by Marcus Sakey
Beside him, Isabella glowed white, her skin flawless and fair, her true self burning ravenous through, a beast of a thousand mouths. Her hunger a coiling thing, a twisting worm of ceaseless lust, never sated, never shrinking. She reached for him, took his hand, digging her fingers into the raw stump where he had hacked away part of himself, her nails driving deep, playing pain like an instrument.
They had taught each other much.
When their puppet arrived, he did it in pain and panic, clutching his chest, feeling for wounds that were no longer there. So small, people. Pale as daydreams.
Like so many others, this one had been lost when they found him. Wandering without hope or purpose. They had spilled poison into his dark hours, nursed his fear into terror, his loneliness into hatred, his shame into rage. And then they had unleashed him and fed upon the pain that flowed in his wake. The lives he had taken and the lives he had destroyed. It was a pattern they had repeated many times.
But Edmund remained restless of mind, and with this they had tried something new. An idea rooted in the changing mortal world. A singular notion that had succeeded.
The man stared, gibbered, spoke. Edmund could see that he recognized them, knew them for the architects of his fate. And too he could see that the creature imagined reward, or redemption. Alive, he had done monstrous things. He had made himself into a specter to haunt the world. More powerful even than the death he delivered was the fear. And yet in his last living moments he had come to fear all he had done, to wonder if he had been misled. All puppets dream of being players.
Isabella smiled. Beatific. Radiant. An angel.
Hope bloomed across the animal’s face. His fears melted. He knew that he was saved. Divine. A tool of gods, and beloved by them.
Then Isabella’s bloodied nails pushed through the skin of his chest, slick fingers penetrating the clutch of ribs to slip inside. The animal screamed, writhed in an ecstasy of agony. The kill was an inch deeper, but she held short of it, her fist gripping his ribs, fingers stroking the secret inner parts of the animal. She leaned in to lock her teeth on his lips, blood running down her pale chin.
Then, instead of finishing the beast, she paused, and offered the creature to Edmund.
And Edmund knew confusion. They did not share. This one was hers. For what reason would she freely offer that which belonged to her?
Gratitude, she explained. Once she had been the teacher. Now they were the same.
Edmund hesitated for only an instant. Then he tore the heart out of the thing and crushed it between his fingers and rode the rush of energy, transfixed.
But it wasn’t the animal in front of him he was savoring. It was an idea.
Gratitude?
Could it be that she, who had lived centuries longer, who had as much power as any elder god wandering the shadows of the world, had forgotten their rules? Their very nature?
Interesting.
They turned from the limp thing and left this little echo, soaring out into darker realms. Her fingers sought his hand, and the wound there, pushing into him, the cruelty a connection. As her nails squirmed into his flesh, Edmund was conscious of the finger he had torn from himself, now hanging against the muscles of his chest like a necklace. Another new idea.
Perhaps that one would wait, though. Perhaps there was a richer opportunity.
A monster who had forgotten the nature of monsters.
Life was so beautiful. So many ways to feast upon it.
THIRTY-FOUR
Brody felt filthy.
He knew they’d been right. Even if he’d somehow been able to get past the sniper and a hundred Eaters and pluck the woman from the flames, even if by some miracle they’d escaped, so what? The poor woman had been trapped in the heart of an inferno. There was no burn ward here. No skin grafts. All he would have bought her was more agony. The best he might have done was end it for her. Spare her some pain. But that would have meant death for the others, including Claire. Nonnegotiable.
Still. He had chosen not to help an innocent person in desperate need. Sure, at first Sonny had him. But while the biker had the same supercharged strength, Brody had been a Marine and an FBI agent. He could have freed himself.
He’d just chosen not to.
Live with that.
When the screaming had finally stopped, the party below had really started. By burning his victim alive the sniper had somehow shared her with all of his followers. Instead of one Eater gaining strength, all of them had. And drunk on power and fire, and having broken new boundaries of depravity, the only thing was for the evening to become an orgy in all meanings of the word. Drums laid a heavy tribal beat, and many had stripped down and danced and screwed right beside the flame.
