Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue
Beyond
the Shadows
by: Aaron Babbitt
Copyright: 2014
Dedicated to Josh and Jason. Thanks for reading.
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.”
--Plato
Prologue
[Ten years before To Absolve the Fallen, circa 1993.]
“Set it on the table, Mr. Carlisle,” the distorted voice commanded.
Vincent eyed the computer monitor with the swirling image on it suspiciously. There had to be some famous adage about how much you could trust someone who never showed his face. For that matter, Vincent had never even heard the guy’s voice, only through a voice changer on an intercom in this office suite. Actually, other than a computer and the table it was sitting on, a video camera on a tripod, two burly men on either side of it (who Vincent were pretty sure were demons), and himself, he had never seen anything else in this entire suite. Every time he came here, the light was on, and the door was unlocked. As to whether or not anyone was here at other times, he couldn’t say. Vincent had no desire to come here without having been summoned.
He sighed. “I don’t even know if this is what you’re looking for,” he admitted, pulling a bundle out of a backpack at his feet.
Vincent removed a small, leather-bound journal from the towel he’d wrapped it in, shook his head, and did as he was told. The voice belonged to a man who referred to himself simply as Adversary, and it seemed that there was no limit to what he knew or what he could buy. But the kicker was that this book Adversary wanted couldn’t be purchased with currency alone. In the last forty-eight hours, Vincent had made deals that rolled his stomach—including, but not limited to: delivery of a foe’s decapitated head; a drugged-out, teenage blond as a sex slave; and nearly a ton of heroin, cocaine, and meth.
He’d been ordered not to look in the book ever, but he honestly didn’t have the desire to. Instead of curiosity about the contents of the book, Vincent had an intimate knowledge of the lives that had been ruined or ended to attain this relatively unremarkable notebook. The price had been way too high; nothing could be worth that.
“Oh, that’s it,” Adversary assured him. “It fits the description precisely.”
“How could you possibly--”
“I see much, Mr. Carlisle. It’s best not to question. That is the item I commissioned you to procure. Your payment,” the voice paused as one of the goons picked up a duffle bag from the floor and set it on the table with a heavy thud, “absolutely untraceable of course.”
Vincent nodded. This had been the second installment, the same as the first: five hundred thousand. He didn’t bother to check. Adversary may have been ruthless, but he was a man of his word. Though, ultimately, what good was the word of a man (he’d always assumed Adversary was a man) who went to such great lengths to conceal his identity? There were no verifiable credentials—only cold, hard cash…and two big guys.
“Thanks,” Vincent grunted. He just wanted to get the Hell out of there and never come back.
“To whom would you like it delivered?”
Vincent cocked his head in confusion. “I can carry it out on my own, just like last time.”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Carlisle. This time you’ve seen too much.”
Vincent smiled resignedly and went for the gun in the holster under his left arm. As Adversary was never physically present for their meetings, his henchmen never bothered to check Vincent’s weapon. Consequently, he had a .38 Special in his hand by the time the biggest of the two guards slammed into him, knocking him to the ground and his breath out of him. Absently, he noted the clatter of his gun sliding across the tile floor.
As he’d predicted, the “man” on him began to transform into a creature several inches taller, muscles forming across its arms and legs. Fur filled in all over the body, and its face morphed, stretching outward into a long snout with rows of razor-sharp teeth and gaining scales. The demon bore down on him, snapping menacingly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the other demon had transformed as well. That one had become wiry, emaciated. Its skin was pulled taut across its skeleton. In contrast to the other, this one looked to have lost all of its hair and grown pale. It hopped up and down excitedly, beady eyes darting around the room, and its fanged jaw chattering wildly.
“Fuck, man!” Vincent screamed. “I swear I won’t tell anyone about what you made me do—what I did for you, I mean. None of those people meant anything to me. And I’ll get high as a kite after this; I won’t remember the names of any of the people you sent me to.”
Distorted laughing came from the computer’s speakers. “Oh, how small you think. The only people you could convince to believe you would never care. I am not going to take your life because I’m concerned that you’ll run your mouth about the illegal activities I paid you to oversee and organize. I’m going to take your life because your knowledge of what I possess could become inconveniencing.”
“All of this over a book?!” Vincent demanded, struggling underneath the monster that had him pinned. “It doesn’t even look very old.”
“Surely, you don’t think I would go through this much effort for just a book, and it’s much older than it looks. Please, give me some credit, Mr. Carlisle. Now, like I was saying, I would like to see that someone gets paid for your sacrifice. I will even go as far as to pay the original one million. Who is your beneficiary?”
