Damnable

by Hank Schwaeble

  “Where’s Wright?” Hatcher asked.

  “Ah, yes. Our knight in shining armor, come to save the lovely damsel.” Valentine leaned down, reaching beneath the wall of the pulpit, and started to drag something onto the scaffolding walkway. It was Wright, wrists cuffed in front of her, ankles bound together with tie wraps. He was pulling her by her hair, forcing her to scoot with him on her knees, moving like a rabbit. She looked frightened and angry and tired and helpless.

  When she saw Hatcher she opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

  “What do you want?” Hatcher said.

  Valentine stopped near a large cable suspended above him. An industrial hook dangled from the end. He placed his fingers over the curl, eyes on Hatcher, and let it take some of his weight, like a subway commuter.

  “Think of this as . . . a game show. I’m going to give you a choice. You can have the lovely Detective Wright, or what’s behind curtain number one.”

  Hatcher glanced at the curtains, let his eyes roam over the Carnates, embodiments of pure sex all, then returned his gaze to Valentine.

  “And the catch?”

  “Such cynicism! Think of it as a challenge. Aren’t you curious as to what’s hidden from view? I’m disappointed.”

  Without waiting for a response, Valentine nodded to one of the Carnates. She reached down and picked up a slender cord. When she tugged on it, the walls below her to Hatcher’s left lost their support and split apart, falling forward at perpendicular angles. Behind them was a woman, naked, chained obscenely on a platform over a wedge of cushioning. She appeared to be fighting back sobs, though she made no noise. She looked at Hatcher with eyes that seemed to pity him and implore him at the same time. Scared eyes, but sophisticated for someone so young. Someone hardly more than a girl.

  There was movement on the scaffolding, and Hatcher saw Valentine lean behind Wright. She resisted him at first, but then he pressed his fingertips behind her ears and yanked her to her feet. With her ankles bound, she had no means to fight him as he forced her arms up and slipped the tip of the hook under the chain between the cuffs. The hook started to rise, pulling Wright’s arms high, and soon she was being winched into the air.

  She kicked out at Valentine as she left the platform, a dolphin move with both feet. Valentine leaned to the side, easily avoiding it, grinning.

  Hatcher followed the cable with his eyes. High above, he could make out a catwalk of some sort in the shadows. A featureless shape moving in the darkness. Another Carnate, he realized, operating a power winch.

  “So, Brother—save the woman you love, or save the innocent maiden, a true child of God.”

  “Save them,” Hatcher said. His eyes jumped from Wright, to the naked girl, then back again. “From what?”

  Valentine smiled. “What a terrific question.” He nodded in the direction of the other enclosure. One of the Carnates on that side pulled on a cord, sending the walls of it tipping outward and falling to the floor.

  “Behold!” Valentine continued. “The Get of Damnation!”

  Visible behind where the walls had stood was a roughly eight-by-eight cage, with bars at least an inch in diameter. Inside the cage was an animal. Hatcher assumed it was a primate of some sort. It was the size of gorilla, but more angular, less hirsute. It had the elongated snout of a baboon and long hair hanging from its head. Its flapped ears looked like they belonged on a farm animal. The eyes appeared almost human. Almost.

  It clasped two enormous hands on the front bars of the cage and let out a sound that sent a jolt through Hatcher’s chest. Those almost-human eyes grew wide at the sight of the girl, but quickly shot over to Hatcher and leveled on him. It sat back on its haunches and slightly bared its teeth. Its gaze remained fixed.

  The side of the cage that faced the young woman suddenly rose about an inch off the ground, then stopped. The movement drew Hatcher’s attention to an inconspicuous mechanism on the top corner, a square box with a thick-toothed gear on the side of it. The teeth bit into grooves connected to one of the vertical bars that extended higher than the others.

  “Since I am nothing if not a good sport, there is one other option.” Valentine held up a tiny electronic device. “This controls the gate. You have approximately three minutes before the bars rise high enough for the Get to escape his confines. If you could somehow reach me and retrieve this in time, perhaps you won’t have to make the choice.”

