Darkness of the Soul

by Kaine Andrews

  Soon, my child, the voice inside his head comforted him. Very soon, indeed. You know what must happen now. Lintar did, of course. He had been trained—programmed, if you will—for this evening during hundreds of hours of prayer and supplication, small slices of his previous life that still left their mark in his mind to say nothing of the final agony when he had floated at the mercy of his master in the void. It had been a meeting of the minds, an impression made by brute force, stamping rather than education, but Lintar had come to believe—or been programmed to believe—that such truly had been the only way, and thus he had accepted it. Perhaps in a way, it was even better; apparently, however he’d been taught in his previous existence, he hadn’t learned it properly and had allowed himself to fail. Now he had the knowledge, undiluted and perfect in his mind, and would not fail a second time.

  The time of the opening was coming. The time of the talu`shar was here. Nothing could change that, or stop it. Not that bastard Woods—and why thinking of the insignificant cop caused such anger in him, he could not say—and most definitely not Drakanis. Chosen one or not, he was fit only for fodder when the beast arrived. It would be hungry, and what a meal the police would make!

  He stepped back from the window and pulled the curtain closed slowly; he would need his rest, all that he could get. The gifts of the talu`shar were mighty, but using them put a great drain on him, and to enter battle with his foes while not properly prepared would mean disaster. He returned to the bedroom, laid his head on the pillow, and fell asleep to the sounds of water running constantly into the drain, and the smell of rancid meat. He paid no mind to the dozens of eyes and eyeless sockets that watched over him as he dreamed, and if they touched him or cried out during his time of rest, he did not notice.

  The talu`shar pulsed steadily with crimson light, and coming from the walls throughout the building, a slow chuckle like water in a drainpipe could be heard.

  Chapter 29

  2:30 am, December 23, 1999

  “I don’t trust the little fuck, that’s all.” Parker sounded completely exasperated, which was fitting enough since they’d gone through this argument at least a dozen times since leaving the office and holing up in Brokov’s cozy little apartment. He slammed his hand down on the thick oak table—a gift from Sheila’s mother, passed down through the family for God knows how many years—for emphasis and then repeated it. “I just don’t trust him.”

  Brokov pulled away from the refrigerator, kicked it shut with one long leg, and settled into the chair opposite Parker. She dropped the two Coors in the middle and sighed.

  “Would you please stop abusing my furniture, Vince? It’s kinda important to me. And don’t call him that. You don’t even really know him.” She rocked her chair back on its rear legs, propped the back against the fridge, and then opened her beer and took a swallow.

  Not like you really do either, hon, the ever-helpful voice of her mother chimed in. One date, some sex, and now you suddenly think you’re best friends? Sheila shook her head to clear it, trying to push those thoughts away. It wasn’t much like her to get that attached to a guy, especially not on short notice, but something about Damien just seemed different; there was some attraction that she couldn’t put her finger on.

  Besides, she reasoned with her inner mother, it isn’t like he’s a serial killer or anything. Just had a rough time of things. Silence from the inner voices. She felt like there was a sense of disapproval, but since all those little voices she heard every day were just her own, wearing masks to make them more believable, did it really matter? She decided not.

  Parker grunted a reply, popped open his own beer, and drained half of it in one go. He was not much for the social graces, apparently. Then he belched, completing the image. Sheila found it very easy to imagine him wearing a wolf pelt and dragging his women and his enemies along behind him by the hair.

  “Fine. Then let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about the damned tape again, because that’s what proves he’s going to fuck us over on this.” He gestured to the kitchen counter, which should have seemed bright and cheery, even in the middle of the night. The bright blue Formica and eternally spotless shine provided a save haven, a promise that all would be okay, that the paring knife would always be in the second drawer down, that left would always be left and never right, and that the world worked on a certain set of rules that would never be broken. What sat atop the counter put a lie to all of that; Drakanis’s tape recorder, small and black and deadly, perched like some Irish storm crow, waiting to deliver bad news. Of course, it already had, assuming that anything on the tape could be believed.

