Splintered

by Jamie Schultz

  “All right,” Nail said. He checked his weapon. One in the chamber, safety off. “I’ll go first.”

  “Hey, man, I don’t know.”

  He looked back at DeWayne, who was standing at the base of the stairs, shifting his weight from one leg to the other like he had to piss. “Don’t know what?”

  “Man, you got the cops on this. We ain’t gonna do shit in there but get in the way, fuck things up. Maybe get shot. Which, like you said, I ain’t exactly in a hurry to do. And, you know, there’s, like, maybe a dozen of Clarence’s guys in there, which if we meet one is not gonna do good things for my life expectancy.”

  “God—” Nail cut himself off. Yeah, this was chickenshit, but DeWayne didn’t know Anna and Karyn. Had no idea what he owed them. It didn’t matter, he supposed. Anna and Karyn were family, but not DeWayne’s family.

  “You ain’t gotta be the hero here,” DeWayne said, a pleading edge to his tone. “That’s what cops get paid for.”

  “Get outta here, man. Take the car, get rid of Stevie somewhere. Then get out of circulation, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Hey, I—”

  “No, it’s cool.” He looked DeWayne in the eye and gave him a single curt nod. “For real. You did good tonight.”

  “All right, man. Watch yourself, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nail went in. He heard DeWayne’s footfalls recede behind him.

  Chapter 29

  An unearthly peace had come over Karyn, not at all like what she had expected from the sort of magic she’d seen Tommy perform, where blood and pain too often seemed integral components. First, the strange cacophony she’d been hearing for weeks quieted, driving home just how bad it had been, how much she’d grown accustomed to. Other sounds intruded—sounds with a different quality, less muted and more immediate. Chanting. Gunfire and screams. The low whisper of flame.

  None of it was present, though—it was like traffic noise when she was trying to fall asleep. Easily ignored, but easily picked out if she paid attention. It had little weight or consequence.

  The visions did a similar trick—fading just a little, retreating nearly into the background even as they multiplied. Perhaps that was because she was in a place that was dark much of the time, perhaps not. They didn’t demand her attention in the same way they usually did, though.

  She felt calm. Happy, though not in any exuberant way. Content, as though nothing was wrong in the world, though nothing could be further from the truth.

  Hector traversed the circle, finally crossing from the outside to the interior. He produced a knife, a tiny thing about the size of a paring knife. Now he kills me. The burst of panic that accompanied the thought surprised her, as did the sudden movement of her limbs. The restraints held, though, and before she could do anything else, Hector cut the ball of his thumb.

  Ah. There was the blood. He leaned over and smeared it across her forehead, then extended the knife in Sobell’s direction, hilt-first.

  Sobell approached. His nose was bleeding, Karyn saw. There was a smear on his lip where he’d wiped the blood away, but a fresh trickle ran down and dripped slowly from his chin.

  He took the knife from Hector. He paused then, turning to each of the faces around the circle. The hesitation was odd, Karyn thought, but there was something on his face—fear, or confusion, it was hard to tell, masked by the flickering light. Neither Genevieve nor the old man did anything more than stare back at him. Hector crossed his arms and waited.

  Sobell cut his thumb. Karyn wondered if that was really necessary, given the blood on his face, but he went with the program. When he smeared it across her forehead, making an X or a cross with Hector’s blood, it was hurried, as though he wanted to get it over with.

  Then he retreated to the circle’s edge.

  One more revolution, and the players stood back in their original positions. Blood now streamed from both Sobell’s nostrils, and he no longer bothered to wipe it away. He and the old man weaved on their feet—one of them must collapse soon.

  Hector pronounced a final syllable and dashed Sobell’s torc to the floor inside the circle. It smashed apart, fragments flying everywhere.

  All the lights in the room went out.

  There was a moment of complete darkness, and then a diffuse blue light began to fill the room. It grew in intensity until Karyn could make out Sobell’s awed expression, Hector’s avid greed.

  It was coming from her, she realized.

