Manderly’s corpse-whisper voice beside her startled her; she didn’t know how he’d gotten behind her without any of them noticing. He laid a hand on her shoulder, shook his head, and let the wisps of his hair tickle her cheek.
“Let it be, girl. It’s done and between them now. We’re just bystanders. Besides, the gun’s empty.” He thought for a moment that it was too bad he hadn’t bothered to reload it—part of him thought it might actually have been better if Drakanis was killed right there—but he knew well the price for wishes, and the simple fact that he hadn’t made the thought pointless anyway.
Parker was bull-rushing Drakanis, who appeared too wrapped up in staring at the steadily widening gaps in the canvas to notice. His head struck Drakanis square in the stomach, the weight of him carrying both men past Sheila and Manderly and tearing down the swinging door between the two main rooms before Drakanis seemed to flicker for a second, remaining standing near the doorway while Parker plowed into the bedroom wall.
Sheila noticed that the light in the other room was wrong, and glancing up to the windows, she saw why. Whatever sunlight and snow-gleam had been remaining this morning was now gone totally, eclipsed by darkness and thunderheads forming around the hotel.
Parker rebounded from the wall; black spots exploded across his vision after a momentary white burst. He was sure he’d just given himself a concussion, but that wasn’t going to matter a whole lot in the next few minutes if he didn’t figure something out, and fast.
Drakanis bent calmly, shining a brief smile in Sheila and Manderly’s direction, and then picked up the talu`shar once more, running his fingers over it the way a man might stroke his wife’s breast or thigh in the middle of the night.
“Open says-me,” he said, the old childhood joke bringing a slightly more human smile to his lips. Obeying his command, the gaps widened further still, and the darkness outside deepened, punctuating his command with a fresh tremor and ripple of thunder.
Parker pulled himself up slowly and swayed on his feet as fresh blood ran from his ears and his nose, dripping on the floor and adding to the crazy patterns that seemed even now to be moving. Whatever was going on with the painting seemed to be going on in a different way in the room itself and the world outside the window, but he couldn’t let himself think about that too much; even contemplating it made his brain hurt. He staggered two steps toward the door.
“Hey, Mikey!” He could feel whatever Michael was doing tearing at his own spirit as he tried to keep the gaps as tight as he could. This had to be finished one way or another, and soon, or it wasn’t going to matter. Drakanis was just too strong, and he was fresh.
Drakanis turned on his one-time friend, smiling. “You’re starting to get on my nerves, Vince. Maybe the new you will be a little less annoying.” Parker had a moment to wonder what Drakanis was talking about, the answer shimmering just inches from conscious recognition, and then his feet left the ground and he was flying.
Sheila screamed as she saw Parker go flying and crash through one of the windows in an explosion of glass, blood, and flesh. Drakanis favored her with an icy glare that immediately silenced her. She felt movement at her side and glanced that way, seeing Manderly sliding down the wall with one hand clasped to his chest.
“Fuck,” he whispered. Then his eyes closed. Sheila’s own went wide as she turned her gaze back to the window and saw what she would have thought impossible.
The curtains flapped around him, the freezing cold pouring into the room and turning it into a sub-Arctic zone, but Parker didn’t let it bother him. His body was screaming in pain, every part of him aching as blood ran out of him in rivers. His back was a shredded mess, the leftovers after some chef got overzealous with a cheese grater, and his hands were scarred and broken, his left middle finger severed totally, the right missing two fingertips, and the palms of his hands speared on shards of glass that clung stubbornly to the window frame. He wasn’t sure how long he could hold on, but for now, he was still clinging to the window, trying to pull himself back in.
Drakanis started toward the window, holding the talu`shar in front of him in both hands, in the manner the old explorers might have once held their treasure maps. His face was plastered with that same happy smile, as he looked down at Parker dangling out the window, blood trickling down to the street below to mingle with the first drops of rain that were beginning to fall. There was no compassion left in him, nothing left of the man he had been, just whatever obsession the Beast had planted in him, whatever promised lie he had obtained.
“I wish you’d have the sense to die, Vince. It would make this easier.”
“I never take the easy route, Mikey. You know that. Too bad you did. Sold out.”
Parker managed to lever an elbow into the window, impaling it on a particularly nasty spear of glass that went all the way through and out the other side, running red with his blood. Drakanis made no move to stop him but didn’t seem particularly impressed.
“I did what I had to do. You can’t understand that.” His lips quivered slightly, and his gaze grew softer. It took a moment for Parker to realize Drakanis was crying. “They didn’t deserve what happened, but I can change it.”
Parker saw how it would have to be then. He just had to hope that Drakanis was too fried and focused on what he was thinking of to foil it. He knew what Drakanis had asked for and how to jab the button. He didn’t want to do it, especially because of the outcome that would result, but he thought he was done having choices in the matter.
Kill the world, or kill your friend. Not really a choice at all, is it? He felt another part of himself slip away, burned to keep the talu`shar from opening, and knew it wasn’t a choice. He was damned anyway.