  Parker had spent the morning trying to get in to see Professor Baum, to find out what the hell the tape said. When Sheila had brought it back, the day Damien woke up, he’d run it by the in-house linguistics expert, who had promptly told them that they needed to look somewhere else. He thought it was some kind of Middle Eastern dialect, but it wasn’t any that he knew, not even close. How some college dropout cop had been spouting it in his sleep was a mystery. He’d coughed up the name of his old teacher—Baum—and sent Parker packing.

  By the time the professor had finally let him in, noon was fast approaching, and he was feeling like a contestant on some old game show, Beat the Clock, maybe, or Super Password. The guy had been all right, in that stuffy old professor way, but he’d talked a country mile before he’d even given a listen to the tape.

  It hadn’t taken long after that; Baum had practically been ready to hit orgasm when he heard it. Parker had tried to ask what the language was and what it said, but the professor was living in another mental ward by the time Parker got that far and ignored him. Parker waited, letting the old guy have his fun with it, and smirked when the prof had glanced upward as if seeing Parker for the first time.

  “Oh, yes, yes, your translation, that’s right. I’m sorry; can I keep this? It’s fascinating, absolutely fascinating…” He’d gone on like that for some time, until Parker finally relented, allowing him to copy the tape once he got the transcript down.

  Coming back to himself, to the present, Parker snorted. “All his bullshit on there about dates, if you buy into Christian stories, the day of the Jerusalem star is not bloody likely to be New Year’s, which is where Woods says the day is.”

  Brokov nodded. “Yeah, but what day is it? And don’t say Christmas again, because that’s Bethlehem, not Jerusalem.”

  Parker blew air out of his nose in a disgusted way and smirked a little. “Don’t they teach you kids anything in school? Bethlehem’s in Jerusalem, hon. My money’s still on Christmas. Besides, look at the file. He always greased someone on the holiday, and he always took New Year’s off. Why would he change now?”

  Brokov swatted at him, draining her beer and making a three-pointer in the trash can under the sink. “Don’t ask me, geezer. You’re the one with all the theories. But I still don’t think he’s up to anything more except trying to cover his own ass and dig himself—and by extension, the rest of us—out of this ditch.”

  Parker got up, made his way to the fridge for another beer, and snagged one for Sheila as well. Then he reconsidered, giving a mental “Fuck it,” and took the whole case out. He dropped it on the table with a thud and slammed the door. He shrugged at the look Sheila gave him as he sat back down.

  “It’s easier. We’re going to need it, anyway.” He cracked the top on his own, raised his can in salute, and drank deeply.

  “Besides the time line being off—if that even is the time line, but I’m willing to bet the house that it is—is the fact he isn’t telling us anything. Mr. Mysterious, oh, I have to go teach your buddy all the secret handshakes. That’s bullshit. Mikey might be some big badass with talents he doesn’t know about, but why shut us out?”

  Sheila slammed her can down, jumped up from the table, and began pacing. Her arms were wrapped around herself, the fingers sinking into
the flesh of her forearms, while she tried not to lose her temper with the big man. She was finding that easier said than done though; Parker didn’t seem to be seeing the big picture, or worse, was willfully ignoring as much of it as he could.

  “It didn’t ever occur to you that it’s dangerous, did it? That whatever they’re doing right now isn’t something people like us can handle or deal with? You heard him, Vincent. You know what happened to his girlfriend, you know what happened to the captain and to all those other people you turned up. If Mike doesn’t know how to use whatever it is he’s got, it might get out of control, and we don’t have any way to stop it or fight it or whatever the hell you’d have to do.”

  Parker was looking at her like she was some new and interesting form of insect, something with previously unknown capabilities that made it useful for science. He had the look of a man who had just had the fundamental properties of color revealed to him after being blind all his life.