  Hatcher ran his eyes down the scaffolding, then glanced at the cage. The little box let out a whir and the gate moved up a small distance, doubling its height. The creature shot an arm through the opening, already trying to squeeze through.

  Wright hung a few yards away, her body swaying as she bucked and swung her legs. He could get to her, lift her high enough for her to get the cuffs over the tip of the hook, but it would take too long. If he carried her away, the other woman would fall prey to whatever that thing in the cage was. If he tried to undo the tie wraps first, that thing may be out and attacking before he was done.

  Not much of a choice, as he saw it. Without wasting another moment, he broke into a sprint directly at the scaffolding. The Get snarled as he passed by, raking its fingers through the air, it’s impossibly long arm coming much closer than Hatcher had expected.

  No slowing, no stutter step. Hatcher leaped in mid-stride and grabbed hold of the metal cross supports of the scaffold, swinging his legs up and hooking them so he could press up and grab a higher set. Muscles still aching from his run-in with the Carnates on the street, ribs still making him wince from the squeeze Sherman had put on them, it took him almost a full minute to reach the top. He expected to be met there, his putative sibling kicking at him as he pulled himself up and onto the platform. But Valentine kept his distance.

  “Not bad. But you’ve only got a minute and a half. Ninety seconds.” Valentine took the device, which at this closer distance looked to Hatcher like the remote control to some child’s toy, and shoved it deep into his front pocket.

  “And the problem is,” Valentine continued, “you’ll have to kill me to get it. And you just don’t have that in you. Brother.”

  The hell I don’t. Hatcher dropped to a knee and pulled up his pant leg, yanking the dagger free from his calf. He took two forceful steps forward.

  “Last chance,” Hatcher said. “Give me it, or I take it from your corpse. You don’t know me, Valentine. You don’t know what I’m capable of.”

  “Oh, but I do.”

  Hatcher lunged forward, grabbed Valentine’s shirt, pressed the point of the dagger to his throat. He moved his hand to reach into Valentine’s pocket, but Valentine grabbed his wrist.

  “Do it,” Valentine said. He pressed his flesh against the blade, causing an indentation near his Adam’s apple. “I dare you. Complete the Prophecy of the Carnates. You must kill your brother. It is preordained. Do it. If you’re man enough. If you have the balls.”

  There was no fear in his eyes, no concern. Other than maintaining a surprisingly strong grip on Hatcher’s wrist, there was no real resistance. Hatcher shot a look past Valentine’s head. The Carnates remained where they were. He glanced back over his own shoulder. Deborah was still in the same place. All were watching intently, but none of them had moved.

  A tiny droplet of blood appeared on Valentine’s neck at the tip of the dagger. Hatcher felt the urge to drive the blade home, tightened his grip around the handle.

  Something in his head clicked. Valentine wasn’t armed. Why? Why play this kind of game, why not just pull a gun? Why didn’t any of them have guns?

  This whole thing has been a setup.

  “No.” He pushed Valentine away.

  “What? But you must! Surely you don’t put any stock in some silly prophecy, do you? A worldly man like you?”

  “I’m not going to let myself be tricked into doing what you led me here to do.” He swept his chin toward Soliya. “What they led me here to do. I’m not going to murder you, you sick bastard.”

  Valentine
dropped his gaze toward the cage. “Then you’ll watch both these women die.”

  The box on the cage hummed, and the cage door clicked up another notch. That was just enough. The creature slithered under the bottom bar and rolled to its feet. It seemed to aim its body at the naked form of the woman as it rose, ready to spring.

  “The hell I will.”

  Hatcher vaulted the side rail of the scaffolding, aiming directly for the animal’s back. It was a fifteen-foot drop. The Get looked up and roared, moving just enough so that Hatcher’s feet glanced off its shoulder and arm, knocking the thing off balance but doing little damage. Hatcher dropped the dagger and took the brunt of the impact with the floor off his own shoulder, tucking his head and managing to roll away.

