Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  “It came out of you,” Bash said his eyes looking at me with some hope, he was worried, I’ve never seen that kind of look on his face, it looked like it didn’t belong there and he knew it.

  “Why did you tell the Chasers twenty-four hours?” he asks me. “That was before this trance.”

  I go to speak but realize that I have nothing to say in response. There are no words because I have no real reason or explanation for what I did. The only thing that I can assume was that the Angel in some way for some reason gave me that kind of time frame and I told it to Bash.

  “We don’t know anything about this,” he says to me after he exhales a sigh and then inhales again. “There’s a lot working all at the same time and it's all leaving us out of it.”

  “Except you,” I remind him. “They aren’t even leaving you out of this.”

  I watch him turn and leave me for a second, his heavy hands brush over his face and then run over the short hair that he has on his head as he lets out another sigh. It’s one thing to know that there’s a chance that you might not come home it's another thing entirely to sign over your life before you even have a chance to save it. The way he was walking was the way that I was feeling too. That no matter what was going to happen, this was over before it had a chance to start.

  Bash comes back with a bottle of whiskey and two cups, neither one of them are all that clean but it doesn’t really matter, it's the liquor that does and it's not cheap. He dropped the bottle gently on the table as if he was impressed and he was trying to show off for a joke, it made me smile. “Glenfiddich fifty, fifty-year-old whiskey,” he said like he was a game show host.

  “Bash,” I say, I let the smile play on my face. “That’s a twenty-thousand-dollar bottle of whiskey.”

  “Had this rich guy once, needed his daughter exorcised. Five priests tried before he got to me. This was one of the payments he made once I took that demon out of his kid and sent it back to the other side.” He paused. “I’ve been saving it for a while. Figured if I ever needed to step foot in this room again, it might not be a bad place to keep something this valuable.”

  Bash pours a glass for each of us and holds it in the air so that we can touch glasses. Neither of us is in the greatest of spirits, there is horror on both of our faces and we’re not stupid enough to try and swallow it. “Our fates are tied to Syllis,” I say as I finish out the drink. “That’s what his Collector told me. Whatever we do we need to get him out of whatever hold Gabriel has on him.”

  Now the smile on his face changed to playful too. “Piece of cake,” he said taking in another shot.

  Chapter 110

  Gabriel stood in the warehouse adjacent to the mansion, most of the inventory and the armory was moved out. The war was coming to him. Everything that had a hand in the war promised him that the war would come to some place that he was familiar with it, all he had to do was get himself the third seal to break. That was proving more and more difficult now. Arinna was still alive, it angered him because in his best efforts to kill her, he found that he still needed her and it was like a justification to his failure. Not his, not entirely.

  He stood there with the wraith next to him. The entity had gotten so much stronger since he had been bridging the world from the realm of the undead to the land of the living. Hundreds have come up and out of their graves, starving and dark bodies that crawled up out of hard dirt to answer a call to raise more hell in the afterlife. The entire village in the mountains that it had converted.

  Now there was just one more piece to it. He was torn in how he wanted to proceed with this. He didn't’ accept failure, under no circumstances was one of his own allowed to fail him as consistently as it had been happening but at the same time, the rules for the game that he was playing had been altered violently now. The entire induction of the supernatural had taken a turn from killing one off monsters and creatures from the other side to full on generals and soldiers that were being recruited from the afterlife. Arinna was a constantly moving and changing piece in the game.

  What he wanted was to have her dead when she had sought out the professor, that was his shot taken but it was another person’s men that were supposed to have her in the room where she was cornered. It was three against one, Gabriel knew that the Professor would be little trouble once the men came in the room with weapons. Arinna on the other hand always found a new sense of calm and purpose when her life was threatened. It made her genius that much more dangerous, it made her training that much deadlier.

  He stood there as Nasir walked into the room. His face was still bruised but most of the blood that had been washed from his face remained either dried or only slightly fresh when he had walked in. Gabriel knew that this wasn’t the handiwork of Arinna, he knew Arinna would’ve just killed him to be certain that he wouldn't be a threat later on. She had killed enough of his men in the apartment building, there was no real reason not to kill one of the most dangerous of those soldiers.

  Nasir came to him with a limp in his left leg and he was nursing his right arm as well but he was still moderately dressed in the attack gear from the building. Nasir was playing a game that was above him with one of the biggest handicaps there were. He was playing it straight with no abilities to add other than the ones he was born with. Intelligence, strength, adaptability, but there was nothing significant beyond that, at least for now there wasn’t.

  “Have you searched for the Collector?” he asked Nasir.

  “All the levels of the apartment, we found nothing,” the mercenary said disgruntled.

  “And the tenants?”

  “Dead, as you’ve instructed. All of them. We’ve demolished the building as well but designed the deaths to look like a gas infrastructure issue.”

  Gabriel watched as Nasir purposefully ignored the wraith standing there. The wraith so far hadn’t taken any interest in the man in front of Gabriel but as Gabriel thought about it, the blue eyes locked in the pale face started to move.

