The Dark Communion (The Midnight Defenders)

by Joey Ruff

  It’d been more than twenty years since I’d seen my daughter, and suddenly, she was before me. Nothing else mattered. I couldn’t bear the thought of being without her again, not even to save my own life. Yes, as I watched her still form, I realized that this was Brom’s lair. That as long as Brom was there, something would exist to separate me once more from my child.

  What I did next, I didn’t do for myself. I did it for Anna.

  I pushed the pain from my mind, pulled strength from outside of myself, and even though I couldn’t feel my leg, even though my side was aflame with heat and agony, even though my arm was mostly useless and throbbed dully, I managed to pull myself to my feet, fueled, I guess, by nothing more than my own stupidity and stubbornness.

  Adam lay unconscious beside the pool, both of his arms out before him clumsily. Another discarded shell.

  I turned to the fire, to the Bogey, the dog, my friend, and squared my shoulders at Brom who turned toward me as I stood. He tilted his head to me in challenge, tragedy on his face.

  I threw myself forward.

  He was so gaunt and thin I could’ve taken his spinal cord in my hand through his mid section and lifted him like some plastic Halloween lawn display, but he held his arms out at me, caught me as I fell upon him, one hand going for my throat, the other finding the open wound in my side.

  Fingers in my gut, electric pain shot through me. I reeled back, trembled with the intensity. I couldn’t focus on any, one thing, but knew it was me or him. All I could think of was my daughter. All I could think of…

  My Anna.

  My fingers found Brom’s mask, and as my ungloved hand caught the porcelain face of Tragedy, my senses prickled and tensed and the pain was numbed as the vision began to play.

  It wasn’t one vision but a series of quickly-flashing images, hundreds of them, like a slide show in fast forward.

  I saw Brom’s cloaked form crawl through the basement of the theater, saw him stalk the shadowy corridors after hours. The make-up table, the wardrobe, the costume trunk, the masks, the fabrics had all been spirited away from the theater.

  Several images showed Brom in front of his mirror, removing one mask for another, changing faces, his form masked in shadows.

  Brom stared in to Anna’s pool, the waters dark and murky.

  Brom came up through the sewer drainage pipes of Arthur’s retirement home, found Ape’s uncle, the flair of Solomon’s ring.

  Adam’s school, the playground, a view from the other side of the fence. Brom stood on the outside, looked in, hidden in the shade of tall trees. He watched three older boys toss Adam Gables around, taunt and spit on him. One of the boys raked his nails across Adam’s face, left him in the dust, and they wandered off amidst their own laughter as Adam cried.

  A bathroom with two children. One was Adam Gables, the other must have been Clint Johnson. The reflected image of Arthur Towers in the bathroom mirror raised his taloned hand and struck once, twice, three times. Clint Johnson screamed in agony and pain, fell onto the floor and the man called Dewey slashed and tore and carved, all the while Adam screamed, “No, Dewey, stop it. Don’t hurt him.” And Clint Johnson was a loose pile of raw, exposed tissue, thick red fluid, and hanging, limp tatters of skin and hair.

  Another flash revealed Adam and Brom standing together in the make-up mirror. Brom wore the tragedy mask and stooped low, his head visible just over Adam’s shoulder, and both stared forward as the Bogey handed Adam the comedy mask. The boy lifted it to his face and cocked his head to the side.

  The Wright house, Brom on the patio in the rain. Then he shimmied up the drain pipe to sit outside the boy’s window.

  Then darkness. I understood that the mask was propped against the mirror, and from what I could see, only two candles burned in the room, distantly, beyond the hanging fabric and visible only through the sheer scarves. A loud crash sounded from somewhere beyond. A thin, gaunt and bony hand shot out from between sheets of fabric, made an opening in the curtain and Brom’s dark head slithered out of the gloom, backlit by the candles.

  After that, a series of images I didn’t understand:

  Brom, naked and huddled in a sewer pipe, cold light filtering in from a grate overhead, water cascading around him in a weak, but steady, waterfall of sorts. The mask held limply in one hand, head buried against his shivering chest.

