“That Power is prepared to make you an offer: An offer that also concerns one Neville Hephaestus Kowalski, AKA ‘Deader Than Three-day-old Camel Shit.’”
“I’m not interested,” I said.
“Oh, but I say you are interested,” Vulpe hissed. “See, I know you. You love nice neat endings: every loose end tied, every literary hole stitched up tighter than a ladybug’s crap flap. That’s just the kind of detail-oriented, anal-retentive he-bitch you are.”
Vulpe drifted closer. The heat from his eyes branded emerald circles across the skin of my irises.
“But you know as well as I do that even if I kill you, here and now, this isn’t over,” he crowed. “Far from it. Everything that’s happened up to this point has been an appetizer. The main course is gonna knock ‘em dead.”
Vulpe stopped. For a moment he seemed to tremble with suppressed vehemence, as if the very air of the sanctuary had grown rife with violence.
“And you? You’re already dead,” he spat. “You just don’t know it yet. However, I’m willing to throw you a bone before the end.”
“Why?” I said. “Why should I believe you?”
Vulpe shuddered again, his face contorting in a spasm of hate. “Because I can’t lie,” he said. “And because you have friends in places you know nothing about.”
Despite Vulpe’s tone a dark glimmer of hope fluttered in my gut.
Was it possible?
“Tell me about the deal.”
“Alright,” Vulpe said. “Your friend isn’t gone... yet.”
“Liar,” I said. “Kowalski’s dead.”
“Oh, he’s dead alright,” Vulpe countered. “Dead as Dick’s hatband, as I believe he was fond of saying.”
My side was throbbing. My movements had widened the wounds in my abdomen. I shook my head to clear the red cobwebs gathering inside it, and a warm gout of fresh blood trickled down my thighs.
“Get to the point,” I grated.
“There’s dead and then there’s gone,” Vulpe continued. “Kowalski’s dead but he ain’t gone. Oh, he’ll be gone any second now, but I’ve held him up while we have our little chat.”
Vulpe gestured toward Kowalski.
Kowalski opened his eyes and sat up. He scowled, and glared around as if he’d awoken in a strange country where he couldn’t speak the language.
Then his eyes found mine.
“Grudge,” he said. “Don’t do it. Don’t listen to him.”
Then, as if the severity of his situation had only just occurred to him, Kowalski screamed.
“Goddamn! It hurts!”
As Kowalski’s shrieks filled the sanctuary, I whirled and faced Vulpe.
“Stop it!” I howled. “You’re torturing him!”
“Yeah,” Vulpe said. “It’s what I do.”
“Grudge!” Kowalski screamed. “Don’t do it!”
“What did you do to him?”
Vulpe shrugged. Kowalski’s screams grew louder.
“I ‘opened him up,’” he said. “He’s not dead, but he ain’t exactly alive either.”
Necropolis grinned. “He can feel himself rotting. Trust me, ol’ Nevvie’s psyche is a very ugly place right now.”
“It hurts!”
“You bastard,” I rasped.
Kowalski thrashed on the floor, his wounds gaping wetly in the emerald gloom: He was suffering the torments of the damned, barred from the surcease of Death.
“I’ve set up a sweet little bargain,” Vulpe said. “Pursuant to your agreement, of course. I’ve arranged to keep your friend on spiritual ice while you and me conversate.”
“‘Conversate’ about what?” I said.
“Goddamit, Grudge,” Kowalski gasped. “Listen to me. I’ve had my run. This is my Day and I’m not afraid. Understand? It doesn’t matter what happens to me. Don’t let that shithead make you do something stupid.”
“That’s enough out of you, soggy-britches,” Vulpe said.
Kowalski stopped, frozen.
My vision doubled, then trebled. My focus began to waver. Vulpe split into two, then three carbon copies of himself.
Stay awake, asshole.
I drove my fist into my gut where the Yeren had stabbed me, and gasped. The world surged into clarity buoyed on a wave of nausea.