  The visions, the images swelled and bloomed, filling her head, enveloping her, sucking her in as the blue light blazed and a crazed vertigo spun the room around her.

  One image in particular grew in front of her, blocking her entire view.

  She began to speak.

  * * *

  There had been shooting, of that Anna was sure. After that—she had no idea. Each time the circle rotated, a new tone at a new dissonant interval joined the others keening in her head, until she thought her skull would shake apart. If there had been gunshots when the circle turned for the fourth time, Anna hadn’t heard them. She couldn’t hear Sheila, chanting three feet away from her, was only keeping up her end of the chant by repeating what Sheila had said before, watching Sheila’s lips, and hoping. Had she mangled the words? How would she know?

  Sheila and Rain were shouting now, and Anna tried to raise her voice likewise, just to hear it over the noise in her head.

  The circle rotated one more time, and the lights went out. The noise stopped, too, leaving Sheila and Anna screaming into the void.

  Blue light shone—Karyn. It came from Karyn’s body, limning her in foxfire. The sight tore Anna’s concentration away from the task at hand, almost caused her to fumble the chant.

  A voice, loud as the amplified vocals at a rock concert, ripped out across the room.

  “Life, you seek life, one reprieve from the abyss, the other escape.”

  That, too, came from Karyn. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, her body stretched taut.

  “In the valley of the garden, here in this Gomorrah—”

  Sheila spat out another line, then released Anna’s hands.

  “—a man, naked, bound, and shot through with arrows, in dying finds salvation.”

  Anna tried to keep up the chant, but it was nearly impossible with the noise and Karyn’s gigantic, eardrum-crushing voice.

  Sheila got out a knife.

  Oh, Jesus, don’t—

  “In his salvation you will find yours.”

  Sheila cut off her thumb.

  Anna scrambled back as a huge, terrifying gray thing filled the space between her and Sheila.

  “Kill them all,” Sheila said. “All save the women.”

  She fell over. Rain collapsed.

  The gray thing reared up.

  * * *

  Anna saw the creature for a split second before the light vanished, saw it reach out and destroy Van Horn like she’d brush lint off her shirt. Van Horn made some kind of gurgling, strangling noise and then collapsed. In the darkness that followed, there was a single deafening gunshot, and by the time Belial—Hector—whoever—conjured up more light, Rhino was dead, too, crushed to a pulp, and the slug thing was still squeezing his corpse.

  “Anna!” Genevieve yelled. She stood close to Sobell’s side, the bulk of the gray thing and its flailing tendrils between her and Anna.

  Anna’s eyes locked with hers. Genevieve’s distant, disengaged expression had vanished and been replaced by a twisting visage of pure emotion. Terror and regret, desperate need combined with emotions Anna had no name for and couldn’t read from the others. Tears glimmered on her cheeks.

  “Run!” Genevieve said. “Get out of here!”

  Run where? The gray thing was between her and the door, too close to Karyn. She couldn’t leave Karyn here, and she dared get no closer to the creature’s questing arms. She had no idea if the thing would follow Sheila’s instructions to the letter, or if it was about to go on a killing rampage, and she wasn’t ab
out to test it.

  Everything, Anna was now quite sure, was not going to work out for everyone. She felt no vindication at the thought, no triumph, only a sick sort of emptiness and disappointment. She supposed she must have expected something different after all.

  The slug thing turned toward Genevieve. Gen’s face contorted with horror. Sobell broke and bolted for the door.

  The creature lurched forward. Tentacles lashed the air.

  Genevieve cast one last miserable look Anna’s way, and she fled. The creature followed her.

  Anna had no time to think about what had just happened, only thoughts for getting Karyn the hell out of here.

  Anna snatched up Sheila’s knife and ran to Karyn.

  The restraints came free easily. Karyn pushed herself to a sitting position, and Anna hauled her to her feet.

  “What the hell was that?” Karyn asked.

  “Don’t know. We gotta go.”

  “I’m not sure I can—”

  “You can. Come on.”