  Brom, mask-less, face hidden from view, shattered a full-length, standing mirror with the base of an antique lamp.

  Brom sulked away in the shadows from the brightly-lit, nocturnal chorus of the Siren Song.

  Brom, alone.

  And I understood:

  The way he stalked back-alleys in search of those he could control, the way his ring would flare and spark as he took possession.

  The way he stalked his victims, hand-picking the children he later consumed, fed on their emotions. He chose kids who didn’t have a lot of friends, that were isolated, easier to manipulate. He’d seen something special in Adam.

  But most of all, what I understood about Brom was not the things he had done or the places he had gone, but I understood who he was. How weak he was.

  His collection of old husks – his mutilated legions of the Dark Communion – weren’t discarded, but stored as if in a closet.

  Through the power of Solomon’s Ring, he wore people like suits.

  As I came out of the flash, mask in-hand, Brom pulled away.

  His hands up before him, face turned to the side. He cowered in the corner, exposed, his thick strands of hair shading his bowed head like a veil.

  “You’re pathetic,” I spat. “You’re not a fucking god.”

  I threw the theater mask against the wall, shattered it like fine china.

  He startled at the crash, then screamed and threw himself against me, threw me. I caught myself before I fell in to the flames of the hung tapestries.

  Brom moved to the makeup table, grabbed the first mask he could find, the porcelain clown, and lifted it to his face.

  He turned back to me, but as he spun, Ape roused himself from his chair and struck him in the face, shattered the clown façade.

  As the pieces of the mask fell away, Brom caught one of the shards, his head bowed low, and raised it to Ape, stabbed him in the shoulder once, twice.

  I tackled him.

  Ape fell back against the wall, and Brom and I collided into the make-up table, shattering the other masks, snapping the table legs, knocking the mirror loose where it clattered to the floor and cracked.

  The Bogey managed to plant his feet against my chest, kicked me off. As soon as I was clear, Ape leapt on him, hit him several times in the face.

  Ape got to his feet and lifted Brom by the neck, squeezed, a look of rage on his face.

  Brom struck him in the chest, and Ape’s hold faltered. Brom was on his feet again, hit Ape once more. He grabbed a table leg from the floor and beat Ape with it like a club, watched him fall and continued to swing furiously after he was down.

  I grabbed the blazing curtains behind Brom and wrapped them around his neck. The flames sizzled against his hair, and he struck me, threw me back. He tore the sash from the ceiling and let it hang around him like a scarf of flames, the light billows of smoke thinly veiling his face.

  He studied Ape for a moment, and when he saw no movement, turned to me.

  A blur of brown fur struck Brom, drove him back into the shadows and toppled him onto the floor.

  Taboo growled, his head and body shaking violently as he straddled the Bogey. The flaming cloth shook to ashes with the bared fury of his canines.

  I moved to Ape, but he didn’t seem to be awake, and then something caught my eye: a purple glow.

  Just behind the Ridgeback sat Grace, and in front of the gun lay Ape’s sword. I crossed to them and holstered the gun. Then I retrieved the blade. Moved to Brom, eyes narrowing.

  “Taboo,” I thundered. “Heel.”

  The dog whimpered once, quietly, and backed away, growling as he did, his eyes ne
ver leaving Brom.

  I don’t know what I’d intended, but as the blade raised to strike, I saw his finger, the glint of the firelight on the white-gold band, as his hands shielded his face from me and cowered under the violet light that caused his skin to bubble and burn at the touch.

  Fury flowed through me. “Fuck you, Brom,” I spat.

  I swung, heard the gory crack of bone and the wet tear of tissue as his hand fell away and clattered to the floor at his feet. I tossed the blade against the stone floor. The metal rattled against the brick underfoot, and I reached down, took the severed hand in my fingers. I pocketed Solomon’s Ring and tossed the hand.

  As I looked down at him, he continued to hide his face. I shook my head and cackled. “You’re pathetic,” I said. “Still trying to hide, even after I see you. Not the show that you put on, not the glam or the fucking fashion. I know what you are, you fucking coward.”