“Then let me help. I loved Gina and Joe as much as you did, you know that. I give. Let me help.” He tore one hand from the glass, putting it back into the room and turning his pleading eyes up to Drakanis. “Let me help.”
Drakanis appeared thoughtful for a moment, and Parker felt himself slipping. No matter what the movies said, trying to cling to a windowsill after you’d just been used as a bludgeon wasn’t at all easy, and when you were trying to do it at the same time you were feeding bits of your soul to a demon-infested painting and considering killing your best friend, it was damn near impossible. At last, Drakanis’s face cleared, and he smiled again.
“All right, Parker. Help me.” He reached out and grasped Parker’s hand. His face turned to shock and fury, and he tried to dig his feet in and stop it from happening, but it was too late. The second Parker had hold of Drakanis’s hand, he braced himself against the wall with his legs and yanked.
Drakanis couldn’t hope to match Parker’s strength, and the dual advantages of weight and gravity were also on Parker’s side. He didn’t have time to shift himself or pull himself away and went sailing out the window almost as easily as a child might have. He lost his grip on the talu`shar, staring down after it as it drifted toward the ground. He screamed out Gina’s name, his voice a note of pure agony.
Parker slammed his eyes shut.
I’m sorry, man. So fucking sorry. Then he let go, shoving his hand back up into the window and trying to drag himself back in, shouting for Sheila to help him, goddamnit! He slid backward, digging new agony into his pierced arms and hands, and felt a weight on him. Parker glanced down to see Drakanis, his face empty except for the hatred of the talu`shar, dangling from his boot and trying to claw his way back up.
Drakanis was shrieking in a language that Parker didn’t understand, but the tone of voice and the feel of the words coming from the man made it clear enough that they were curses. He sank his fingers into Parker’s calf and dragged himself up another six inches, still shrieking.
Parker didn’t think Drakanis’s hands were exactly hands anymore; the brief look he’d gotten when Drakanis had shifted his grip made them look scaled and deformed somehow
, and the pain in Parker’s calf felt like the time he had been bitten by his neighbor’s dog. He ground his teeth, biting back a scream, and yelled for Sheila again, trying to plant his free foot against the building and use it for leverage.
Sheila had watched Drakanis go out the window, her eyes still wide with shock and her mouth permanently fixed in an “O” of surprise. When Parker screamed for her the first time, she hadn’t been able to move. Terror had rooted her to the spot like superglue. When he called again, she managed to break the paralysis and run to the window. She tried to get a grip on his flailing hands and brace herself against the wall. She nearly lost her grip when she made the mistake of looking out the window.
Past Parker’s worried and tortured expression, she could see what was hanging on to him, trying to drag him down. It was Drakanis, she could tell that, but something was wrong with him; his whole body seemed to be twisting, the flesh in flux as he changed into something else. His skin was turning dark and scaly, and his eyes were shifting colors through the whole spectrum, growing larger and catlike as they did.
Parker felt Sheila’s grip loosen, glanced down, and saw what was happening to Drakanis; his teeth were gone, replaced by razor-sharp metal, and horns were trying to burrow out of the flesh of his forehead.
“Quit looking at it and fucking pull me, you bitch! That’s not Mikey! Quit looking!”
He didn’t know how it was happening, but he knew the why of it; whatever bargain Drakanis had made, it meant the Beast got his body. Now it was doing to him what it had done to Woods’ old girlfriend, fighting for everything it was worth to hold on, to win. Parker didn’t intend to let that happen. As Sheila tore her gaze away from the monster below him and tightened her grip, he pushed with his foot, shoving himself up another foot and feeling the creature’s claws sinking into the meat of his thigh as it pulled itself closer.
Parker used the fresh leverage as best he could, knowing that this was the last chance. The clouds were breaking up, and that was good; the tremors and thunder were also slowing. Whatever the Beast or Drakanis, whichever one it was hanging off of him, had been doing was slowing down, probably because the change was taking up too much of its power. If it got back into the room though, it’d cast him aside like a toy, kill Sheila, and finish the job. Parker knew that if he couldn’t get it off of him, he was going to have to let go. Kill them both to make sure it was over. He didn’t want to have to end it that way, but shit, others had made the same sacrifice. He was ready to do it if he had to.
At the same time he kicked off with his free foot, the thing beneath him sank those metal teeth into the meat of his calf. Parker shrieked, and Sheila gave a final mighty yank. Adrenaline and the force of that last yank gave Parker the edge he needed, and he pistoned his foot down into the gaping maw that hung below. He felt bones crack and flesh split and then agony as the Beast’s claws ripped down from his thigh to his foot before falling away.
It screamed as it fell, a shriek of pure cheated rage that cut off suddenly only a moment after it started, punctuated by a dull thud. Parker didn’t stop to look, using the momentum gained as he pushed off the thing’s face to shove himself back through the window. He fell to the floor in a heap and crumpled at Sheila’s feet.