  “Oh,” he said, and his voice was very small and humble, quite unlike his usual bravado-filled tones. He lowered his gaze to the table.

  Sheila shook her head. “Christ. Sometimes you guys can be so thickheaded. I wonder how you can be considered a good cop when you can’t even see something that simple.” Looking disgusted—with the situation in general or with Parker in particular, he couldn’t tell—she sat back down, drawing her legs up under her and shaking her head as she dug into her second beer.

  “Now, why don’t we do what we’re supposed to and be quiet, drink our beer, and get to bed? It’s not like the shit is going to hit the fan tonight anyway. Not in anything we can do much about, at least.”

  Parker was still staring at the table, his face red, silently sipping at his beer. He couldn’t really taste it anymore—the flavor of shame, he had come to discover, was a great deal stronger and more unpleasant than anything he could actually pour down his gullet—but he felt like it was an excellent evening to push himself into alcohol-induced sleep and try to just forget about all this shit for a little while. As Sheila had pointed out, after all, there wasn’t much else he could do about this right now.

  They drank in silence for a while, before Parker looked up, actual distress showing on his face and a slight tremble in his voice. Sheila guessed he’d been brooding on the story Damien had told them and on what he figured his friend’s chances were for making it through this. It was what she’d been up to after all, her mind gnawing away at all the negative possibilities like a rat with a wheel of cheese and finding nothing but more of them. She was just hiding it better apparently.

  “Do you think it’s real?”

  She studied him evenly and then nodded. “Of course it is. Just listen to the way Damien tells it, or think about the things that have been going on. Any other explanation you can think of? World-destroying demon painting sounds as good as any other to me.”

  Parker’s head inclined and then came back up in the barest indication of a nod. He was quiet again for a second and then asked, “Do you think we stand a chance?”

  Sheila hoped she sounded more confident than she felt when she answered him. Her guts were roiling. She put their chances for survival—always assuming it was as bad as Damien had claimed it was—somewhere so far below zero they’d be crawling out of China any minute now. Think positive. That was what her mind was telling her anyway, but that was advice that was always easier given than received. She realized she’d been sitting and staring at him for a great deal longer than she should have—half a minute, at least, and maybe a bit longer—then cleared her throat and looked away.

  “Of course we do. The good guys always win, right?”

  “Right. I’ll drink to that.”

  So they drank, and they slept, and they waited, but when Sheila woke in the middle of the night, the need to relieve herself overpowering and already feeling the beginnings of the headache that was going to plague her all through the day tomorrow, her words came back to her… and she wondered.

  Chapter 30

  11:00 pm, December 22, 1999

  Dust filtered down from the ceiling, obscuring the whole room in a white cloud. A few chunks of plaster soon hit the floor, kicking up more dust and provoking the two men in the room to duck behind whatever was handy and wait it out.

  Woods sounded jubilant as he peered out from behind the filing cabinet in the corner. “Jesus, Drak. You’re not a tac nuke, you’re a fucking space howitzer.” Despite the wording and the apparent happiness in his voice, Drakanis was sure he could feel an undercurrent of fear coming off of Damien.

  Drakanis shook his head and stepped away from the rubble. Rubble you made, his mind pointed out. He settled down onto the floor and stretched his legs out. “I’m still not seeing the point here. All I see is that we’re making a mess out of somebody’s place, which I might add, is illegal.”

  Woods smirked. “Always worried about legalities. Man, you’re not even really a cop anymore, so why do you get so hung up on that? Besides, if it makes you feel any better, this is my place. I bought it for a steal, just in case of such a situation.”

  Drakanis considered arguing the point but could read enough of Damien to know he wasn’t lying—not directly at least—so he let that one drop. That left the other question though. “You still didn’t answer why you’re having me try to blow things up here.”