  I knelt over him and pulled a large piece of mirror from the broken frame that lay on the ground. I held it up before him and said, “You don’t want anyone to see who you are. You’re afraid of yourself.” And as I spoke, his body went rigid, tense, and something curious happened. His hands lowered from his face, and for a split-second, he saw his own reflection.

  I saw what he fought so desperately to hide.

  Brom had only one eye, one black eyebrow, and that one amber eye glistened with pain and fury and shame, blinked rapidly at the image in the mirror. The rest of his face was sunken with deep reddish-brown marks, three of them side-by-side, like claw marks, that stretched from the hair line in front of his right ear to the flapping shreds of torn flesh that dangled where his jaw should have been. There was no hollow eye cavity. There were no nostrils, no mouth, and no structure or molding to his face of any kind below his left eye, as though whatever had done that to him had melted the skin over any openings.

  Brom shook, convulsed rapidly. There was a loud siren, like a fog horn, yet disorienting. I staggered backward, shielded one ear with my shoulder, and dropped the piece of mirror as my good hand covered the other ear. But the noise grew louder. It occurred to me that it wasn’t a noise at all, but rather some kind of psychic attack, some mental backlash.

  I collapsed to the floor, and Brom grabbed his severed hand and disappeared past the flames into the darkness near Anna’s pool. There wasn’t anything over there…nothing except the boy.

  I couldn’t move and called, “Taboo!”

  The dog bolted forward, his growl tearing through the chaotic noise in my head. I couldn’t see what happened, but heard a scuffle, and Brom staggered through the darkened entry. As he moved away, the psychic noise faded.

  Beside me, the fire crackled, and one of the curtains fell like a dying phoenix. In the space beyond, I saw the dog standing atop Adam’s body, straddling him, teeth bared in a snarl, a low growl reverberating in his throat.

  “Good boy,” I said.

  Taboo appeared at my side, panted heavily in my ears. Licked my face. I patted him on the top of the head and felt the warmth from the dark, wet stain on his fur. Another deep gash just behind his right foreleg. He limped a little as he walked, but still seemed eager and pleased with himself.

  There was a loud, shrill whistle, and Taboo barked once in response and trudged through the doorway. I tried to move, couldn’t get my fucking legs under me as the smoke and flames grew in intensity.

  Crestmohr entered the room with Nadia. She gasped and fell at my side.

  I caught her eye and said, “Adam’s back there. He’s unconscious.”

  “I have the boy,” Crestmohr said and stepped over to Adam, picked him up. He handed the boy to Nadia. Stooped and lifted me. Held me with unfaltering strength. As they ducked back through the doorway, I caught a deep breath of fresh, smokeless air.

  “Take me back,” I said. “Leave me with Anna.”

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” Nadia said. “He’s delirious.”

  “Fucking let me go,” I yelled. “You’re going the wrong way. My daughter…”

  But I was so tired, so weak. I tried to protest, but nothing came. The more steps he took, the more desperate I became, and as he stepped out onto the old brick road, the pain inside of me seemed to rival the physical pain in my body. I closed my eyes.

  Nadia said, “Where’s Ape?”

  “He must still be in there,” the Chinook said.

  “I’ve got him,” somebody said. “We’ve found him.”

  “He’s alive?” somebody said, surprised. I didn’t know if they were talking about Ape…or me.

  “For now. He needs medical attention. He’s lost a lot of blood.” Probably me.

  “He’s lucky.”

  Yeah, lucky me. Fuck. I guess my truck was on time today.

  39

  The path Crestmohr took to lead us out of the Underground was through an old, abandoned utility shed in the fairgrounds, not even half a mile from the subterranean, brick street. It took maybe an hour to get everyone topside again, and by that time, Ape was feeling much more like himself. He was still a little shaky, but he insisted on helping the Chinook take a few treated timbers of Gopher wood back into the Underground.

  I was only half conscious, but I lay in the bed of Crestmohr’s pick-up, my head in Nadia’s lap, an old blanket underneath me, and the stars blazing in the cloudless night sky above. I’d never been so happy to see the fucking sky.

  The dogs curled up together beside me, along with Adam. Barnes’ wrapped body lay at the tires on the ground until a police team could come and claim it.