The sniper had sat on his throne, laughing as the flames shot higher. The dancing woman had climbed onto the table and knelt before him, and he’d used her mouth without seeming to notice, his attention everywhere else, a small, cruel smile on his face.
Brody had wanted to leave immediately. They all did. But it would have been reckless. They’d been lucky to get in without being noticed. The Eaters might be distracted, but they were also freshly fed and amped up. Better to wait for booze and bloodlust to take their toll.
So they sat avoiding each other’s eyes while outside the Eaters celebrated the end of worlds.
It was after four in the morning that they finally risked it. The fire was down to a dance of embers, the revelers at the mad ball strewn amidst discarded clothing and broken glass from smashed bottles. Simon Tucks strolled as if keeping watch, or standing judgment.
In silence, the six of them fumbled their blind way back down the stairs and out the north side of the building. The sky had lightened just enough that they could make out the column of smoke rising against the ever-present clouds. They took a moment to scan for motion and set off.
With each step there was an urge to turn a walk into a run. The scene was seared on all of their eyes, brighter every time they blinked. Night and fire and figures dancing to the rhythm of screams. Brody may have been raised Catholic, but he’d never believed in Hell. He’d studied history, understood the importance of the church as a political and economic force over the last two thousand years. Much of that power had come through promising salvation from eternal suffering. And so what had begun as metaphor became dictum, and begat everything from coffer-swelling indulgence scams to fevered Renaissance images. The notion of a real Hell, a world of fire and demons and torture, had always seemed silly. Especially in light of the actual statements attributed to Jesus.
It didn’t seem silly anymore. Not after their voyeur’s view.
Perhaps the truth was that Hell wasn’t a physical location; it was an idea that could be summoned into being. Hell had been created countless times before, from the Crusaders’ massacre of Jerusalem to Stalin’s “hunger-extermination” of seven million Ukrainians; from reeking, disease-ridden slave ships bound for New Orleans to the systemized horror of Auschwitz; from Lieutenant Calley to the Khmer Rouge. There was almost an equation to it. Hell was born when some decided others weren’t people.
If they weren’t people, then you could do anything you wanted to them. Rape, torture, murder. Feed.
“I’m sorry,” Claire said. She looked as exhausted as he felt, her skin pale, dark circles beneath her eyes.
“I know.”
“I had to.”
“I know.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
She nodded, her lips set in a thin line. “Do you believe what Tucks said? About his god?”
“I believe he believes it.”
“It would explain a lot.”
He cocked his head. “It would?”
“I used to wonder if the sniper was working with someone in law enforcement. He always seemed to know where no one was looking, knew how to shoot like he’d been trained, knew how to vanish without a trace. Like he was being informed. Or guided.”
“You’re saying it wo
uld make sense to you that Simon Tucks was possessed by a god who demanded sacrifices.”
“Well. Yeah.” She shrugged. “I guess I am.”
Brody sighed. A few more blocks and they’d be home. Or what passed for home these days. “You know what? I’m all full up on strange right now. I can accept this place as undiscovered science. An echo generated by the force and energy of life, like another dimension. If you believe string theory and the multiverse, it’s not even that big a step. But start adding gods into the equation, I’m out.” He shook his head. “Tucks is just a psycho. A guy who gets off on power over others. There’s no god controlling everything. And there’s certainly not more than one of them.”
“So how did he make fire?”
Damn it. It was one of the things he loved about her, the ferocious precision with which her mind worked. She immediately found the weakness in a line of thinking and hit it hard, even if that ended up bringing the whole notion toppling down. He used to love watching her run a meeting: Claire sitting at a table of men who had all applied for the job she’d taken, disassembling poor thinking with such facility that it made her place at the head of the table self-evident.
Do you love it less when it’s your poor thinking being disassembled? No. But that didn’t mean he enjoyed the wreckage. “I don’t know.”
