The Dark Communion (The Midnight Defenders)

by Joey Ruff

  I sat up, pushed myself away from her. “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “You…Jono?” Her tears stopped, and the ghost of a smile swept across her face. But as she reached for me, she began to weep again.

  “Not now,” I said. “We still have a job to do. Help me up.”

  She stood wearily, blotted her eyes with her fingers, stared down at me, but made no motion to help.

  “Jono,” Ape said. “You…don’t need to push yourself. You were…I mean, my god, your heart stopped.”

  “Fucking help me up,” I said forcefully, and they each took a hand, pulled me to my feet slowly.

  “You lost so much blood, you need to rest. I’m amazed you’re even awake right now,” Ape said.

  I ignored him and pulled my t-shirt up, looked at the wound in my side. It was deep and dark and burned like fuck, bleeding light but free and oozing a translucent puss. I might have been dead. I probably should have been dead.

  “What happened?” Nadia asked.

  For a moment, my mind went blank, then remembered Adam Gables, remembered the words he said. I looked around frantically. “No time,” I said. “I’ve gotta find Adam. I’ve gotta find Anna.”

  “Anna?” Nadia asked. She looked at Ape. “He must have lost a lot of blood.”

  Grace lay on the ground nearby, and I moved to her. My right arm was completely numb and buzzed with dull pain and stinging needle pricks. I couldn’t move my fingers. “Fuck.”

  I grabbed the gun with my left hand and strapped her onto my leg.

  I heard a loud roar and spun to see Elensal flat against the buildings. Its wings beat against the huge, grey brick walls, blocks of concrete rained down against it. A man with shaggy white hair and broad shoulders stood before it, held up a heavy, wooden crossbow. Just behind and at either side were large, brown Rhodesian Ridgeback hounds, their hackles raised and dark crimson stained their bared fangs.

  I heard Finnegan cry out in pain, clutching his face in both hands, rocking himself on his back not too far away. Ape moved to him, but shot me a warning look, as if to say, “Take it easy and don’t be stupid.”

  “What the fuck is the groundskeeper doing here?” I asked Nadia.

  “I invited him,” she said. “I tried to tell you outside, but you got distracted.” She must have noticed the look on my face and said, “Crestmohr saved your life, Jono. He saved all of us. If he hadn’t shown up when he did…”

  “Where are the others?” I asked.

  I spun around, looked among the buildings of the buried avenue, the flames of the pyre of child-fuckers still blazing hotly, providing enough light to see.

  “They’re safe,” she said. “They’re in one of the buildings, out of the way.”

  “In one of the buildings?” I said. I thought about that a moment. “Yeah. That makes sense. I’ve gotta find them.”

  “They’re safe,” she said again, paying more attention to Crestmohr and the dragon. They’d worn it down. Its movements were sluggish and slow, but its taloned paws swung with the same angered intensity.

  Elensal roared and stomped the ground in front of it. The alligator tail lifted into the air, swung out toward one of the dogs, and threw itself against the façade of the building behind it, sent brick and rubble and debris into the air.

  The Chinook dropped his crossbow in favor of covering his eyes, ducked his head, and took several steps back. One of the dogs leapt at Crestmohr, pushed him out of the way just as a cyclopean brick threatened to flatten him, cracked the brick street instead.

  With one last look to me, Nadia lit her hands in a red mist of energy, and Ape joined her with his sword, the blade glowing brighter than I’d seen, which meant Brom had to be near.

  I turned. There, in the darkened entrance to one of the old buildings, a cloaked figure in a top hat disappeared into an open doorway.

  It wasn’t easy, but I hobbled after him. One arm hung lifelessly at my side, the other pulled Grace from her holster. My side burned with every step, and the pain threatened to bring me to my knees. I ignored it as best I could and pressed through it. “Daddy’s coming, Anna.”

  I reached the doorway in a half-limp, fell against the side of the frame and took a moment to catch my breath. The room was dark, but I could just make out the halo of light around a closed doorway ahead.

  I pulled myself away from the wall, took a few steps and staggered again. The fingers on my left hand tightened around Grace’s pistol-grip, and the ones on my right sutured themselves loosely across the open wound in my side that oozed, warm and throbbing, against my palm.

