Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  As I park, Eric is there waiting for me with a stretcher already in place. I get out and see him and he sees me but the man in the front is begging for both our attentions. We get him on the gurney and begin to push him as I explain what happened.

  “It’s been about thirty minutes, he’s lost a lot of blood,” I say but Eric’s eyes are already studying the bullet wound.

  “You triaged well,” he says to me as we roll the gurney into the medical exam area. “He might’ve been dead if you hadn’t.”

  I say nothing. I need him alive and for that I need Eric to work. There is a reason that someone wanted Stark killed, that’s what I need to find out.

  The tools are already lined out on the table and he goes to work. I don’t mind the blood, it doesn’t yank those same chords in my stomach as it does for some people. I know the bullets still in there and no matter how painful it looks, I’m confident Eric will get it out. I can remember the last time I saw Eric. It wasn’t to dissimilar from this situation except that it was me but it wasn’t with the bullet hole.

  I’ve taken a few bumps and bruises in my line of work. That night I saw concern in a man’s face that didn’t belong there. I saw Eric look at me like he wasn’t entirely sure that he could bring me back. I had broken my elbow in four places, my knee in two more places. Most of my face was swollen shut and I had cuts that ran up and down my torso and chest, and six knife wounds to my ribs and forearm. My body still wears scars from that night.

  My hands are wrapped around my chest even with now dried blood coating my skin and I pace as I wait for Eric to give me some kind of news. I don’t know what to expect, to be honest I’m not even sure why I saved him. I could've learned about the ritual on my own but I don’t think that was it.

  “How are we looking?” I ask, it’s been nearly two hours but it feels like more.

  “The bullet’s extracted,” he replies, the mask over his mouth muffles his speaking. “I have to repair the arteries.”

  “Is he going to survive,” I wonder. My patience is thin and Eric can see that.

  “For now, yes,” Eric says back to me. “He’s going to need longer term treatment.”

  “That’s not my problem, I need him conscious enough to speak to me.”

  Chapter 30

  I’m sitting on a chair just outside the medical area not sleeping but not really processing anything in my head. I see Eric coming out from the other side of the window in the door before he actually comes through. There’s some blood on his shirt and he’s still drying his hands.

  “How did he do?” I ask.

  “He’s going to live,” Eric says to me but there’s something else to him.

  “What is it?”

  Eric turns back and then back to me. “There’s an agent working into his bloodstream. I didn’t notice it until some of the blood that was coming out was discolored. The bullet wasn’t conventional, I could see that when I extracted it. It was a carrier for something, it wasn’t meant to kill him. I doubt very much that the shoulder shot was an accident.”

  “What agent?” I ask.

  “Cadaver blood,” he says back to me.

  “Dead man's blood?” I reiterate.

  “Yea. It’s moving throughout his body. I don’t know why there would be an introduction of that type of blood into his body. His body will heal granted in time, but that congealed blood shouldn't be in there.”

  I rack my head for a minute. Thinking as to why this would've been done to someone. I knew what it was used for, what the properties were and how it would change certain things and defend against others. It was more like hallowed-ground for angry spirits but inside a living didn’t make sense. Then I remembered what Stark told me.

  “He needs a wraith.”

  Shit. I think to myself and I get up and storm into the room. Eric didn’t leave Stark like this, I can see him sitting up in the surgical table his eyes white as rotted milk and a strange sound rumbling from his vocal chords.

  I pull the gun and aim it at Starks’ face, whatever humanity was in it is long gone now. I take three shots, all of them clean and right into the skin of his left cheek muscle. The body reacts but it doesn’t fall. I know it’s because it's changed to much for the silver tainted bullets to have an effect.

  From my back I pull my blade run to the body and grab it by the hair. I have to do this before the change goes too far. Sliding my knife into its neck, I saw it off. I know it's brutal I can imagine what Eric is saying or thinking.

  When it’s done, I drop the head to the floor and run to the sink to wash off the infected blood from my hands.

  “What the fuck are you doing!?” he screams.

  “There’s more than you know going on here Eric,” I say as calmly as the adrenaline in my body will allow, trying to rinse the soap off my skin.

  “You fucking killed him.”

  The words cut me, this isn’t as clean as it's supposed to be. The body won’t turn to ash like the other ones. It didn't fully change but then something happens and happens very quick.

  A black cloud thick enough to be water rushes out of Stark's’ neck and finds the next person in the room that has some interest for. I witness it smother Eric’s face as it's pulling itself down into his stomach, trying to get all of itself out of the free air and into a vessel. It’s enough to throw Eric into the wall and leave him propelled in the air while it forces the digestion of the rest of vaporized body.

  I take my wet hands, grab the gun again and shoot, five more bullets lodge inside of Eric but it's too late, whatever it was is too strong now. The bullets go in but no blood comes out of him.

  I hold my ground, the gun where it belongs right on his forehead as the last of the blank ink in the air vanishes behind his teeth. I see the eyes glaze and turn a crisp white. That’s before the entire body vanishes in a plume of black smoke and Eric vanishes.

