Darkness of the Soul

by Kaine Andrews

  “Maybe you should give up. I mean, you did hear what’s supposed to happen when the shit goes down, right?” He laughed and then moved again. Two can play this game. He slid up against the central bar and ducked under a shelf full of bottles, and then popped up for a second, grinning. “You know, the whole apocalypse gig. I don’t think it really suits you.” He ducked again, barely avoiding a rain of splintered glass as several reports went off; apparently, she’d decided the old-fashioned way was good enough and was spraying the bar with bullets.

  “You wouldn’t understand. Too thickheaded.” There was a note of anger in her voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago, and Parker wondered what Karim or the Beast had promised her. Such a little thing, really, to give up the trust of your friends and co-workers in favor of promises made by a psychopath.

  “What, did he tell you you’d be a queen or something? Rule the world? Sorry, sister. Don’t cut it. Or maybe he just drank your Christmas punch and didn’t puke.” A neon display featuring the Little Mermaid—promoting the new Disney-themed penny slots—went out just above his head. The lights were left hanging from the central fixture and filling the air with mosquito buzzing as the neon fought valiantly to keep functioning.

  “Shut the fuck up, Parker! I’m warning you!” Her voice sounded as though it was edging dangerously close to the realm of panic. Parker felt sure if he pushed her much further she’d just explode. Of course, he thought with a hint of a smile, you can juggle nitroglycerine and it’d blow, too. You’d just be lucky to still have a hand when it was done. This time, she opted for the gun again; either she was carrying more than one or she hadn’t been empty in the first place. He was sure if she had tried to reload it, he’d have heard it, even if she was packing speed loaders. The shot didn’t even come close. It zinged off the metal base of one of the chairs deeper on the casino floor. Then something in that direction exploded, and he guessed she’d added whatever gun was in her head to the one in her hand for that one.

  Hell, maybe she’ll run out of ammo. You can hope, anyway. He supposed he could, but he was also a firm believer in that old saying about those God helps. He decided he didn’t want to sit around and wait for her to get tired, and she didn’t look like she was going to quit anytime soon.

  He stood up, grinning, and reached into the recesses of his mind. He was digging for the power that he felt buried back in there. He didn’t think he could use it with the finesse that Damien probably had, or even what Taeda was showcasing—assuming it came from the same place, anyway—but he didn’t think he’d have to. People might think that using an anvil to crush something when a hammer would do wasn’t exactly the best way to go about things, but Parker had always believed you used the tools you had at hand.

  He could feel static in the air, charging around him like he had just turned on an ionizer or something, and felt that new awareness within reaching out and taking hold of all of it; he harnessed it, grabbing with meaty mental hands that would never be able to pluck just what he needed but would serve for now regardless. He started toward the last place he’d heard her voice.

  Taeda bounced up, her head appearing briefly over the top of one of the tables set along the west wall. Her mouth dropped open, and for a moment, she had a look of almost complete surprise on her face, which faded quickly into a sly grin that said she obviously had the upper hand. Parker could feel some of her thoughts coming off of her—more empathic resonance than real telepathy—and could tell she thought she had him dead to rights.

  You just keep thinking that, honey. We’ll see who goes home in a box. He didn’t stop moving. He picked up his pace a little, even as she raised her hand and her face twisted into a grimace of concentration and pain. The charge in the air felt stronger all of a sudden, and some of what Parker was trying to pull from it started to flow the opposite direction. He could see a small ball of black light gathering in her palm and knew that was going to have his name on it if this didn’t work.

  “I told you to quit, Parker. Now you’re going to be retired. Forcibly.”

  “Fuck you.”

  She shook her head once and threw the bolt of whatever-it-was at him; it moved fast, faster than he might have been able to track before, though not quite as quick as a bullet. The new senses he’d gained gave him enough of a reaction time to see it, and he drove his own fists forward, propelling his body directly into the path of the thing.

  He felt all the air go out of his lungs and heard an unimportant popping noise followed by the sensation of something warm and wet trickling down his cheeks and neck, soaking into his collar. He released his grip on the energy he’d pulled and threw it with his mind as hard as he could, bearing down and producing a flare of agony in his forehead. He swore he had just ruptured his brain, but the rest of it happened too fast for him to worry about it.

  Taeda’s bolt struck him just as he let go of his own. The two forces slammed into one another, combined, and then burst, sending shockwaves both real and psychic through the room. The force of it sent Parker flying backward. He landed on the bar and skidded along on his back, tumbling in a crumpled heap at the far edge. Every piece of electronic equipment near the blast—and a good lot of them elsewhere on the floor—popped and shattered, sending glass and electric guts spewing in a wild rain. A moment after that, the remaining lights flickered and died, leaving them in the dark.

  Taeda saw what was going to happen a moment before it did and tried to dive out of the way; whatever Parker had done had overpowered the energy she had been able to muster and was still streaking toward her. She didn’t move nearly as quickly as she thought she had, and the swirling globe of raw psychic energy struck her in the chest even as she tried to throw herself clear. Her eyes went completely blank in an instant; in two, her body was on fire. In a third, the globe exploded, spraying the wall with a gory splash.

