The Collector 03 - The Big Reap

by Chris F. Holm

  “That’s not a fair comparison,” I said.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “My orders don’t leave a lot of wiggle room.”

  “Don’t they? What of New York? Of young Katherine MacNeil?”

  “The order to collect her was based on false pretenses. She was an innocent. Neither can be said of the order to kill the Brethren.”

  “Really? What of Thomed, then?”

  “Whatever peace he’s come to now, it can’t change who he is or what he’s done. And let’s not forget, the body he’s been fused to since he and his buddies’ little ritual had to belong to someone.”

  “Are you certain about that?” the creature asked.

  “As certain as I am of anything,” I replied.

  “On that, at least,” it said, “we do not disagree.”

  The child-thing raised its hands, first finger of each raised, and made a rotating motion with the two of them as if setting an invisible plate spinning. The world seemed to twist beneath my feet, and my vision swam. I took a knee and closed my eyes, my equilibrium lost, my stomach threatening mutiny. When the world steadied, I opened my eyes once more, and found that day had turned to night and that the child, its mouthpiece, and I were not alone.

  A bonfire was burning some twenty yards away from where we stood, pushing back the dark. Its flames reached high into the sky, struggling against a cold wind to lash at the crescent moon. Beside – but not around it – stood a group of people huddled in twos and threes. I counted nine – no, ten – all but one of them in simple cloth, undyed and rough, robes and tunics and the like. Some affixed with bits of rope, some wrapped such that they affixed themselves. Feet bare, or sandaled. The lot of them looked as though they’d stepped straight out of the history books.

  And not one of them noticed our presence.

  “They cannot see us,” rumbled the child’s pet beast, the child once more unnerving me by responding to my unsaid thoughts, “because we are not here.” The child gestured like a maître d’ showing me to my table, and I took his hint, wandering puzzled into the strange gathering.

  Beneath my feet, I noticed the heather had been burned back – scorched black plant matter forming a circle maybe twenty feet around. Inside the circle was drawn a pentagram so large its five points touched the outer edge of the burn zone, white ash against the black. Though I shuffled, puzzled, through it, my feet did not disturb the delicate ash line. As I reached the interior of the pentagram to find another, smaller one rendered inverted inside it, realization dawned. I’d seen something like this once before, during Ana’s failed attempt to recreate the Brethren’s freeing ritual.

  A ritual that I was about to witness.

  I scanned the faces in the crowd, all frightened, expectant, their worry-lines etched deep by the long shadows of the firelight. A blond-haired boy of twenty hugging tight a fresh-faced girl with chestnut hair and a smattering of freckles across her nose, cooing, reassuring. Drustanus and Yseult, I guessed. A brash, muscular young olive-skinned man pacing back and forth on thick, powerful legs as fast and smooth as a shark through water, his face a brittle mask of arrogance. Ricou, I suspected. A pack of three conversing in nervous whispers, one an Indian boy of not more than fourteen, the other two wild Roman-era Scots, or Vikings maybe – a male unkempt and hirsute; a female small and quick, her hair a simple plait. Jain and Lukas and Apollonia. A broad-faced Asian man in monk’s robes sitting cross-legged in meditation was the furthest from the firelight, young Thomed’s knitted brow indicating his thoughts were far from peaceful. And at the center of the double-pentagram, over a small stone altar, stood two men: one young, handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed, at ease; the other older, bird-thin, sharp-angled, and feverishly intense, hands worrying at a small jute bundle in his hands. Grigori and Simon, respectively.

  I reminded myself that these physical forms were meat-suits, nothing more. That the entities inside were older, harder, crueler than they appeared. But still, I could not shake the notion that they were but children, goading one another to go and ring the doorbell of the creepy house at the end of the street.

  Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.

  Then the tenth of them stepped into the light, draped despite the chill in a slip dress of parchment-colored silk, and carrying in her delicate hands an ornate, glinting gold skim blade. My borrowed heart damn near stopped. My breath caught in my chest.

  The tenth was Lilith.

  “Did you bring it?” she asked the older of the two standing at the center of the circle: the one I knew as Simon Magnusson – although her word-sounds did not synch up with the movements of her mouth. But when I thought upon that fact, I realized it was not exactly true. What I’d heard had matched her lips’ movement just fine, but what I understood her to say did not. It seemed my child-companion had done me the courtesy of translating.

  “I did,” said Simon, his word-sounds and meanings also decoupled in my mind. He unwrapped the tiny bundle in his hands to reveal a small, dark orb, projecting rays of black across the field that seemed to dim the fire, and proved darker still than night itself: a corrupted human soul.

  “Good,” she said, and then glanced up at the sky. “The heavens are aligned, which means it’s time.” She handed the handsome dark-eyed man – Grigori – the skim blade, and then with one open palm caressed his face. He leaned into her touch and smiled, one more in a long line of victims to her otherworldly wiles, I thought. “I trust you understand what must be done?”

  “I do,” Grigori replied.

  “Then do it, and be free.”