“I know it sounds crazy, but what if it’s true? That there are . . . things out here. Maybe not gods, exactly, I’m not saying Zeus is wandering around. But beings of some kind that can reach out to our world. Maybe communicate with people who are already a little unbalanced.” She sucked her lips between her teeth, her thinking tell. “It could explain a lot. Tucks didn’t fit the profile. Not military, no evidence of training, but he was building bombs and nailing head shots. Maybe he had homicidal impulses, but no skills. Think of all the mythology behind deals with the devil, or possession. Think of the serial killers everyone said were so nice.”
Suddenly he understood. “You’re still doing it.”
“What?”
“Still looking for reasons. Remember, your rant about the Unabomber? You wanted to believe that the sniper had a reason. That he wasn’t just a broken guy who’d been abused by his uncle or whatever. Wanting to believe that there’s a logic behind insanity. More things in heaven and earth.”
Claire shrugged. “Look around you, Horatio.”
Despite everything, despite his failure and his fear, Brody laughed. Just once. But still. There were worse definitions of love than someone who could make you laugh as the world fell apart. Even once.
The sentries spotted them as they rounded Clark onto Wacker, walking in the middle of the street between high-rises with spires lost in cloud. Brassy whistle blasts had split the morning air, echoing off stone and glass. He and Claire had drifted apart from the others as they talked, and hurried to rejoin them.
It was early yet, barely five, but there were dozens of people milling around, eating breakfast or sharpening weapons or staring at the southwestern sky, where the smoldering column of ash still rose.
“What the hell is going on?” Finn yelled from atop the bridge tower, his bow slung on his shoulder, hands cupped around his mouth. “Is that . . . smoke?”
“Get them up,” Kyle yelled back.
“Who?”
“Everyone.”
THIRTY-FIVE
Two hundred and nine. Counting Claire and himself, that was how many people lived in the Langham, how many followed the Gospel According to Ray. Two hundred and nine men, women, and children.
They sat in Vietnam Veterans Memorial park, just the other side of the river. Tiered stone benches had been carved into the hillside, and the names of several thousand native sons killed in the war were etched in a long slab of black granite behind a reflecting pool. Brody had never been down here before—the Riverwalk was a tourist thing, and this park was more often used to scarf down Chipotle than to remember the dead—but it made a perfect amphitheater. They’d taken a seat on the third bench, near the end. It felt good to sit down, way, way too good, and so Brody had started counting as a focus exercise.
People looked at once exhausted and keyed up. A dangerous combination. Everyone was asking everyone else what was going on. Since none of them knew, the conversation was all fearful speculation. Voices overlapped and jostled, the tone tense. The only mercy was that in the hour it had taken to gather everyone, the column of smoke had finally faded, first to a dark smear and then altogether.
Arthur was among the last to arrive, shooing forward a mob of children, some as young as four or five. He must have been a good teacher; he was a natural with them, cajoling some, comforting others, keeping them all moving together. He got them settled a short distance away, the younger ones tossing things in the river, the older ones climbing up on statues or flirting awkwardly.
Brody watched them play, and thought about the woman wrapped in duct tape.
A piercing thumb-finger whistle split the morning, shutting off conversations like a tap. Kyle stood on the lip of the fountain, his axe slung over his shoulder. He let the silence settle, then said, “There’s probably a way to do this better, but I was never in Toastmasters, so I’m just gonna say it. The Eaters are working together.”
Brody watched the news hit. A fit man leaning on a spear seemed to droop. Madeleine’s knitting needles stopped clicking. Antoine sucked air through his teeth. They looked surprised, disconcerted, but not terrified. They don’t get it.
“They’ve got a leader. It was the guy that killed Brody, and who Claire wanted us to hunt down when she got here.” Kyle’s nod wasn’t regret, but there was at least an acknowledgment that she’d had a point. “The sniper, the guy who’s been wasting people the last few weeks. Somehow the dude is more powerful than your typical vamp. Next level shit. He made fire.”