  At the end of the hallway, I bent my shoulder into the darkness of the halo’s center and was surprised to find that the door opened inward, silently and without much resistance, to a quiet, well-lit room. I expected a dirty, empty brick shell with a cot or a gathered nest of tattered newspaper clippings, perhaps a utility closet. I didn’t expect the backstage dressing room of a Vaudeville show.

  Sheer and velour curtains draped along the walls, ran across the ceiling like banners in a throne room, ivory and deep royal purple, magenta and lime green, a patchwork of tapestry. In some places, the cloth was as thick as a comforter, others as spidery thin and diaphanous as webbing.

  In one corner stood an old makeup table with a three-foot oval mirror, cracked down the middle and surrounded by nearly a dozen light sockets, only half of them glowing with naked, baseball-sized bulbs. The wood of the table was dusty, marred with age, deep, dark rivets chiseled into the grain of its surface.

  In other areas of the room, I saw an old wardrobe, scarred with the black smudges of some ancient fire and a costume trunk bursting with brightly colored fabrics. Fancy, dark wood chairs stood at irregular intervals along the walls, their burgundy and gold-patterned cushions split and gushing plumes of white, whipped stuffing. On every surface, and even scattered across most of the floor, were lit candles of every size and thickness.

  As far as I could tell, the room was empty but for my broken reflection in the make-up mirror. I took a few steps toward the little table.

  Scattered chaotically across the top of it were powder brushes, mirrored compacts, and generic theater masks in plastic and plaster: the white half-mask of the Phantom of the Opera, the happy Comedy mask iconic of the theater, and a crying clown, the left eye smashed through and jagged as if done by a small fist or a little hammer.

  I set Grace down on the table and slowly took the clown face in my left hand, turned it over. I felt a presence, knew I wasn’t alone in the room, but didn’t turn to look.

  Even as I pretended to study the mask, I felt his influence snake gently through the room, unseen, like oily tendrils, felt it prickling along my flesh, winding its way around my legs, my arms, my neck.

  “I’m not fucking afraid of you this time,” I said, my voice calm.

  I heard his footsteps before I saw him and looked from the clown face to the mirror. He stood behind me, silently.

  Brom was taller than me, maybe six-five, draped in a long, tattered grey trench coat. I couldn’t see his feet in the mirror, but his stained and torn navy dress slacks were tied at the waist with a length of electrical cord. He was bare-chested, his skin the color of dairy creamer, and his rib bones were clearly visible.

  He wore the top hat I’d seen, the chimney of it crushed on the side like a tin can, the lid punched through and flapping open like the mouth of a tea kettle. Beneath the brim of the hat and framing his head were greasy strands of black hair, thick like tentacles and just as wavy. Over his face he wore the Tragedy mask, dark triangle eyes and a large frown.

  I watched him in the mirror, expected him to move, to attack, to speak, but he remained silent, watched me, as still and calm as a tombstone. “Give me the fucking boy,” I said.

  “I know who you are, Jonothan Swyftt,” came the answer. “And I know why you are here.” For a moment, I heard the voice only in my head, and then it spoke out loud, the same eerie baritone that spoke throug
h Arthur in the sporting goods shop, that spoke to Adam Gables on the playground. “This is the holiest of holies. You are not welcome here.”

  In the mirror, his head moved slightly, and I narrowed my eyes. “Give me the boy, and I’ll leave.”

  “Adam Gables is here.” The curtains to my left parted, and I spun to see Adam, face blank and sedated.

  I moved to him and said, “Are you okay? Where’s Anna?”

  Adam lifted his head slightly and looked me in the eyes. Brom’s head moved in sync with Adam’s. Then the boy said, “Adam Gables is safe.” It wasn’t the voice I’d expected to hear; it was Brom’s.

  I grabbed Grace from the table and spun to the Bogey, lifted the rifle to his breastbone, the barrel inches from his chest, and said, “Get out of the kid’s head.”

  Adam Gables laughed, long and hollow, and I pulled the trigger.

  From that close, the bolo round should have split him in half, but it didn’t even break the skin. It wrapped around him twice, held his arms to his sides, and the laughter continued.