“That’s the spirit,” Vulpe said. “You and I both know that if Kowalski is allowed to die you gon’ be one sorry sumbitch. But it don’t gotta be ‘dat way, my brother.”
“You mentioned a deal,” I said.
“Yes,” Vulpe said. “I give you the power to make good: to do right by all those dead monster hunters swingin’ from your family tree. I’ll even throw in old ‘knobby-knuckles’ over there. In return you promise me one simple favor.”
In the red haze that clouded my senses, I imagined Kowalski shouting at the top of his lungs. Or maybe he really was shouting. I couldn’t tell anymore.
“What kind of favor?”
Vulpe chuckled again.
“Now that would be way too much expository dialogue, Mr. Chekhov; me standing here gloating as I reveal my devious plans while you figure out how to thwart them. How corny is that?”
Vulpe seemed to grow taller. The corpse-light in his eyes flared star-bright as he drew near.
“Let’s call it an act of good will; one to be redeemed at a later date. See, you’ve got potential that you haven’t even dreamed of, O-dog. I just want to see that potential realized before the Feasting Time.”
Juno had mentioned the Feasting Time as well. Something about those words stirred a pulsating terror in my gut. Black wings beat the shadows around me.
“What is that?” I said. “Feasting Time?”
Vulpe made a noise like a gameshow buzzer.
“Thanks for playing, but that subject is a ‘No Fly zone,’ comprende?”
Everyone I’d met along the strange journey to that moment rose up in my mind, shouting from the shadows of my confusion.
“Obadiah,” Marcus’s shade intoned. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Let him go.”
He’s dying, Marcus.
“Everybody dies, son,” Marcus said. “It’s Kowalski’s Day. Let him go. You’re playing with forces you don’t understand.”
But Kowalski lay dying at my feet.
And I had the chance to make things right.
“Well, what say you, O-dog?”
I shoved the shouts of horror and condemnation away, consigned them to whatever destiny lay over the emerald horizon. I would decide my course, and no one else.
“I accept.”
Vulpe’s eyes ignited. Curling streamers of emerald force rolled heavenward like the smoke from a conflagration.
“That’s my boy.”
There was a viridescent burst of light that faded swiftly, leaving me momentarily dazzled. The light was physical, possessing both weight and density. It clung to the insides of my eyelids. It hurt, like dozens of invisible millipedes crawling over my skin, creeping beneath my flesh.
When the pain faded, I opened my eyes.
Vulpe was gone.
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“What?”
We were back among the pews. Sandra Woo was staring at me. Kowalski lay unmoving where she’d left him on the floor.
“I asked if you have a cell phone.”
“Where is he?” I said.
“Mister, we’ve gotta call an ambulance.”
The word “ambulance” galvanized me.
“Wait.”
I crawled toward Kowalski, propelled forward by a rising wave of terror.
Something was moving inside me.
It seethed beneath my skin, something cold. It coiled around my heart and drew away its warmth. The coiled thing had settled itself inside my mind.
I had to get it out.
I lifted my left hand, heavy with blood and terror, and dropped it on Kowalski’s chest.
Power.
It flowed out of me, through me and into him, a red/green
shriek of power that blasted the nerves in my hands and feet, fired the synapses in my brain and sent a thrill of horror down my spine.
I closed my eyes and heard someone shouting my name. I think it was my father.
I found Kowalski huddled in the dark, floating in a place that was no place, a place that was simply Outside.
I called to him. He turned to me and I froze: I didn’t see a savior reflected in Kowalski’s eyes. I saw a monster.
But it was too late.
I opened my eyes.
A moment later, Kowalski hitched in a breath.
Sandra Woo screamed.
The bruises on his face were gone. The injuries he’d suffered at the hands of the Yeren were fading as I watched.
Kowalski sat up. He held his hands in front of his face and stared at them as if they belonged on the end of someone else’s arms. Then he turned to me.
“My God, Grudge,” he said. “What have you done?”
35
Summing Up
In the days following the so-called “Seattle Wildman Murders” a series of truly unsettling events occurred.