  Chapter 31

  I clasp my hands around my gun and begin to search around corners, clearing all the turns ahead of me. Eric was gone and I had no idea where he had gone too.

  There was nothing. No evidence. No sound of stray footsteps anywhere around me. I already knew what had happened though and it was taking my body a few minutes to catch up to my head. I had released the wraith. FUCK! It’s the only meaningful thing that comes to my mind.

  I turn and look at the body on the table and the head that's on the floor. It’s not a vessel, it was never intended to be one. It was meant to hold it until I could find a more suitable body to hold the spirit. Fuck I think again and then I have to put my thoughts in order fast. I have a missing doctor and a decapitated patient that I shouldn’t be anywhere near here right now.

  I start to scour the medical cabinets, looking for anything that will catch fire. I start to think about the security guard but I can’t wait for that right now. I have to act fast. One look at my phone and I know that daybreak is coming and I have to get out of here while the moon still holds the sky.

  I find some rubbing alcohol and begin to empty the bottle everywhere that the body and the blood is touching. Once it's done I reach into my pocket and pull out a lighter and touch the flame to the alcohol. It sparks instantly sending the stream of fire all over where the alcohol soaked everything and I wait to make sure that the body not only catches the flames but takes hold of it and won’t let it go.

  Running to the car, I slam the door closed and flip the key in the ignition and drive. The smoke is already leaking into the garage and it won’t be long before I hear the sirens alerting whoever is in the building to the fire that loose on one of the floors. How could I have been so stupid.

  I push the accelerator down as hard as it’ll go and fly past the barricade that's protecting the parking garage, move the car back over to Madison and catch a string of green lights that light the path ahead of me. The next thing comes to my mind the second another one's leave. I have to get rid of this car. It’s infested with my fingerprints and the blood of a man who they’re going to f
ind the remains of in that fire.

  I hate this. I’m thinking behind where I should be and that's never a good thing. When I was younger this would've been a punishment, a small beating to remind me to stay ahead of whatever is in front of me. I’ve fallen too far behind. I let whatever was in my head cloud all the judgements that I needed to make. I acted with instinct and not with my actual head thinking that my grip on whatever was missing and the normalcy that my mind was lacking was the answer and the solution. It wasn’t.

  I take the car downtown to another parking garage that’s down there, push the machine which slips me a ticket and park the car on the fifth level down of the sub-basement. I have to get the prints off of here, the blood can stay but all traces of me have to be gone.

  Lucky, in the glove box I find some napkins and I begin to go to work all the while there is only one thing in my head. There’s a lot racing through me right now as my hands scrape away the oils leftover from my touch. An anger that I don't usually associate with is inside of me now, its familiar but strange all at the same time. I think of Jesse and what he said to me that day on the pier. That he was back.

  The control that he had over Jesse, what he made him do. What he told me once that Gabriel had me do. It was too close to have that name brought up around me, to have it mentioned so close to everything that’s been happening. The summoning mantle a block and a half down from me, the man I’m speaking too infected. Someone knew me, someone was bringing this closer to me than it should be. I should've seen all this, I should've been able to piece it together.

  I know that I need to learn whatever truths I can about Gabriel. Despite the name being so fresh in my mind, all the events that have happened feel like this being, whatever it is, is at the center of it.

  Chapter 32

  Gabriel sat there watching five television screens that were all playing different angles of the NYU attack as well as the fire that's currently raging just outside of Midtown. He’s pleased to see the damage that he caused but it’s empty for him at the same time. There is no guarantee that his mission really succeeded. Not yet at least.

  He needed Arinna and now if she was alive, she knew that she was a necessary point. The mystery of her was going to have to unravel sooner than he wanted it too. The Syrians hadn’t given him all that he wanted but they had given him enough to start with.

  He stood, taking one final sip of the whiskey that was next to him clearing the glass and placing it down, pulling his shirt up and off his body.

  He walked to a stairwell at the far end of the room and then down three flights of steps to another room that was down there that didn't’ have the same modern appeal as the rest of the apartment. Instead it had an old wooden door that he pulled open.

  The room ahead of him was lined with a small moat, a long rectangle that ran up the room that was the color of glowing stone amidst the aura of the burning candles that lined the moat. At the head of the room was as mantle, the same one that he had left in Courtney’s apartment.

  There was something else standing there, a figure hidden in the shadows, a body that the light wouldn't go near to touch.

  Gabriel walked slowly to it, with little effort and with less fear. This is what he had wanted, this was the culmination of the plan that he had put together. The thing that he had needed Arinna for.

  The figure didn't move when he grabbed the machete, it stood there in rags of black that were different from the scrubs that it had arrived with. It had come to him because he had wanted it too. But it needed something else. Something to keep it in human form, wraiths were never allowed to stay out of spectral for long unless the sacrifice was worth it.

  As he took the machete, he ran it up his arm from wrist to shoulder and allowed the blood to slide out of him.

  The figure turned around, ghostly white eyes and a dark face of rotted skin clung to what was left of the skeleton that was holding the skin in place. A hiss echoed from it like the voices of a thousand people all speaking at one single time.