  In a motion that looked half flex and half shrug, he snapped the steel cable and grabbed the barrel of the gun, twisting his wrist to the side, and Grace leapt from my hand. Casually, he tossed her over his shoulder.

  “You insult me,” Adam said in a low growl, but I didn’t look at him. I stared coldly into the black triangle eyes of Brom’s mask. “You come in to my holy place. You, a wretch, who are unworthy to eat of my scraps. How do you make demands of a god?”

  “God?” I scoffed. There was a hard, bitter edge to my voice. I grabbed the fringes of his coat with my good hand. “You don’t come close to the gods I’ve gone up against. You don’t hold a candle to the fuckers I’ve taken down.” There was a low rumble, like the growl of an angry dog, echoing in the throat of the boy at my side. “If you’re such a fucking, all-powerful god, you piece of shit, then why do you have to control your followers with jewelry?” I looked around the room, motioning to the colored fabrics, the second-hand furniture, and I couldn’t help but say, “This entire existence is a show.”

  “Get out,” Adam said.

  “Not until I get my daughter.”

  He laughed.

  I caught a blow on my chin and spun. Brom stepped forward, raised both fists, a glint of light reflecting from something shiny on his left hand – the Ring of Solomon – and hit me again, again, again.

  Either the room spun, or my head did. I lost my orientation and toppled over onto an old, tattered and stained Persian rug. As soon as I landed, Brom’s foot caught my stomach in a sharp thrust, bounced me upward, coughing and sputtering.

  “So this is the knight that comes to face my dragon?” Adam screamed. The boy took one step away from me, as the white hands of Brom grabbed me and lifted me into the air. “This is the avenger of children?” Cold laughter flooded over me, thick and heavy and wet. He swung me backward, then I was airborne. My hands flailed weakly before me, navigated the sheer fabrics that parted before me as Brom hurled me into the air.

  I landed in the darkness, somewhere beyond the pretty fabrics and the soft glow of candles and could feel the aching in my body, the dull, constant throbbing. Wetness and warmth crowned my head. I couldn’t feel one of my legs, and the other buzzed with fire and the prickling of a thousand needles.

  Through my half-cracked eyes, I could just see the low brick wall that I lay against and managed to get my forearm on top of it, my elbow resting against the cold stone.

  The only light came from the candles behind me, and as Brom approached, his shadow eclipsed the rest of the room until all I could see was darkness, all I could feel was despair.

  “I will teach you to fear me,” he said.

  “Give me…my daughter,” I said, my breaths came in short, painful gasps. It hurt to swallow and my mouth had the bitter iron taste of blood.

  There was more cold laughter, then a voice said, “Look down.”

  My glance fell to the floor, to the stone on which my arm rested, and just beyond it I saw light dancing in long, rippling waves.

  As I watched, the darkness began to glow, and from somewhere deep below me, a light, soft and sweet like the flickering flame of a candle, sparked to life.

  The stone on which I lay was one in a ring that surrounded a pool. Below the water’s surface – and I couldn’t tell how far below – the light flickered. It was beautiful, warm and inviting, and as I watched it, entranced by it, the light filled the length of the entire pool, maybe five or six feet across, and more light began to spill out of it. At its center, I could just make out a darkened figure, blurry at first, but gradually moving into focus.

  Brom stood over me, said nothing, and I didn’t look at him. I was mesmerized by the figure in the pool.

  A girl, no older than six, sat in darkness. Her long brown hair hung like silken curtains on her shoulders, and she wore a green dress of crushed velvet, a sash tied around her waist and another bow, much larger, was tied in the small of her back. She wore crisp, white stockings and black baby-doll shoes. Her eyes were closed, and while she wasn’t smiling, there was an ethereal peace about her. She looked so much like her mother it took my breath away.

  Anna.

  As the surface of the water rippled, the darkness around her took on the appearance of a city park: beautiful flower arrangements and neatly groomed trees, bright, emerald grass. She sat on a park bench, her hands folded in her lap, her head bowed gracefully against her chest.

  I wanted to reach into the water, to pull her out, to touch her, but I didn’t dare move. I feared if I broke the surface of the water or even blinked, that Anna would be lost to me again. I couldn’t risk that.