Nurse Sandra Woo, the only survivor of the Wildman’s killing spree, led the authorities back to the Southwest Chinese Lutheran Sanctuary, only to find that it had been burned to the ground by a fire so intense that nothing, not even a single wall, remained intact.
The Seattle Police Department and the FBI found no trace of the suspect Woo had identified as the Wildman. Only the remains of his victims, preserved from the flames in a crawlspace beneath the Sanctuary.
But Woo was adamant. Her story, she insisted, was true. The SPD officers shook their heads and made googly eyes at each other behind her back. Only one officer appeared interested, a recently injured veteran named Athena Talbot.
Talbot took Woo to lunch a few days later.
She listened to everything Woo had to say with great interest.
* * * *
In the ashes of the burned sanctuary, the Seattle Police Department’s task force found copious amounts of DNA from a man wanted for questioning in the murder of Glen Arthur Hong: a thirty-five year old illegal Chinese national named Chen Mao Liu.
DNA analysis of Chen’s blood samples taken from the Sanctuary proved inconclusive. Forensic scientists quietly determined that Chen’s DNA had been cross-contaminated by that of an unknown animal.
The Mayor, County Medical Examiner, Chief of Police and every Federal agent involved in the case agreed that the blood samples should be held for further study. They were stamped “Classified” and sent to a Federal research facility in Washington. The mysteries of Chen Mao Liu’s blood, they agreed, were better left unrevealed to the general public.
An anonymous tip led Federal investigators to the cramped studio apartment Chen Mao Liu rented in Chinatown. There they found more of Chen’s blood, and hair samplings from several victims and from the so-called “Wild Man.”
Police also found the half-devoured remains of several of the missing victims whose bodies were not recovered from the Sanctuary: Their organs were found in Chen’s refrigerator in Chinese food containers stolen from the stockroom of the Golden Fortune, the restaurant where Chen worked until the night Glen Hong was butchered.
The Seattle P.D. and the FBI issued a joint statement saying that Chen Mao Liu had been held for questioning by Homeland Security, but because of his status as a citizen of the People’s Republic of China (and a hastily-drawn relationship to an obscure Chinese Ambassador), they averred, Chen was deported to Beijing to await punishment in the Chinese criminal justice system.
The outcome of the Wildman murders was protested by the victims’ families and an outraged public. Congress launched a twelve-week investigation that was abruptly halted without explanation at a cost of nearly thirty-five-million taxpayer dollars. Lawsuits were filed and settled, quietly, away from the glaring light of public scrutiny.
Soon enough, the story faded from the front pages, replaced by perfectly ordinary terrors.
But one fact remains.
The body of Chen Mao Liu was never found.
Other than blood and a few hair clippings, some of them displaying human, animal, and other characteristics that one forensic scientist described as “utterly impossible to identify,” no physical evidence was found to confirm he had ever existed.
Chen Mao Liu’s bloody footprints had been smoothed over like tracks in the sand. Hidden beneath an eternal sea.
* * * *
I didn’t know where the Story would lead me. Didn’t know what doors might open, or down what dark pathways those doors might lead.
I spent the next few weeks healing, pacing the floors of my apartment and jumping at shadows, unable to sleep, unable to write, needing to write just the same. Mostly I sat in Central Park, alone at night, smoking, searching my soul for answers and avoiding the pigeons.
One night, needing the sound of other human voices I went to a local coffee shop in the Village. It was a place normally haunted by literary types. I went there whenever I couldn’t get the words out of my head and onto the page.
One of the waitresses, an aspiring actress I’d seen many times at the coffee shop, sat down across from me. I’d always experienced an intense distrust of this woman. In the past she’d tortured me with her adventures as a Black Artiste in the Big Apple.
On this particular night, however, the actress/waitress invited me to join her in an adventure of a different sort. She was dark brown, with dyed red dredlocks and eyes the color of a glacier. Having no good reason to reject her, I accompanied her back to Brooklyn.
I was lonely.
