leo. There is no wall here. I've created a strong illusion to fool the mind, to make you see and feel what should be there."
"Then you did one hell of a job, sir," I said as I touched the wall again. He must've had some Jedi mind trick working overtime, because even the thin beam from the flashlight showed a wall in front of me.
"Imagine it to be a wall of static fog . . ." Viggo said while he moved his hand in front of the light. Then, slowly, he slid his hand and forearm through the wall without any resistance. It was one the few times in my life that I was speechless. "Imagine, Leo," he said low and solemnly. "The wall is a curtain of devious air. There is no wall. Fix that in your mind . . . and step through."
I wanted to obey, but I didn't want to go face-first into cement and look like a fucking moron. I guess Viggo got impatient with my hesitation; he put his hand on my back and shoved. I stumbled forward a few steps into space that wasn't there. Holy shit, that permanent cloak trick was awesome!
I spun the light around, seeing I was in another alcove. There were no rungs up to the street, though; only a narrow descending stairway. It was roughly carved, cut into the natural bedrock. Just standing in front of it, the air felt cooler. That stairwell didn't look inviting, though. I felt like something was waiting for me down there in the dark.
Viggo moved me aside and began descending the stone stairs. He paused for a second and said, "Try not to lose your footing. If you're prone when the rats come upon you, they'll likely think you're a meal."
That sure as hell got my attention. I was never less than two steps behind him on the way down. At the base of the stairs was a hallway cut through rock. It curved to the left and ended at a metal door, like a hatch you'd see in a submarine. The rats had gathered behind me and waited again - fuckin' things gave me the shivers. Viggo cranked at the locking wheel; it looked like he had to put some muscle into it. He pushed the door open and then turned to me and said, "Welcome to a Deviant den."
DEN
I stepped through the doorway, and it felt like I stepped on carpet. Viggo flicked a switch next to the door; subdued lighting lit what appeared to be a cavernous room. It had a fifteen foot stone ceiling that dipped at the far end, where there was another metal door. The whole place was sort of egg-shaped; we came in on the wide end. The floor was mainly level but the walls were rough, like a cave's would be.
Then I noticed everything else. Hell, it was like a big studio apartment. Resting on some of the many area rugs, two full sets of matching leather furniture sat in a semicircle facing a wide entertainment center. It held TVs, DVD and CD players, big speakers, and a shitload of movie and music cases. Next to all that was a desk big enough to have a PC, printer, fax, and an old telegraph machine sitting on it with room to spare. Wiring ran throughout the den, secured with clamps along the walls and ending at power strips. All sorts of shit were plugged in: wall and table lamps, ceiling fans, digital clocks, you name it.
Sitting back in a recess off to my right was a large bed, with bookshelves on either side. "No coffin for you, sir?" I asked lightheartedly, trying to get rid of my own tension.
"Not since the late 1800s," Viggo replied as he waited at the door while his horde of rats flowed in, "when the box spring was invented." I stood still as the rats swarmed around my feet and into the room. Viggo finally shut the door and then knelt down in front of one lingering rat. He picked up the oversized disease-carrier and stared at it a few seconds before setting it back down. The rat ran over to a small crevice where a wall met the floor and crawled in. On its heels was the rest of the horde, disappearing one by one. It took a minute until they were all gone.
Still standing in place, I asked, "If I may, sir . . . What the hell just happened?"
Viggo walked past me toward the far side of the den while he answered. "I've sent them on a mission to cause irritating damage to a particular daemon's abode - chewing through power cables, ruining the plumbing, that sort of thing. She is due some frustration."
"If someone pissed you off, sir, I'd be happy to pay her a daytime visit."
He stopped in front of a table and pulled out a familiar box, the one with my ancestor's cup in it. "The day may come when I
request that, but not for now." Using the same steel blade that he cut himself with in my kitchen a couple weeks before, Viggo filled the cup half full with his black blood. "Take a seat, Leo." As I relaxed into a soft leather chair, he came over and handed me the cup. "Another drink of my essence isn't needed just yet," he said as he sat in a nearby chair, "but it will strengthen your bond nonetheless. Now, tell me of your concerns."
I told him about my latest meeting with Ragna while I drank, and how she went all 'dark side' on me. "Sir, I've killed the enemy while in the Marines. As a civilian, I've killed aggressors in defense of others and myself. But I don't think it's a part of who I am, and I sure as hell don't get a kick out of it. And you, sir, you're my commander; if you told me to go kill someone, I'd know there was a good reason for the order and I'd do it. Ragna, though . . . She wants me to go burn some hemo to death just because she's got bugs in her brain. I simply can't go commit murder on a whim."
Viggo thought for a second before he said, "Ragna unfortunately does have triggers. Cults, misguided as they may be, are one of them. I realize that it seems somewhat hypocritical when she herself adheres to the beliefs of the Norse pantheon, itself now a paltry and outdated religion. Still, I need you to continue the ruse of being her minion. I'm told you are to be in the employ of the Outsider's Mr. Fletcher; that might place you in a position to gather good information for me."
"Yes sir, but what about -"
"Edward Galloway is far from innocent, Leo. Less than twenty years ago, he had other deific delusions, and gathered a small flock of weak-minded followers. Something angered him one night at a gathering, and he slaughtered them all. I can see a certain justice in what Ragna demands, but I also know that you are not cold-blooded. Do what Ragna ordered; I will have a deterrent in place that she cannot fault you for. My safeguard will not be permanent, however, so Mr. Galloway is on borrowed time."