  I watched the rest in numb horror, knowing all too well how it was going to play out. They took their places around the altar, Grigori and Simon at the center, the soul in the very middle, their hands raised up above their heads, both of them clasping the skim blade well above it. As one they chanted, and the firelight extinguished. A bitter wind ripped across the meadow, stinging against my skin.

  The blade came down.

  The soul was shattered.

  A shockwave of pure, unfettered evil rippled outward from the circle’s center. The Brethren were each buffeted by it, but stood fast, as if anchored by the ash-lines on which they stood. The world around them was not so lucky. The black shockwave expanded exponentially, gaining speed as it blew past me and disappearing beyond the horizon in all directions. The very earth beneath my feet shuddered violently as if with sudden fright. It left nothing of the landscape standing – leveling trees, withering heather to dead husks, felling small game to burst half-rotten in mere seconds.

  I fell to my knees, weeping at the sight. Those inside the circle looked stricken – panicked.

  From somewhere distant I heard a roar, like every radio ever built was tuned to static and turned up as far as it would go. A salt wind buffeted my cheeks and tousled my meat-suit’s hair. The distant horizon seemed to rise up before me in the starlight, faintly luminescent.

  And grew.

  And grew taller still.

  In the moment before it reached me, I finally realized what I was looking at: a wall of water five hundred feet high, hurtling toward me like God’s own vengeance.

  As it bore down upon me, I closed my eyes. Placed my hands over my head. And prayed.

  The water hit. I felt its impossible weight slam me to the ground, and crush my bones to dust.

  Then the world shifted.

  The wall of water was gone.

  I stood once more in a vast field of heather, the child-thing and its mouthpiece at my side.

  23.

  “So now, you see,” the child-thing’s mouthpiece said.

  “See what?” I asked, my voice shaky and hoarse with fear. “Why would you show me that? What the hell’s it got to do with me?”

  The massive creature sighed. It sounded like two boulders rubbed together. “It is ever a fault of your kind that you each assume yourselves to be the hero of your own tale. Perhaps it is my fault, for creating you with so narrow a poi
nt of view. Thanks to your limited perspective, you see yourself in every scene, and therefore conclude that you’re the star. I showed you this because you need to understand you’ve been nothing but a pawn for all this time, a pet Collector for Lilith to do with as she saw fit.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning the hierarchy of the Depths did not order you to move against the Brethren. They were protected by the Great Truce, and despite recent skirmishes, remain protected by it still. Given that fact, hell alone cannot order their termination; such an order must be unanimously decided by all parties. Charon, for his part, might have assented, for he’s long seen the Nine as an affront to his authority. Lucifer would only act against the Brethren if it proved in some way expedient to him, and he assures me at this fragile time, he considers any violation of the Truce to be quite the opposite. And I certainly did not consent. Which means your orders to eliminate them came from Lilith and Lilith alone.”

  “That’s not true. It can’t be.”

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  “But what of the demonic raid on Grigori’s place on the Riviera? On Drustanus and Yseult?”

  “They were conducted by Lilith’s partisans. She has a great deal of support among the foot-soldiers of hell, as one might imagine of a woman of her wiles. It seems she’s no shortage of blunt instruments to manipulate.” That last was pointed, and aimed at me.

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “Isn’t it? You can’t deny you’ve acted recklessly of late. That your heart has hardened.”

  “I can’t be blamed for that. After all I’ve been through. After all I’ve lost.”

  “I won’t deny your path has been one of great suffering, that you’ve taken your fair share of wounds along the way. But wounds are a funny thing. If ill-tended, they scar over, grow numb, deaden he who carries them to the sensations of the world around him. Collect enough of them, and so too shall you be. But if treated properly, they reveal new skin beneath. Sensitive, certainly, painfully so, but more capable of feeling than what came before.”

  “You’re saying I’ve let go of too much of me. That I’ve become something less than what I was.”

  “I’m saying the healing process is both long and painful, but ultimately it’s up to you how well it goes – and how you deal with the challenges it poses along the way. Even flesh twisted by consuming fire can be taught to feel again with time.”

  “Save the fortune-cookie bullshit for someone who might give a damn,” I said.

  The creature and boy both shook their heads in time. “I think you care more than you dare let on.”

  “So okay, I’ve been played – or allowed myself to be. Why? What’s Lilith’s angle?”

  The child shrugged. Its monster said, “Perhaps upon discovering your ability to end the Brethren, she saw the chaos created by the recent unrest as her opportunity to clean up a mess made long ago, one that very nearly came back to haunt her when Ana Jovic and Daniel Young attempted to recreate the ceremony she herself devised. She, unlike the Brethren, is not protected by the Great Truce, and therefore can still be punished for her actions should they come to light. Or perhaps her reasons are somewhat more obscure. Whatever they are, they’re known to her and her alone. But if you’re curious, you could ask her when you catch up with her.”

  “It’s usually Lilith who catches up with me,” I said. “She’s not really one to come when called. She prefers to make an entrance – usually of the appearing-when-I-least-expect-it variety. Come to think of it, you and her should hold a contest.”

  “I fear her days of wielding such power are behind her,” he said.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I’ve taken the liberty of stripping Lilith of her powers. She is human once more. And Lilith’s fate is in your hands: for as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

  “You’re telling me I have to collect her.”