  Gabriel dropped to his knees, felt his neck swell and the veins in his neck stiffen. The shadowed hand went out and opened thin bony fingers. The blood that was falling away from him lifted off his body like tiny particles and were moved into the palm that was waiting there for them in the air.

  Gabriel could feel the pain as the blood was being stripped from the lining of his veins as he stood there trying to control the pain that his body was in. Feeling his eyes tumble back to the end of his skull. The skin over the muscle in his chest and arms squeezing trying to push as much blood out of him as they could to feed the figure in front of him.

  When it was done, he was left alive. He wasn't entirely sure that he would be. This was more important than his own life though. As he looked up trying to swallow air as fast as he could to refill the depletion in his chest, he looked up at the figure that was standing there. No longer was it falling apart, it looked whole and its eyes had taken on a frigid silver tone.

  Blood slipped out of the corner of his mouth. He had done it.

  Chapter 33

  Reluctantly I’m back in my apartment again and as daylight draws, I pull the drapes closed to seal out the sun, I’m not even close to being in the mood for that.

  Part of me thinks that I can’t do this alone, I don’t want that feeling but it's the one that keeps coming to me. Since the war it’s all changed and it should be like this. The war was fought to close the seal and to leave only a few stragglers wandering around. Thoughts of what did this to me try to come at my head but they come as questions rather than answers. I know about the war, more than enough of the Chasers told me about the war but until Jesse said the name to me, until he told me what Gabriel had forced him to do, I had never heard that name before.

  I open the cap of pills and this time I devote myself to the anti-depressants. I can’t allow my system to start to sink now. Not with memories so repressed I doubt that I’ve ever lived them. The life that must’ve lived in that two years is enough to make my imagination scar and flay the parts of my mind that those thoughts pass over. It brings a physical pain to both my head and my stomach and I quickly grab nearly a full handful of painkillers and shove them in my mouth. Even when my throat objects, I leave my hand there until my teeth have managed to dissect them enough to be swallowed. Then I move to the whiskey.

  It’s like my mind knows and accepted worst case scenario for things. I’m being played, it’s easy when the person doesn’t know all the rules. The fact that I can kill and hunt means nothing when I don’t know what I’m after. I also have no fucking idea what Gabriel looks like. What he probably did to me in those two years, what he made me do to him and for him and I can’t even recognize his face, at least I think I can’t. My mind can’t project it for me.

  That’s when I find it. Out of the thousands of images and facial recognition I scoured for online, I find one single picture that comes back to me. It’s me, dressed in a blazer and suit pants, my hair long and straightened with a man next to me, his hand on my lower back, a smile reflects on both our faces and we’re coming out of an office building. From the best I can tell from the glow of lighting, its late, it’s also the only picture that I can find.

  I take the next leap and run a search on the building property, from there hopefully I can find something at least slightly useful. I ignore the dull veil that’s falling over my eyes, tiny hands are massaging my body trying to force me into a sleep that I don’t want now that the adrenaline reservoir has dried up. I’d rather force myself to throw up then sleep at this point.

  There is something interesting though that I find. One of Gabriel’s companies, a place called BRDS Holdings INC has some dealings with a company that I’ve worked for before. Off the books and freelance but you make friends along the process. People appreciate researchers especially with the good ones, you never know which ones can find something that you need or which one will find something on you. Some of the researchers that I’ve worked with have princ
iples and won’t investigate people they know, others won't. Research isn’t my main gig, I can afford to have morals.

  I’ve made some friends at ATAP, I’ve worked almost exclusively with them for the last three years. They keep me on designated retainer. Every year I get a check whether I work for them or not. They don't trust principles, they trust cash and contract, I can appreciate that. But it works both ways. They might have some information especially the CFO, the one that's been trying to date me for the last six months of my life.

  I think that maybe he knows something. Amazing how he can have such lust for a woman that has so many holes to their own past that it’s amazing that she can remember her own name half the time. Add to the that the double life that I lead I almost can't figure out how I haven't’ had a nervous breakdown at this point.

  There is something about the picture too that I notice, if I hadn’t been staring at it, I might have missed it entirely, not missed it because it wasn't apparent, it was small but also noticeable. I almost missed it because I’m the one that put it there. It’s a small watermark that I use in most of my surveillance, in a world so filled with contracts and boards of attorney’s, you have to protect your work, that watermark is my insurance. I always keep them on the proofs but I can’t fathom why I would have this picture, let alone why I would draft a copy online and then make it nearly impossible to find.

  I shower and do my makeup, it feels weird to do after so long but by the time it’s over I’m happy with my appearance, it’s how they know me and it’s how I’d like them to keep on knowing me. The better I'm dressed the more I’m disguised even though I’m sure that Gabriel could still pick me out of a crowd. I just don't know yet if he’s hunting me. At this point, I’m sure I’ve involved myself to the point that I’m a threat to whatever this man or this demon is planning. I was never very good at following advice that I didn’t agree with.