  The dagger lay on the marble surface between him and the Get. For a moment, neither moved. The creature watched him with eyes that were both wild and comprehending. Both its expression and posture were entirely feral. It was almost humanlike in its shape, with the elongated limbs of a primate. But now it was in a four-point stance, baring oversized canines. An enraged ape. A rabid baboon.

  Feinting first, Hatcher dove at the dagger. The creature leaped high, arms above its head, legs coiled beneath it, jaws cocked wide. It roared midway through its leap.

  In one continuous motion, Hatcher grabbed the dagger and rolled, thrusting it straight up. It plunged firmly into the animal’s chest, dead center, the Get’s own weight burying the blade deep.

  A short burst of vibration buzzed through Hatcher’s hand as the hilt of the dagger slammed against the thing’s breastbone. He felt the internal workings of some mechanism in his palm, a click of disengagement, the releasing of a spring.

  The Get yanked itself back, stumbling. It looked down at its chest. A small portion of the end of the blade protruded, like a flattened tube. Blood spurted out as if from a hose, landing on the marble floor with a splat. It formed a small pool as it poured out and flowed into the grooves of the symbol that had been engraved into it.

  Hatcher dropped his eyes to his hand. The handle was still there. A thinner blade protruded from the hilt. Around its base, he could see the prongs of a mechanical catch. A spring-loaded dagger, designed to release an outer blade. A weapon designed to exsanguinate its victim. A weapon that, judging by what he was witnessing, did its job very well.

  Each beat of the creature’s heart sent another gush through the hollow blade until after a few seconds there was nothing but a trickle. The Get stood motionless, seemed to try to move, but instead dropped face-first. It landed on the floor with the dead slap of deli meat.

  Dropping his hands to his knees and resting his weight on them, Hatcher tried to make up for lost breathing. His body was enervated, his legs shaky, his arms sacks of wet cement. He sucked in several lungfuls of air and forced himself to straighten up. He looked at Valentine. At first Hatcher thought the man was stunned, too shocked to react. But a distinct feeling of unease started to worm its way through his gut.

  There was no look of dejection, no crestfallen eyes or slouching shoulders. Valentine was staring intently, the expression on his face hard to read, but one that Hatcher could only describe as brimming with anticipation. His gaze remained fixed on the body of the Get.

  Hatcher looked at each of the Carnates. They watched without expression, but their eyes seemed wide, the mouths and cheeks of a few twitching with the hint of a smile. Almost simultaneously, they produced tiny knives in their right hands and cut the wrists of their left. They then submerged their wrists in the bowls before them and closed their eyes.

  Wright’s eyes were saucered as she hung from the cable, frozen in a look of dread beneath a tense, pleading brow. Her lips quivered. She held Hatcher’s gaze and shook her head slowly.

  “Did I mention that one of my triple majors was in psychology, Brother?”

  Two ropes dropped from the catwalk above. A pair of Carnates descended onto the scaffolding near Valentine. A redhead and a brunette, both of whom he recognized immediately. The brunette was slightly favoring her abdomen.

  “You may not have realized it, but Carnates are not only irresistible, they are world-class actresses. They followed my script masterfully. First, working that hapless sap Warren into pondering the killing of his wife, then directing his worried spouse to your half brother, who played the role of tragic hero on cue.”

  Valentine’s tone taunted and teased. The unease was now acute anxiety. Oh, shit, he thought. What the hell did I just do?

  “It all came down to you, Jake. There was only one man in the world who could do it, one man who could enable me to complete the most extreme of summonings from the Book of Thoth. One who had my own blood. One whose psychological profile I deconstructed and reconstructed over and over and over, one man I studied until I knew him better than he knew himself. College curriculum, high school courses, base assignments. Just literate enough to know Steinbeck, to recognize a few allusions.”

  The blood that filled the groove of the symbol began to pop and bubble, quickly roiling into a boil. A putrid smell wafted over Hatcher, almost making him gag.

  “Throw in a useful idiot like Sherman—a sap who had no idea what was really happening but would give you what I wanted him to when he cracked—throw some money and sex a corrupt detective’s way, and everything I needed was in place.