  “I’m telling you it falls to you to do what must be done.”

  “There has to be another way,” I said.

  “There always is, but I beseech you not to seek it, for it will not end well for you.”

  “What if I just refuse?”

  “Then someone else will be chosen for the task. But I suspect you might prove more humane. It is up to you. Only you can decide what’s right.”

  “I wouldn’t even know where to find her,” I said.

  “On that count, I can provide some measure of guidance, for you see, your journey with Lilith is a closed loop. It will end where it began.”

  “You mean–”

  But I never bothered to finish my question. The child-thing and its mouthpiece-beast were gone.

  24.

  Berlin had changed so much since I’d first laid eyes on it in the last flagging days of the Third Reich. Then, it seemed an apocalyptic wasteland, ground zero for the worst evil the modern world had ever known. The decent people who’d lived there did so in quiet and in fear, scarcely glimpsed because they were as afraid of their own fascist regime as they were of the Allies intent on leveling the once-great city they called home. Now, the city was great once more. A bustling modern metropolis – vibrant, colorful, and lively. A shining example of what humankind can accomplish, a center of art and commerce, of science, of community.

  It seemed the child and his grotesque conduit were right about one thing – given time and tending, even the deepest of wounds can heal.

  It was amazing to me the building in which I first awoke as a Collector was still standing. It had been redone tackily sometime in the decades hence – a sad, Sixties-modern façade slapped up over the original brick face – but it seemed Berliners found the new façade as much of an affront as I, because it was halfway through the process of being removed. Scaffolding climbed up one side of the building, and on the rooftop sat an idle crane; yellow construction refuse tubes led from upper windows to dumpsters below. For a moment, I wondered where the workers were – it was scarcely twilight, after all – but then I realized it was Saturday, the city awash with the spark of possibility that only ever seemed to fully ignite come weekend.

  I wore the body of a young man who’d expired ten hours prior, the result of a congenital heart defect. Dropped over on the soccer pitch, bleeding out inside but not yet dead. Docs patched him up enough for my purposes, and filled him with fresh blood besides, but couldn’t spark his heart back into rhythm. Made the online version of Berliner Morgenpost, which the web-browser in the Edinburgh internet café I used to access it translated well enough for me to glean the salient points.

  I hadn’t taken many dead vessels of late. I’d told myself they weren’t worth the bother. Sacrificed my ideals for expediency, and told myself that I deserved the break for all I’d done. Saved the world twice over by my count. Started thinking of myself as a caps-implied “Good Person”. Problem with that is, Good Person is a moving target. And this past year, I found that target moving on without me. Maybe my run-in with the creepy child-thing had gotten to me. Maybe it was the sting of Lilith’s betrayal. Whatever it was, I realized I couldn’t just keep on keeping on – that the path on which I’d stood led nowhere worth going.

  The construction site around the building was paddocked with chain link six feet high – new and shiny, just like the city itself, untarnished by the corruption of the ages. The gate was fitted with a keyhole lock. Easier, even, to pick than a padlock, but hardly worth it when I could duck into the quiet, empty alley, and be up and over the fence in seconds.

  Which is what I did.

  The front door was unlocked. Too many subcontractors coming and going to bother, I suppose. Once inside, I considered searching the place from the bottom up, but something tugged at my gut like swallowed fishing line, pulling me inexorably upstairs.

  “It will end where it began,” the child-thing had told me.

  I found the stairwell by memory, felt the eerie sensation of decades dropping away. The stairs had been restored to their prewar state, though constructio
n-dusty and unlit as they were, they reminded me of my first visit here, bomb-shaken and powerless. Not sure if those last adjectives were intended to describe the building then, or me, or both.

  There were no apartments left intact upstairs. They’d been gutted. All that was left of them was framed-out walls run through with ductwork and electrical wiring, black against the twilight blue that spilled in from the windows on all sides. I strolled through them like a ghost in my own life, passing through the walls and years both, and not stopping until I stood atop the dusty floorboards facing a familiar window, glass broken in my mind, but here so new its gleaming white frame and double panes were still affixed with stickers emblazoned with the manufacturer’s logo.

  Bare footprints, woman-petite, disturbed the pale dust at my feet.

  I followed them with my gaze. They led toward a large jetted tub.

  Delicate fingers looped around the edges of the tub – their owner crouched and still, hiding, hoping I couldn’t see.

  “Lilith,” I said.

  Her reply was shaky, frightened. “Sam?”

  She rose, then, her jerky unsure movements a far cry from her trademark otherworldly grace. She was naked. Cold. Shivering. Her eyes wide, furtive, and dark-rimmed.

  When she saw the grim expression on my face, she frowned.

  “So this is how it’s to be, then. I’m made human once more so that I can have the privilege of being killed, collected by my very own.”

  “You set me up, Lilith. You used me.”

  She smiled, but there was no humor in it, only sadness. “All those years ago, back on the beach, did I not tell you that I would? It’s what I do. It’s who I am. So let’s not overly prolong this little reunion, shall we? Just do what you came to do and get it over with.”