  “I want you in this war Nasir,” Gabriel said. “You’ve been faithful and disciplined but this war is more delicate and more advanced than you could possible understand. Arinna will kill you the second that you step foot into battle because she will do anything to make sure that I’m dead at the end of this.”

  “I understand sir.”

  “Then I want you to do something for me.”

  “Anything.”

  “I want you to take that knife of yours and cut yourself from pelvis to chest and I don’t want to hear a scream while you do it,” Gabriel said rolling his arms over his chest and studying the change in eyes that happened after the task was assigned and the mind behind those eyes struggled to transplant impulses to make what he wanted the sole obligation of the person that had heard it.

  Gabriel watched as Nasir stripped off the last of his attack gear that he was still wearing until he was standing there in a dirtied and sweat filled shirt that he pulled off as well. Gabriel could almost trace the pattern of bruising on the dark-skinned body, he watched it until Nasir grabbed the knife that was holstered at his ankle.

  When the blade went in, his face turned but he never once let out a moan when the tip of the blade pierced through his flesh nor when he began to saw through skin and organ and blood began to fall out of him. Gabriel admired the muscle that came to life all along the arm that was cutting to make sure that he reached the target point before he either passed out, bled out, or died in the process.

  “Stop,” Gabriel said as Nasir got close enough for his own satisfaction.

  The blood was sliding down his entire body, it looked like he bathed in his own blood from the chest down and though his hand was off the grip of the knife, the knife still hung in his body.

  “Do what you have too,” Gabriel whispered to the wraith who extended out his hand and lifted Nasir into the air. This was the final soldier that was going to be recruited into the war.

  Chapter 111

  “It’s thru here,” Bash said to me as
he opens the door that he just picked the locks too. There were three locks on the door, all of them deadbolts for an abandoned building down in Greenwich Village. I have to admit, it feels good to be back in the walls of the city. I’ve been spending too much time away from it, this part of it feels closer to home for me.

  The second we’re through he slams the door closed, it starts to get caught until he kicks it and then relocks one of the deadbolts from the inside. “I don't want to take a chance that something will get out of here,” he says to me as I put the flashlight beam to his chest, the handgun is in my other hand but it’s aimed at the floor, the automatic weapon is slung on a strap over my shoulder.

  When he’s done with the door, he lights his own flashlight and pulls out his own handgun.

  Most of what we’re walking through is rotted concrete and wood. I aim the beam up, whatever it was the caused the building to be abandoned seemed to have something to do with the foundation. When I shoot the beam up to the air, it cuts through a hole in the floor that extends all the way to the roof five levels above. I can see the cracks in the roofing up there too, there is a leaking coming from somewhere that sends the sound of splashing water down to my ears.

  Even with the flashlights working it's hard to see. The sun is trapped up at the fifth floor and it looks like light hadn’t made it down to this level in a long time, almost as if the floor is more comfortable in the dark especially since it caught all the chunks of the building that started to rot and fall down to it.

  It’s strange that Bash is following what I said during the trance. We both have a good hold of what I said, the sounds that I made and the words I said are well practiced in our minds. I don't like that we’re trusting something that I said during a trance. I don't like that I told the army a time frame even before I knew that there was one. While I know we need the seal, I don’t like how we’re going about it, especially with just the two of us. There were more Chasers, there are more that are left alive, I feel like some of them should’ve know about this, at least some of them would have come if they knew this was what was going on.

  About twenty feet into the building, we came to it, the stairwell that would take us to the basement. That’s where we would find the entrance to the sub-basements below it.

  We both aimed our lights at the door, both of our guns were there too, when our eyes met and we made a silent agreement, Bash went ahead and opened the door, he trusted my eye even in the darkness knowing that I had the faster trigger. When I aimed, I aimed at nothing. I could see the stairwell that led downstairs to where the boiler room was but there was nothing else but darkness going through it. Even when I pressed the gun and my shoulder and my eye around the corner, there was nothing there either to meet us.

  I kept close to Bash as we moved down the stairs, the adrenaline in my body made the gun feel like it weighed nothing at all. I wanted to use it, I kept feeling like there were eyes on me but I didn't’ spare the light from where it was aimed, marking the path that we needed to take but I had that feeling on me and I could feel the goosebumps spreading all across my skin and the pockets of cold that we were passing through.

  When we reached the bottom of the stairs, we stopped. The boiler was at least a story and a half in height and covered in rust. There was still a small beam of glowing red from underneath it. “The gas should've been shut off years ago,” I say and Bash bends down with his flashlight and takes a look for himself.

  When he gets up to his feet, he nods his head letting me know he found nothing unusual down there. I catch the movement, it’s coming from the upper right-hand corner of the room. My gun and my light get there first, Bash is close behind me. We can see the thick black rivets on the wall like thick veins of black paint spread everywhere on the stone. The trail of somethings tail moves as well, forcing itself through a crack in the stone as it plunges through it.

  I could’ve gotten a shot off but I didn’t. Whatever it was made it behind the wall quick and I could see that it was heading down. I followed what trail I assume it followed with my light and could see that the thick black covered more of the wall then I had seen. It was almost completely covering the room around us. I could also see cracks and streaks and pits all over the room. That’s when I heard the first song of growls come up through the space in the concrete and touch the room that surrounded Bash and I.