  Anderson and Chuck regained consciousness and agreed to wait ‘til we had gone before rendezvousing with Stone.

  Turns out the warehouse where they found James Wright also housed the bodies of over thirty children, their bones displayed in an upstairs office that was made into a charnel house not unlike the one Ape and I had found before. With so many bodies discovered at once, it wasn’t difficult for Stone, Chuck and Anderson to convince the Powers that Be that the idea of an underground ring of serial-kidnapping bums wasn’t all that crazy.

  The warehouse also had a silk room, or a chrysalis chamber, as Finnegan had referred to it. According to Finnegan and whoever he consulted with, the room was used for a cocoon orgy of sorts, allowing multiple inhabitants to undergo their metamorphosis all at the same time. Of course, the room was never used, but Brom either couldn’t, or didn’t see a need to, stop them from creating it.

  James Wright and Adam Gables were delivered safely home.

  I wasn’t there for that. I was sleeping in a hospital bed after getting stitched and bandaged. The dragon’s claw hadn’t pierced anything vital, but my arm was fucking broken, and they had to put me in a cast. Nothing ended up being wrong with my legs, and the numbness was blamed on phantom nerves from my previous incident at the Song. I was given an IV of morphine for the pain and a quiet room. I finally got the rest I needed, didn’t get up until about three the next afternoon. I would have gladly slept longer, but they sent me home.

  The next day was Nadia’s birthday.

  Chess had prepared a multi-tiered chocolate cake that put most celebrity wedding cakes to shame. We were going to throw her a party, but she asked us not to. She swore she’d had enough excitement for a while and decided to celebrate with a movie rental and a pizza delivery, which was fine with me. I’d just gotten out of the hospital and ached all over.

  Later that evening, I made my way down to the barn. I’d never been inside before, and it was nicer than I would’ve guessed. Of the two small rooms on the side of the building, one had been turned into a den with a fireplace and a futon, a small table with two chairs. There was a colorful, hand-woven rug in the middle of the room and a large cushion in the corner for the dogs. The other room was a small bathroom with a toilet and stand-up shower and a small kitchen with a mini-fridge, a stove and a sink. There was a closet for clothes and another for storage.

  I stood in the doorway for a moment before I knocked.

/>   Crestmohr sat at the little table, drank hot tea and read an old paperback by candlelight. Thai greeted me as I entered. The fire blazed in the hearth, and Taboo lay on a cushion next to it, his ribs wrapped in white medical bandages. He lifted his head toward me, and his tail began to wag excitedly when he saw me. He didn’t get up. He let his head fall back to the cushion, tail flopping lazily.

  Crestmohr looked up and smiled absently. “Good evening, John Swyftt.”

  I nodded to him and entered the room. “I wanted to…check on your dog. How is he?”

  My left hand hung at my side, and Thai nuzzled his head into it.

  “He will be just fine,” he said with a knowing grin. “My dogs are tough. It takes much more than a dragon to put them down.”

  I nodded and walked to Taboo, knelt down beside him, rubbed the top of his head.

  “How are you?” Crestmohr asked.

  “Me?” I looked up, a little surprised. “In pain.” I shrugged. “It’ll pass.” I looked back at the dog for a moment, rubbed him idly, watched his eyes close. Taboo took a deep, relaxed breath. I looked back at the Chinook and said, “Look, I…I wanted to say…”

  “You are welcome,” he said with a smile. “How is everyone else?”

  “Anderson has a few second degree burns, some nasty cuts. Chuck’s okay: bumps and bruises, mainly, but he thinks I saved his life.”

  “That is good.”

  There was another moment of silence and I said, “You’re not a normal hunter.” He watched me patiently, but said nothing. He folded his hands before him. “Were you with the Hand?”

  “The Hand of Shanai?” he asked as a curious expression played across his face. “No.”

  “But someone trained you?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “The same people that trained Ape?”

  He shook his head. “I am afraid not. My people are old, John Swyftt. There are many things we know, and we train our children to know them as well.”

  “Your people?” I said. “The Chinook?”