  Parker felt her die. Apparently, his new gifts didn’t come with an on/off switch. Either that, or she sent it to you. Wanted to make sure you knew how it felt. She didn’t scream, and Parker counted that as a plus, though he realized he wasn’t able to hear much of anything anyway. Something was fucked up with his ears. Even his own ragged breathing sounded far away and hollow, like a recording made somewhere in the dim days of the first phonographs.

  He lifted a hand to the side of his head and dabbed at the wetness there. When he pulled it away, he saw that his fingers were slick with blood. Whatever had just happened, it looked to him like it had probably blown his eardrums out, at the very least. The headache that was simmering up to a nice boil inside his skull probably wasn’t helping matters any either.

  No time to worry about that kind of bullshit right now, bucky. Business to be done, and it looks like you’re the fucking cavalry. True enough, but it didn’t mean that he had to like it. “This was supposed to be Mikey’s job, goddamnit.”

  He heard the voice inside, but it wasn’t his own, just the friendly neighborhood higher power, invading his brain. He supposed the average person could get used to damn near anything if given time enough to do it but doubted that contact this intimate would fall under the heading of “damn near anything.” He was willing to lay money on the line that this was one of the few universal exceptions.

  Enough dallying, Vincent. Upstairs. You know the way. He realized he did. Whether it was a gift from whatever, cop instinct, or some deeper empathy with the others didn’t really matter. He knew where to go.

  Without offering further argument, he wound his way through the darkened rows of machines and bar stools, heading toward the registration desk and the elevators beyond.

  Chapter 39

  9:30 am, December 25, 1996

  Silence ruled in the sunny kitchen of the Drakanis home for a long while. Gina appeared to be completely oblivious to the situation unfolding between her son and her husband. She continued to set plates out and prepare breakfast as though nothing odd was
happening. Drakanis was almost ready to believe that he was just having some kind of episode, that all of it was in his head and some mental censor had just turned down the volume as a prelude to blacking out the screen and informing him that the remainder of the film had been edited for content. That kept not happening though, and the longer he looked into his son’s face, the easier it became to realize that it wasn’t going to.

  Joey didn’t appear to be in the mood to drop hints or break the tension; he just continued to focus his gray eyes on his father—and Drakanis realized a terrible thing: that he could no longer recall with certainty what color his own son’s eyes had been, though warning bells were sounding inside. He was almost certain that whatever color they had been, gray had not been anywhere close. Drakanis was unsure if he actually wanted Joey—or whatever impersonator was claiming to be Joey—to speak or if he preferred the silence.

  At almost the exact instant that he decided sound was preferable to silence, the boy-thing spoke again, the voice still the clotted and hissing syllables of the Beast instead of the high, sweet sound of a child.

  “Your friends made their choices. Brought the wrong sorts of presents. But you still have time to choose correctly. Whether I make it to my next birthday or not depends entirely on what you choose to do now, Michael.”

  Gina had finished filling the plates with bacon and the bowls with cereal and had settled into her own chair. She opened the newspaper and began to read. Apparently, this discussion was just between the men of the house. Involuntarily, Drakanis’s eyes were pulled to the date and headline of the newspaper. He could see the date clearly enough, and seeing that much made his stomach knot in fear and worry and sweat break out on his brow. “December 25, 1996,” the date read. The headlines were harder to read, since they seemed to be saying more than one thing; even the big, half-page front photo seemed blurry and indistinct, shifting from one picture to another and back again.

  From what he could tell between the flux of the ink pattern, one headline had something to do with a Christmas caroling session that was going to collect donations for AIDS research; the other screamed in neon letters that a double murder had been committed in the neighborhoods off of Robb Drive, his neighborhood. The picture that seemed to go with that headline was also much more recognizable; it was of his own house.

  “The past and the future are mutable, Michael. Provided you have the will to change either. But you must choose. You cannot simply sit in the middle and wait for life to happen to you instead of taking command of it.”

  Drakanis couldn’t speak at first; what the thing was offering him—and he was sure that this was indeed the Beast, the creature that dwelled within the painting and that Woods believed he was supposed to destroy—seemed impossible, but in the last few weeks, he had come to accept nearly anything as being possible; whether it would actually happen was a different question entirely.

  Once he had finally managed to unglue his tongue from behind his lips, Drakanis turned his attention back to the boy that wasn’t really a boy. He tried to speak forcefully, but all that would exit his throat and pass his lips was an awed whisper. “You can give them back?”

  The thing that was pretending to be Joey laughed, and Gina—assuming it was her in some shape or form—snorted from behind her paper. Drakanis wasn’t sure what they thought was funny about the question and was about to protest, but Joey interrupted him before he had even managed to think it, let alone speak.