  Anna half dragged a stumbling Karyn over to Sheila. “Come on,” she said. “We have to go.”

  “I don’t think she’s getting up,” Karyn said.

  There was a lot of blood, Anna now saw, a dark pool surrounding Sheila’s hand and head. It hadn’t come just from the knife wound, but from her nose and ears as well. Her eyes were open, unblinking. Rain was curled next to her, trembling.

  “Come on, get up!”

  Rain closed her eyes.

  Anna looked down, helpless. “Damn.”

  “Now would be good,” Karyn said. “Sooner than now.”

  They ran out.

  Chapter 30

  “There was something else,” Sobell said, gasping. He pulled Genevieve forward and shoved her down the hall in front of him. She’d been quick about catching up with him, but apparently her self-preservation instinct was flagging. “There had to be more.”

  “There was nothing else,” Belial said.

  “Anna!” Genevieve shouted.

  “Keep moving, dammit! You can’t help her.” Sobell shoved Genevieve forward again. Obstinate pupil.

  Belial didn’t even slow to look at them. He went through the next doorway. Sobell pulled Genevieve along. The only light came from Sobell’s borrowed cell phone, barely enough to keep Belial in sight, and Sobell wondered how long before the battery went dead. It hadn’t seemed to take quite so long to get in here as it was to get out.

  “Whose question did she answer?” Sobell asked.

  “Shut up,” Belial said.

  Belial stopped at the next doorway. Beyond, flashlight beams careered around the large room they’d come through on the way. Armed men, and not friendly. They wore black with tall white letters printed on the uniforms or suits, and while Sobell couldn’t read the words from here, he was moderately certain they all spelled some variant of LAW ENFORCEMENT.

  “Here they come,” he said.

  “What are we doing?” Genevieve whispered.

  A flashlight swept past another doorway, stopped, then returned to it. A mostly naked man leaped out, held up a strip of paper, and shouted something. Sobell recognized the words partway through, and got his hand up in time to shield his eyes from a brilliant flash of white light. Somebody shouted, and somebody else fired off a few rounds. The naked guy hit the ground, full of freshly minted holes, so either he’d fucked up the blinding spell or the LAW ENFORCEMENT guys had better gear than Sobell thought. Or there was one lucky, stupid, blind bastard out there shooting, he supposed.

  A dozen other remnants of Belial’s army rushed out of other doorways, screaming at the top of their lungs.

  Belial started to go forward, and Sobell grabbed him by the shoulder.

  “Are you insane?” Sobell asked. “Why does everybody around me have a death wish today?”

  Belial spun around. In the blue-white light from the cell phone, his eyes were overlarge, face twisted in a snarl. “Fuck yourself, Enoch.”

  “I can help you, Belial, but not if you’re dead.”

  Belial hesitated. His face worked in that peculiar way it had, the various bits moving with no particular relationship to each other.

  The screaming started. Somebody started shooting, regardless of whether they could see or not; then somebody else joined him.

  Sobell yanked Belial back through the doorway and to the side, before one of them caught a stray bullet.

  Above the screaming, there came a shriek so awful it caused the hairs to stand up on Sobell’s neck.

  “I hate to say this, but we need each other,” Sobell said.

  “You need me. Us. You need us.”

  “I have money. I have people. Your people have a nasty habit of dying, even when they’re not getting mowed down by law enforcement.” He peeked around the edge of the doorway—impossible to tell what was going on out there, bodies swarming everywhere, flashlight beams bobbing, muzzle flash and flame adding to the chaos. “The oracle said there’s one solution to both our problems.” I think. I hope. “We just have to find it. But to do that, we need to get out of here.”

  Belial looked back through as well. Was he actually loyal to that collection of morons out there, or was he struggling to overcome the twin temptations of bloodshed and chaos?

  “Fine,” Belial said. “Go fuck yourself. Fine. Let’s go.”

  “Glad you’re all in agreement in there.”