  Damien spread his palms before him in a gesture of supplication, still grinning a little. “Look, you want to learn to tap it, you do the easy stuff first. Gets your control going. And, alas, like most things in our pretty little world, the gift is easiest to use for destruction. Once you’ve got that down, we can get down to other things.”

  “I’ve got a headache. Let me rest, and maybe you can take that time to explain those other things, you think? You’re kinda dropping me in blind here. I want this asshole, and I want whatever made him do it, but I want some answers a hell of a lot more right at the moment.”

  Hunkering down, back against the wall, next to Drakanis, Woods sighed. “Oh, fine. You want answers? You want the real absolute truth about what I’m training you to do? Fine. You got it. It’s simple really. I don’t fucking know.” The look of misery on his face was so strong for a moment that Drakanis could feel his own face moving to match it, before he restrained himself. Woods had warned him about that, picking up other’s emotions and then assuming they were his own. The fact he recognized it this time gave him a small measure of comfort in the possibility of getting total control over it. His words did nothing to improve Drakanis’s mood though.

  “You don’t know? Then what the fuck was all of this for? You drag me out here, leave my partner and your girlfriend or whatever the hell she is without any help—after mentioning, oh by the way, the big bad killer can pretty much do what he likes to you—and you make this big show of trying to teach me, only to tell me that you don’t fucking know?”

  While Woods sounded miserable about the prospect of not knowing, he didn’t sound sorry in the slightest for dragging them all along on this train wreck waiting to happen. “Look, that’s how these things work. You won’t know until it’s time. Didn’t you pay attention to the fucking story? Nobody told me how to deal with it when it crawled out of its hole and started babbling at me. I just felt what I had to do and did it.”

  “Yeah, and got your girlfriend killed in the process.”

  The look that crossed Damien’s face at that made Drakanis instantly sorry he’d said it; the younger man looked like he’d been slapped across the face. In a way, Drakanis supposed he had. He supposed if positions had been reversed, Parker might have felt a certain species of savage glee, but Drakanis only felt hollow.

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He reached out to touch Woods on the shoulder, but Damien was shaking his head and pulling away. The vibe Drakanis was getting from him felt like one part anger and one part grief, though who it wa
s pointed at was up for grabs. Woods sniffed and scrubbed his nose against the sleeve of his uniform coat. Looking at Woods dressed in those clothes—not quite cop clothes but almost—triggered some spark of memory in the back of his mind. The spark became a flare a moment later, and his brows arched.

  “All right, different subject. I heard something earlier about being a pretend cop. What the hell did you mean by that? Was it you that said it? Memory’s hazy, but I know somebody said something, and nobody caught it, then.”

  Woods smirked, the left corner of his mouth arching enough to give him a grin like the Joker; his teeth gleamed. The flicker of the remaining fluorescents shone in his eyes, making it hard to read his expression, even as he took another step backward and spread his arms, gesturing around him.

  “Look at this place, Drak. Think about how many of them I might have. How many bolt-holes. I’m not going to make you count, because you couldn’t find ’em all. I’ve got ten, just here in Reno. Add in the rest of the West Coast, that climbs up to almost a hundred. And not a one of them can be pointed back at me.”

  The grin was changing now, coming down, and Drakanis was reminded of one of those paintings, the one they liked to use in the commercials, The Scream or The Cry or whatever the hell it was. Woods didn’t seem to notice. He just continued on, the volume of his voice rising, the grief in it overtaking the anger. “I’ve had twenty jobs since the night Sheila died, and none of those people knew me or remembered me. I was just a ghost in the halls, collecting a paycheck while I did my real work.

  “I’ve slept with thirty women since that night, and only one of them knows I exist at the moment, and even she wouldn’t if things hadn’t gone to hell in a handbasket in the last couple of weeks. And you know why?” He shoved his face inches away from Drakanis’s own, and Drakanis could see the tears gleaming in them, could feel the sorrow pouring off of him. He shook his head, keeping his eyes focused on Woods.