  “Those Karesh has taken may be replaced, just as he may be. The one you call Damien speaks only lies of me, for he knows me under only adversarial circumstances. Karesh—the one you call Karim—believes me something else and appeases his own hungers while claiming them to be mine. I have a purpose, one granted me long ago, but cannot serve it as I am. Unlike what you may believe, my mission is one of mercy.”

  Drakanis felt a deepening lethargy inside, and his head began to nod. He was having difficulty maintaining focus. Part of him knew that something was wrong, that drifting off here would be one of the worst things he could do in his life. None of that seemed to matter, though. He blinked at Joey, his head falling to a natural tilt, and tried to break through it enough to speak.

  “What… mercy?”

  The Beast shook its head. “Removal of pain. I would have thought that obvious by now.”

  It was getting harder and harder to even keep his eyes open, let alone form coherent thoughts. He felt murky inside, almost drugged. Nothing seemed to be making proper connections in his head, and he was still reeling from what the Beast had told him. If it means it . . .

  “I often forget how literal you humans can be. Always wanting things spelled out for you. Very well.”

  Joey hopped down from his chair, walked to the center of the room, and stood directly under the fluorescent lighting. As he passed beneath it, his features flickered for a moment, seemed to twist into a death’s head with worms crawling in the eye sockets and all the flesh on his neck gone black and purple. The image faded almost as quickly as it had come, and Drakanis wasn’t sure if he had really seen it at all; the image of his son standing there with arms wide as if beckoning was the one that stayed with him. It was growing difficult to focus on Joey—or whatever had replaced him—because tears were welling in his eyes. Gina set down her paper, and on her way to join Joey, she laid a hand on Drakanis’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and then brought the hand up to caress his cheek, and he felt whatever sense of resistance or will he might have had fade away before the simple desire to have them back, even if only for a moment.

  Gina joined Joey in the puddle of light in the middle of the kitchen, laying her hands on his shoulders and looking at Drakanis with questioning eyes. Joey managed a smile, full of emotions no child should know. Contemptuous amusement topped the list as he spoke again.

  “Karesh is a failure. Only one can grant me my rebirth: you. You give me what I want, you receive what you want: your family, returned to you, forever.”

  Drakanis’s tears were flowing freely now; it no longer mattered to him that this—all of this, so far as he knew—was nothing but a dream, a phantasm conjured up from his deepest hopes and dreams. All that mattered was the possibility. He slid from his chair and crawled on hands and knees toward his family.

  Chapter 40

  12:00 pm, December 24, 1999

  Parker eased out of the hotel room and closed the door behind him. He leaned back against it and slid to the floor, trying to block out the garish pink and yellow walls along with the images of what he had seen inside. Banishing the inner demons that were still mocking him, telling him that he had been too late, proved to be much harder; the singsong chant in his head continued to go around and around, speeding up and laughing at him in what sounded like a hundred languages and voices at once.

  He had been so goddamned sure of himself, certain that he could do something about this, certain that everything was going to turn out all right. When he had started jogging up the stairs—Taeda’s last hurrah had apparently shorted out the power to the elevators too—heading for the eighth floor, guided by the internal compass that the mysterious spectral benefactor had seen fit to embed in his skull, he had thought there was still time.

  He supposed he should have paid better attention to what the voice had told him. It was only now, as he leaned against the door and tried not to think about what he’d found, that he recalled it had told him that Damien was basically already screwed. Even with that warning and the fact that he hadn’t particularly liked Woods—the smarmy, know-it-all looks and the habit he had of disappearing when actual work became involved had turned Parker off almost immediately—he hadn’t been truly prepared for what he had found.

  By the time he got up to the eighth floor hallway and stepped out of the stairwell, he had become aware of some kind of strange sound. It was almost like screaming, but it seemed to be hitting him more on a mental leve
l than a physical one. He supposed that made a certain amount of sense, since he could barely hear his own footfalls on the stairs. He had picked up the pace, charging down the hall like a bull and slamming into the door at full force, not knowing or caring how he knew which one to pick.

  The scream had cut off seconds before he hit the door. By the time he had rebounded the first time and threw himself at it again, he’d been in silence for ten or fifteen seconds already. On the third try, when the door finally gave in, part of him had already decided that whatever had happened in the room was already over. He just had never been very good at listening to the pessimistic side of himself, even when it was correct.

  The room had looked as though a small-scale hurricane had torn through it on a brief vacation from Florida. The tiny kitchenette was a domain of shattered glass and torn confetti that might have been some businessman’s paperwork before Karim or one of his little slaves had taken over the room. The living room hadn’t fared any better. At first, all Parker could see of it was the ruined remains of one of the dozens of obnoxious purple chairs that seemed to fill every room in the building, still smoldering, and the shattered picture frames and windows. For a moment, he was glad of his (hopefully) temporary deafness, because some inner awareness told him that the scream he had been hearing out in the hall had been the source of this wreckage. While he doubted it could have done much to a human body, especially not through one of the thick doors that guarded hotel residents from the nuts outside, Parker still found himself slightly glad that the noise had been deadened and had stopped by the time he came crashing in.