  Then the scene changed, and she sat in a bus station, or maybe the lounge area of an airport, her park bench became a row of hard, plastic, armless chairs. Large picture windows stretched from floor to ceiling behind her, reflected the light of the room she inhabited.

  “Anna,” I breathed.

  At my side, Adam spoke with Brom’s voice, “Your daughter is not here.”

  “No,” I said simply. From the moment I saw her, I understood. I knew the truth, but didn’t want to voice it. Anna was dead. She’d been dead a long, fucking time. I was a fool to expect anything else, yet what Adam told me was true, nonetheless. She was here, right before my eyes. In a way I never knew could be possible.

  Brom moved behind me, and I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Your daughter awaits judgment,” he said without malice or remorse. “And I will reunite you with her.”

  I didn’t fight. I didn’t move. I knew exactly what he intended. I’d breached the sanctity of his isolation, come backstage uninvited, and ruined the illusion he’d created. I found the man behind the curtain.

  But none of that mattered. I had my daughter back, and while Brom sought to destroy me, he’d given me the greatest gift I could’ve asked for.

  The pain numbed me. And although I didn’t feel anything, I knew a smile had spread across my face. Had I felt, I would’ve almost pitied Brom and certainly felt such intense joy at the sight of Anna my heart would’ve collapsed.

  “The show must go on,” Adam said, almost eagerly, and Brom’s hand began to tighten.

  A low growl behind me. Then a brown blur, and the hand slowly, uncertainly, began to let go. Brom took a step away, and the growling grew steadily louder until it purred like an outboard boat engine.

  My consciousness drifted from me. My eyes never left the pool, never left my little girl, yet I could see the room from some high place. Below me, the candlelight flickered beside the sheer curtains, and shadows danced against the wall.

  Brom grappled with one of the Ridgebacks, the one with the black face mask and nose. His coat was torn away, and his limbs flailed wildly. His skin was sunken and sallow, as if someone had removed all of the organs and stretched bread dough over his skeleton, let it sag under its own weight. The way he wrestled the dog, they might have been fighting over a steak.

  Taboo’s
head writhed and shook, snapped his canines down on Brom’s fingers, and wriggled free of the Bogey’s grip, backed up to the makeup table and barked furiously, his head close to the ground, his eyes narrowed and fierce.

  Three gunshots echoed in the small room. Brom took them all in the back and shoulders and staggered forward, then spun with malice.

  Ape stepped from the darkened doorway, one of Finnegan’s Colts smoking in his outstretched hand, a look of pain and agony in his hardened eyes. The violet light of his cane sword glowed like a star in his other hand, and Brom’s attention shifted nervously to the blade.

  “I have a score to settle with you,” Ape said, teeth gritted and bared.

  He squeezed off two more rounds before Brom charged. Ape brought his sword up and swung, missed the Bogey completely. The top hat fell in two equal pieces to the ground. Brom’s fists hit Ape’s gut, threw the sword arm away to the side and backhanded Ape.

  Ape rebounded quickly. With a snarl, the amaranthine blade arced upward, but Brom caught Ape’s forearm in his skeletal grip. For a moment, the violet light touched Brom’s neck, and the pale skin sizzled and smoked. He didn’t cry out, simply bowed his head and twisted his wrist, flicked the sword away and snapped Ape’s wrist with a loud pop.

  When Brom let go, Ape staggered to the side, fell against the wardrobe and onto the chair that stood next to it. Candles toppled on their sides, maybe a dozen all together, and hot wax pooled and dripped as the flames bent skyward from the wicks and caught the diaphanous fabric that wallpapered the room.

  Taboo leapt at Brom, knocked him flat against the wall. I heard a loud, dull sound and pieces of asphalt flaked from the brick. Brom screamed and threw the dog backward, but it rebounded instantly and sunk its teeth into Brom’s calf, clamped down firmly and shook his head as if in seizure.

  I don’t know what happened next. I felt my body again, felt my pain, and saw the peaceful form of Anna in the still water before me. My left glove hung from my teeth and my naked hand hovered a hair’s breadth from the water’s surface and for a moment I thought I could touch her. I was aware of the scorching heat in the room, the way the hung fabric caught as if soaked in turpentine. I knew the room was on fire, and yet it didn’t seem to matter.