Kowalski had refused to return my calls. He’d left me unconscious and alone at Seattle Memorial. When I awoke I was told that all my medical services (stab wounds, several strained tendons in my neck and back, several cracked ribs, a broken wrist and a greenstick fracture in the ulna of my right forearm) had been paid in full.
It had been four months since we’d last spoken.
On the subway ride back to Brooklyn, the actress/waitress and I could barely keep our hands off each other. By the time we reached my apartment I believed I would have committed murder to possess her. When I opened the door, Kowalski and Hernandez were waiting for us.
The actress/waitress shrieked and leaped across the room. Hernandez fired her crossbow even as the actress/waitress shape-shifted. The iron shaft shot past her and buried itself in the wall inches from my head. The actress/waitress lashed out, moving faster than human eyes could follow, and slapped Hernandez across the room.
Kowalski fired next. His bolt passed through empty air. The actress/waitress was standing on the ceiling directly over Kowalski’s head. She reached down, grabbed Kowalski by the throat and lifted him off the floor.
Red fury burned the shock from my mind. I grasped the iron crossbow and pulled it out of the wall. A shock of force reverberated up my arm, and fire exploded across the range of my perceptions.
The actress/waitress dropped Kowalski. Black-veined folds of skin like bat’s wings burst from the flesh beneath her outstretched arms. Her limbs elongated and thickened. Fangs emerged from her jaws and drooled viscous black slime onto the floor.
The vampire dropped to the floor and lunged toward me even as I lunged, thrusting out with the iron crossbow bolt. The force of our clash carried us across the living room and through the big picture window that overlooked Atlantic Avenue.
We plummeted two stories to the concrete. The vampire took the brunt of the fall. Even so, she tore at my face, black claws dragging red runnels down my cheeks.
My mind filled up with a crimson shout, and I rammed the iron bolt into the vampire’s heart. The creature screamed, and spat ichor into my face. I ground the bolt deeper into its chest until I felt the cords of her unlife snap. With a warbling moan, the vampire settled into the asphalt. In moments, she was gone. Not even a skeleton remained.
Exhausted now, abandoned by that shining red rage, I staggered up the stairs of my b
rownstone, back to my apartment. When I got there, a bruised and battered Hernandez and Kowalski were waiting for me.
Kowalski shoved Hernandez toward me. The one eyed hunter stared at me, almost sheepishly.
The Blood Rose cleared her throat.
“We have to talk.”
* * * *
After the cleaners were gone, Kowalski and I sat facing each other across my kitchen table.
“I drove up to Woodstock you know,” he said. “Thought I could retire, like I’d always planned to do.”
He shrugged. “I was bored out of my tits.”
The crusty prophet stood up and looked out the new glass the cleaners had installed in my living room.
“I couldn’t sleep out there,” he said. “Not sleeping much anywhere these days.” He turned and faced me. “What did you do to me, Grudge?”
I shrugged. “I healed you,” I said. “I don’t know how.”
Kowalski grimaced. He glared at me without speaking for nearly a minute. Then he shrugged.
“I don’t think I’m fully human any more,” he said. “Hell, I’m supposed to be dead. I don’t sleep. And I’m seein’ things…things that I shouldn’t be seeing. Things I don’t want to see.”
He slammed his fist on the table.
“Why’d you do it, Grudge?”
I considered my answer for a long time. But finally, I settled on the simple truth: “You’re my best friend.”
Kowalski stared at me without speaking. Then he cleared his throat and nodded. For a moment, I thought the merest hint of emerald fire shimmered around him; a fleeting glimpse of corpse light, but I couldn’t be sure.
A crazy gleam that had nothing to do with Carlos Vulpe flickered in his eyes. Kowalski smiled.
“Then maybe things ain’t so black after all,” he said. “No offense.”
I returned his smile.
“None taken.”
* * * *
Three hours ago, a man attacked two female joggers in Central Park. There has been a month-long spate of unsolved mutilation/murders in Midtown. Othello led Kowalski and me to a secluded section of the park where we found the werewolf. It was in the process of eating one of its victims.
The Revenant Road Page 19