  The noise was dying down. Sobell couldn’t tell if Belial’s mess of an army had won, but even if they had, they wouldn’t for long. The thing about the law was that it was effectively bottomless. You couldn’t go toe-to-toe with it and win. You needed to obfuscate, lawyer up, cover up, be unbelievably careful, and, when you’d exhausted all of the above, run.

  “There a back way?” Sobell asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Lead on.”

  They retreated from the battle, going deeper into the building. Sobell wondered what his chances were for successfully pinning this whole mess on Belial, if they got caught.

  Not terribly good, he supposed.

  * * *

  Finding the way toward the front of the building was easy, even if Nail had gotten a little turned around inside—just head toward the noise. He had climbed up to the ground floor, taken a few dead ends, but now he was headed toward the front, where this shit show was likely reaching its conclusion. Maybe the cops would rescue Anna and Karyn before Sobell and company did something horrible to them, but Nail kinda doubted it. Any sort of hostage negotiation had obviously failed, but Sobell’s legion of doom had an entrenched position and fuckin’ voodoo or whatever on their side. They’d lose in the end, but it would take a while.

  The sounds of battle echoed through what looked like a long row of cells. The noises were much louder when Nail got to the end. There was a slight turn, then another long hall. The noises were getting closer now, and he killed his flashlight.

  Yeah, footsteps.

  Keeping low, Nail looked around the corner. Couldn’t see shit—whoever it was wasn’t carrying light. He readied his gun.

  Genevieve stepped right out into the hall. “Who’s there?”

  “Gen? That you?”

  Genevieve flooded the area with light from her phone. Two figures stood at her sides. Sobell, and the crazy cult leader who’d shot Sobell in the head a couple of months back. “What is going on here? Where’s Anna?”

  “This is all terrifically touching, but we need to be moving,” Sobell said.

  “Where’s Anna and Karyn?”

  Genevieve shook her head.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means I don’t know,” she said tonelessly. “You should get out of here. There’s nothing but bad shit that way.”

  “How, exactly, did you get in here?” Sobell asked.

  “I gotta go,” Nail said, walking forward.

  “Good luck, Marine,” Sobell said.

  “Fuck all of you.” Nail shouldered past them.

  “
Nail—I mean it. That is not a good idea,” Genevieve said.

  “Tell me about it. Now get outta here.”

  “Be careful,” she called after him.

  “Right. Sure. No problem.”

  She walked away, in line behind the cult guy. He knew it was stupid, but he felt a pang anyway, way worse than when his brother had split. He and Genevieve should have been on this together. She was really gonna leave him here, let him do this one by himself.

  He headed away from the them, deeper into this burgeoning clusterfuck. He used no light, hugging the wall for navigation. It wasn’t like he had any better ideas. Shouting and gunfire echoed through the hall, diffuse and distant, and he moved toward it as rapidly as he dared, sliding his feet softly across the floor so as not to suddenly step forward and fall in a hole.

  The hall either took a right angle turn to the left or opened out into a wider space—he couldn’t tell which. From the sound, it was probably the latter, but the echoes did funny things in here, bouncing around off the hard concrete surfaces and never seeming to come to rest.

  He could call out, he supposed, though that might be a good way to get shot or incinerated. Yell for help, maybe—though it was impossible to know who’d show up. The police, maybe, or maybe some crazy-eyed fire-slinging motherfucker who had an endless list of imaginary scores to settle.

  This sucks.

  A scream, a real bad one, echoed up the hallway, and Nail paused. Bad shit, that. Last time he heard something like that, a guy had stepped on a land mine and blown most of his leg off. They’d pulled him out of the mine field with a charred black bone sticking out of the end of his thigh.

  Was he really going to go toward that?

  He exhaled. He literally could not see his hand in front of his face. Somewhere dozens of people were fighting and dying over a hostage situation that, for all he knew, wasn’t even a hostage situation anymore. Well, half of them were fighting over that, and the other half were fighting because they were crazy. He had the funny feeling he’d been here before.