  “And you. Bravo! You played your part to perfection,” Valentine said. “Perfection!”

  Hatcher raised his eyes to Valentine’s, then back to the Get. The floor beneath the creature trembled. Cracks spread out from the carved symbol.

  “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. No one ever stops to think about that, do they, Jake? No mention of creating Hell. Our concept of Heaven, you see, was created for this experiment we call Earth, both at the same time. Hell is eternal, but Heaven is not.”

  The creature’s body began to twitch.

  “You did what no other could. You killed your brother, our brother, a brother neither man nor beast, an abomination born of the blood of its one, slain by the blood of its other.”

  Movement. Just the limbs at first, but within seconds the chest spasmed and the eyes shot open. The Get jerked up to its knees, springing like a marionette. Once on its feet, it started to grow.

  “The tens upon tens of millions of dollars I’ve spent, the countless hours over years and years . . .”

  Its arms swelled, its chest stretched as if something were inflating it. The creature became enormous right in front of Hatcher’s eyes. Its head seemed to add bone layers as it expanded. The eyes turned a dark shade of cherry black, like motor oil mixed with arterial spray.

  “I have actually done it! You have actually done it! We have smote the Get of Damnation, and have raised the Prince of Hell. Have risen the one who will not rise!”

  The thing inhaled a deep breath, flexing its chest and spreading its shoulders, then it roared with a fury that scalded Hatcher’s ears.

  “I will give those boys in uniform some credit. Their psyche profile of you was spot-on. I had to tweak it, of course, since I knew some things they didn’t. But they were quite thorough. And for someone not functioning in the private sector, the GI I found with access to your records was quite the businessman. He shook me down for a substantial sum of money.”

  Hatcher watched the Get as it tried to orient itself. It looked in several directions, taking in its surroundings. There was no question it had grown in front of Hatcher’s eyes since he’d stabbed it, larger now that it had been, taller, wider. Like something was inside of it, wearing a formfitting costume several sizes too small, the material stretched to its breaking point. Two bumps bulged from its skull over its brows, cranial protrusions that looked almost like horns.

  The Get seemed confused. It scanned the church with a wary, predatory gaze. Its eyes finally settled on the naked woman. Her head was turned, set to look back over her shoulder at it, but her eyes were tightly shut. Her lips were moving, as if she were mouthing a silen
t prayer.

  “Let them go,” Hatcher said. “You’ve got what you wanted.”

  “Let them go? Now why would I do a thing like that? Brother of mine, you don’t seem to understand the point of the exercise.”

  Hatcher’s mind raced, scrambling for an idea. There had to be something he could do, but his options seemed severely limited. The Get was enormous. It would be like attacking a grizzly. He looked down at the knife in his hand. The thinner, shorter blade looked impossibly small.

  “That cost me a pretty penny, you know. A medieval spring-loaded dagger, the genuine article. Of course, the pedigree was pure cock and bull. The Dagger of Cain. Ha! How gullible, how easily manipulated, you were.”

  The Get was staring at the woman now. Eyes wide like some insane animal. Its body seemed to shudder.

  “His brain, you see—it’s not quite capable of channeling Belial’s mind. Not right away. That’s why I had to imprint it, to condition it. Allow for instinct to take over, so he would know what to do. What he would know himself to do if he could process a rational thought.”

  Its breathing was heavier now. Hatcher noticed its penis begin to rise, the shaft extending, swelling erect.

  “Don’t even think about it, Jake. It’s too late. Once Belial consummates the ritual, once he defiles the innocent one, the child of God, once he who cannot be risen has done the unspeakable, I will have achieved what no other dared ever even think of. I will have brought to pass the events foretold in the Book of Thoth.

  “I, Demetrius Valentine, will have ended the covenant of Creation. I will have brought down Heaven.”

  The Get seemed to have whipped itself into a frenzy staring at the woman, her legs spread and genitals exposed in an obscene pose. It moved toward her with a deliberate stride.