  “That one,” I say when I find a pit on the floor that looks like it can house Bash's’ mass as well as it can my own. I’m almost half the size of Bash I’m more then sure it’s fine for me but it looks like it’ll fit him as well.

  We walk to it cautiously, I’m not scared, I know he’s not either but I can feel my heart rate start to really chug along inside my chest and the metal that's touching the skin of my palms is getting slick as I renew my hold of the handle and the trigger to reset it more comfortably in my hand.

  I’m standing over the pit and I shine the light down into it. It’s a six-foot drop, that’s what it should be once we’re hanging from the breaks in the concrete. I can see the grey water moving along the sewer system down there. The floating trash in the water dancing along on a current that’s pushing it to some underground city of waste removal and the seal that we want to find.

  Once I bend down and have a look to make sure the coast is clear and I’m satisfied that it is, I hang myself down, gun in my back, I need the one hand on my flashlight, Bash is left to cover me as I fall into the pit.

  I land hard, in a heavy crouch and immediately rip my gun out of my waist and aim it around the dark tunnels in front and behind me. It’s so black and thick that my light doesn’t go far into the darkness.

  “Clear,” I whisper but I look up. Bash isn’t kneeling down covering me like he was before. I can see him standing.

  I hear gunshots firing off and the flash of light that’s spitting out of the gun as it’s shooting at something.

  Chapter 112

  My gun is aimed at the port above me and the firing stopped. Before I know it, I see a body coming down and landing hard on his legs. It’s Bash, covered in a thick black blood that’s all over his arms and his neck and his shirt. His face is pale but he’s alive.

  “What happened?” I ask him sharply.

  “Crawlers,” he says to me as he inhales a deep breath. “Two of them.”

  If he’s down here, I know their dead and I give him a second to catch his breath before I press on.

  According to what I said during the vision, we have to move west through the tunnel system, I knew it was going to be protected but I don’t know exactly what’s protecting it or who's controlling what’s protecting it, I doubt that Bash does either.

  We move slow, dredging our feet through the water to not makes splash sounds so they can be carried up and down the hollow tunnel. I can hear the growls they’re already busy moving up and down the intestinal sewer that we’re in. The sounds are clearer now than they were one level up but now I can hear splashes as well as whatever is making those sounds wades in the waters around us.

  I stop when I hear clicking. If it wasn’t for what Bash had told me I might’ve missed it completely but the second I stopped, I could see his face focusing in too. It wasn’t simple clicking, it was the sound of claws touching the thick skin of the concrete walls.

  I turn and so does Bash dressing the wall in light crisscrossed with our guns until see one, long and lanky with a body that's a dull dingy black with stray openings around its body like the skin was infected and rotted off. Long rows or ragged teeth with its wide claws at the front and the back on its hind legs, it’s eyes wide and red as it made its way towards us. There was one caught in the light, then two, then three.

  The first one that I saw jumps down and I can see the muscles rippling in its back as it wanders down its exposed spine and to its hind legs. It’s going to pounce on me. I can see the second row of teeth from the secondary mouth trapped behind its jaws. I lift my shoulders, aim and fire five shots into the crawler’s face, it m
oves a few more steps before it falls dead in the murky water.

  I turn and start shooting, one of the other crawlers got on the other side me, Bash was dealing with his own. I fired another nine shots before this one went down, seven of those shots burrowed into its head. The muzzle was smoking by the time that I was done with it.

  I walk around them, I don't want to get to close, even in death their more than contagious to be near especially if their blood gets on you. Only rippers can raise crawlers but that’s not all their good for, if there’s crawlers down here, I know they’re not going to make getting that seal easy.

  About fifty feet passed where we put the three creatures down I stop for a second. I need water and when I put the liquid to my lips, Bash stops me. “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “I’m fine,” I say back to him, putting the water back to my lips and quenching the sandpaper that’s lining the inside of my throat.

  “You don’t look so hot,” he adds and puts a hand on my forehead. “Your burning up too.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I say to him but I can already hear something else but this isn’t a click or a growl. It’s something else entirely,

  When I turn to put my light down to that end of the tunnel it goes nowhere, it's like a curtain fell in front of me and the light wouldn't go passed the darkness that was surrounding me. It didn’t catch in anything, it didn’t reflect back either.

  I turn back to Bash but he’s not there either.

  Chapter 113

  I’m standing near a house somewhere far outside of the city. If I had to make a guess, I was somewhere down in Louisiana. The thick trees at the edge of the Bayou, the thick water that’s floating thick enough with all the algae in its that its moving like it’s an ooze more than a water.

  A dark, beaten up home stands on stilts near the end of the river just over the edge of it. I’m standing in front of the house. I don’t’ have the flashlight in my hand anymore but I don’t need it, the moon is out and its putting enough light on the ground that I can make my way around, my eyes still work sharply in the dark. The gun is still there though, situated in a drier palm, my heart is calm too but I’m curious as to where I am and why I’m here and where Bash is.