Epilogue
2:00 pm, February 12, 2000
Perez sat behind the giant oak desk that had once belonged to Captain Morrigan, drumming his fingers on the top and giving his best paternal scowl at the man sitting across from him. One thing that Parker had discovered was that when your office was mostly in shambles, still filled with crates of things to go out and things coming in, and a portrait of your predecessor was hanging behind you as though judging your every move, the paternal scowl was unlikely to work.
“Yes. That’s my story, and if you don’t buy it, then take my badge and let me go home. It’s time for another shot of morphine anyway.”
Parker’s voice was diminished a bit from his usual bellow, a concession to the miles of surgical tape that wound around his rib cage. The fact that he was up and walking around—Well, limping around, his mind interjected as he clenched a fist around the head of his cane—was something of a minor miracle. No reason to push his luck by blowing stitches or cracking ribs simply because he wanted to make a point.
He had been in that chair for the last three hours, once again giving his report of the incident at the Silverado. No, he did not know where Officer Taeda had gone. No, he did not know why the casino had been empty and most of the items inside destroyed. No, he did not know the whereabouts of former Detective Drakanis, and no, he could not explain the lack of a body. It was the same song and dance he had performed since he had first recovered consciousness—in the same hospital room that Officer Woods had been placed in—and one he fully expected to be performing for years yet.
The new captain seemed unimpressed by the sheer volume of things Parker did not have answers for; he simply sat, asking the same questions while busily picking at the corner of his blotter. The whole thing stank to Perez, and while he wasn’t entirely certain that anything illegal had gone on, he could still tell that something had happened, and Parker was stonewalling him.
“I don’t believe we will be needing the relinquishing of your badge, Vince. You know you are wanted around here, even though you can’t seem to keep the chain of command straight.”
Perez twitched one corner of his mouth into a half smile and then shook his head.
“I understand that you have been through quite an ordeal, and I appreciate that you are concerned for your associates, Officer Brokov in particular, but I still believe you could accomplish the most for her and the rest of us if you were to explain everything.”
Parker barked a laugh and then winced and scrubbed his ribs for a moment, hating the feel of the tape beneath his fingers and wishing he could just tear it off. The whispers in the back of his mind, those granted by Woods’ goddess, reminded him again that he could do so quite easily and with no fear of further injury, but Parker was a stubborn sort. He preferred the inconvenience and pain to the questions he’d have to answer if he walked in one morning and his injuries were just gone. His hand drifted to the front pocket. He withdrew a Camel and lit it one-handed, staring at his commanding officer through the smoke that bloomed.
“I’ve told you all I can, Captain. It’s in the file, all double stamped and everything. I don’t know what you’re looking for besides the facts… but I can’t give it to you.”
Perez sighed and pushed himself to his feet. He turned to face the portrait of Morrigan that hung behind him as though looking for counsel from it and began to tap one foot against the floor.
Wonder just how many tics the man has, Parker thought randomly. And how many of them have cropped up since this whole business.
“I am sure you realize the position I… we . . . are in. The Silverado, practically destroyed. Two officers and one former officer missing, another dead of a heart attack, and the station’s janitor dead with a department-issued bullet in his brain. Someone is going to need an explanation, sooner or later.”
Tapping his ash casually onto the floor, unconcerned with the former cleanliness of the room, Parker managed a shrug.
“Some things just don’t have an explanation, sir. Are we done here?”
Perez blew air threw his teeth, shaking his head without turning away from the portrait of Morrigan.
“I’m sure that statement will make a wonderful quote for the press, one of these days. But yes, you can go. For the moment.”
“Thank you, sir.” Parker began the laborious process of pulling himself out of the chair. He planted his cane first, then his good foot, and then his bad. Once again, he found himself thinking how lucky he was that Sheila had enough sense to wrap a tourniquet on it after she dragged him through the window; the bite that the Beast had taken out of his leg had nearly severed the artery, and while h
e had no doubt the presence that had guided him to that point would have ensured his survival, he didn’t particularly want to face the world one-legged. He was already a couple of fingers shy of what he’d started with and thought he could do without further modification to his body’s blueprint.
Once he was standing, he sketched a mock salute and then hauled his weight back out into the hallway, shaking his head as he went. As he lurched past the front desk, he tipped a little nod to Sheila; at first, she didn’t seem to realize who he was, a reaction he’d been getting from her more and more often, but finally she raised her hand and waved. Then she turned back to the call she was working on.
That right there tells you it’s almost done, he thought. He seemed to be the only one who really remembered anything that had gone on inside the hotel, or much of anything else. As far as Sheila was concerned, she had been dragged to the hotel for some reason while unconscious, had awoken to find Parker severely wounded, and had applied first aid after calling 911. The rest was just… gone.
Parker shook his head again and stepped out into the sunlight, taking a brief moment to let the warmth heat his face as he turned it upward. Part of him wished he could forget, but the lingering influence of whatever had spared him wouldn’t allow that. Probably couldn’t. He sighed, and turned his gaze to the Silverado, squinting at the building.
Sorry, Mikey. Miss you. Hope you’re with them now.
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