The sound that rose was a strange mix of shock and desire. They must all have known what was coming; though it had finally faded away, the column of smoke had risen to the clouds. Yet despite the proof, they’d ceased to believe in the possibility of it. What a powerful thing fire is. People joked about the wheel, but it was fire that had been the first civilizing tool of humanity. Fire changed everything. Every culture had myths about it, tricksters and heroes who stole flame from the gods and brought it to earth. And now Simon Tucks joins their ranks. Prometheus recast as a serial killer.
“That’s not possible,” Arthur said. “I’ve been here twenty years, and nothing burns, not ever.”
“Sniper’s changed things,” Kyle said. “Last night we snuck into the building DeAndre spotted them from. There were more than he’d seen, a lot more, so I guess they kept coming. Maybe the fire drew them. Sure as hell drew us. The thing took up half the quad, a huge bonfire. The heat coming off it . . .” Kyle’s tone had become almost loving, and he caught himself. “Anyway, it’s real, we all saw it.”
Finn said, “How?”
“Simon says he’s an angel.”
“Gladiator,” Sonny said, in rich, rounded tones. “The gladiator of a dark god.”
“Right. Gladiator. Dark god. Anyway, his plan is to kill all of us, and take over the echo. Then eat everyone who arrives. He’s got a way for them to share the power somehow. To prove it, he . . .” The light, I-mess-with-life tone faltered, and Kyle drew a deep breath. “He had a woman with him. A new arrival. He . . . he threw her into the fire. She burned to death.”
A hundred exclamations at once, gasps and half-formed questions and muffled cries.
“She was a sacrifice,” Lucy said. “A human sacrifice. They burned her alive, and instead of one of them getting fed, they all did. Do you understand? It’s not zero-sum anymore. The Eaters can work together. They’re an army now.”
And finally they got it. That this wasn’t a joke or a prank. That there was no good news to offset the bad. That the relative measure of safety they’d enjoyed had faded like last night’s smoke.
People stood, yelled, shouting questions, how many and where and what ar
e we going to do. Madeleine began to cry, her back heaving. Hector stared at his shaking hands. Antoine, the former correctional officer, stiffened in a way that must have given convicts nightmares.
“All of you saw this?” Arthur leaned against the memorial wall.
“Yeah,” Kyle said, and the rest of them nodded.
“They said they were coming for us? Specifically?”
“No,” Lucy said. “He said they would take the city and kill everyone not them. We know there are a few loners surviving out there, and probably some of the Eaters won’t go along. But basically, it’s them and us.”
“Oh god,” a woman moaned. “Oh god.”
“What are we supposed to do against a hundred Eaters?”
“They have fire?”
“What about the kids? They won’t harm the children, will they?”
“We can build walls,” Hector said. “In the hotel.”
“They’ll vanish as soon as we leave them.”
“So we don’t leave,” Hector said. “We guard them, round the clock. We hole up and we don’t go anywhere.”
“Yes!” A woman in a scarlet hoodie yelled. “Yes! We can move up to the upper floors. Barricade the stairs. Set up traps and weapons.”
“Against Eaters?” An accountant-looking dude shook his head. “They’re too fast, too strong.”
“Won’t matter if we do it right,” Antoine said. “What we do is, we channel them. That’s how it worked at Stateville. Felons might lose it in the yard, but we could always fall back. Narrow corridors where we get the drop—”
“And if we’re at the top of the hotel, where does our food come from?” The accountant’s face was turning red. “Where does our water come from?”
Madeleine said, “We have to run. All of us together. We’ll be safe on the road. We could pack up our stuff and—”
Brody tuned out the yelling and turned to look at Claire. Her lips were set in a thin line, and he could see her brain spinning away, punching the obvious holes in these silly plans. It hit him in that moment that though these were good people, and though they’d existed in more danger than plenty of soldiers, they weren’t warriors. They were just ordinary folks whose lives had been stolen from them. To their credit, they had adapted. Tried to make the best of the situation.