Vincent shut his eyes and breathed deeply. “My wife,” he answered.
“Okay,” Adversary agreed. “Do it,” he commanded.
The smaller of the two demons bounded over, squatted down, and bit Vincent hard on the arm. He cried out, but almost instantly, he felt no pain. A tingle started in his arm and quickly moved across his torso, and then to the rest of his body, taking all physical sensations with it, making him completely numb.
Before the evisceration began, Vincent was able to mumble, “It’s just…a book.”
“No,” Adversary contended. “It isn’t.”
Chapter 1
A woman and a boy stood in the parking lot of a dirty motel. The woman was dressed business-casually, and the boy next to her was between twelve and fourteen, had a complexion that belied his mother’s Mexican heritage, and wore the best clothes that the woman next to him could find on such short notice.
The neon lights on the sign above their heads read V ancy. The boy looked at the run-down motel with both confusion and disgust.
“What the hell is this?” he demanded.
He’d heard about this before. Kids get in trouble with the law, get thrown in the system, then get put with adults—often men—who would do horrible things to them. And the rumors he’d heard had been incredibly graphic.
For the justifiable question, he received a stinging slap to the back of the head. His social worker, Tonya Shony, glared down at him menacingly.
“This isn’t what it looks like, and you’re going to need to watch your language, Dylan. I’ve seen the stats on this guy, and I will promise you this is a good thing. But he told me he had a thing against cussing.”
He scrunched his eyebrows incredulously. “Why the fuck should I give two shits if this pussy…doesn’t…nope, that’s all I’ve got.”
Tonya looked like she was going to hit him again, and he put his arms up to block.
“I’m serious,” she almost whispered, as if anyone inside the motel would have been able to understand them from the parking lot. And, to her credit, when Dylan brought his arms back down, she did look serious. “He has a lot of money, and he owns property on the Las Vegas Strip. I’m telling you, you want this.”
“But why does he want me? I’ll cut him if he whips his dick out.”
At that moment, he chastised himself for dropping his guard before saying that. As he expected, she smacked the side of his head hard enough to rock it to the side.
“You can go back with me, Dylan, back to the boys’ home. From there, I hope you’re smart enough to keep your ass out of trouble.”
“And I don’t get to smack you?!” he protested, still recovering from the last attack.
“You’d better watch it,” she warned sternly. “You may be able to stay out of trouble; I do hope so. But, let’s say you don’t, just for sake of argument. Let’s say you go back to the boys’ home, and that doesn’t work out for you. Maybe you run your mouth and get into a fight, and you get hurt. Wouldn’t be the first time for any of those things to have happened. You’ve got a record, kid. Do you think if you keep screwing up, it suddenly becomes sunshine and daisies?”
“Well, I’m glad I’ve got you to cheer me on.”
“Sure,” she conceded, still with some condescension, “now let’s say you make it. You do exactly what everyone hopes you’re going to do: You pull your act together; you get back into public school, and you get good grades. Then, you graduate and get a job.”
“Or go to college,” he objected.
“Yes,” she agreed, “or go to college. Are you going to go to college, Dylan?”
“Pfft,” he snorted, “fuck college.”
She didn’t smack him this time; she just shook her head. “I figured as much. So let’s say everything goes great, and you get a good job out of high school. I don’t know, maybe you got some stunning references or something. What do you think that’s going to net you a year?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Maybe a hundred grand.”
This time, she snorted. “Okay,” she said chuckling. “Let’s say you get a job out of high school making a hundred thousand dollars a year after taxes.”
“I thought this was a high-pathetic question,” Dylan replied defensively. “You don’t have to be mean.”
“It’s ‘hypothetical,’” she corrected. “And since when did you have such thin skin?”
“This is all news to me. How did you expect me to act?”
“Anyway, you get lucky and land a-hundred-K-a-year job, and you’ll still be behind where you’d be if you were fostered by, and maybe adopted by, someone who’s already a multimillionaire.”
Dylan shook his head slowly and shifted his weight around on his feet. “This whole thing doesn’t feel right. Just take me back.”
“No,” she said quickly, as if she’d been expecting that reaction. “I’m not going to let you do this to yourself. C’mon, Dylan. You know I’ve done my due diligence. I’ve talked to him lots of times. He’s nice, and he wants this to happen. This guy checks out.”
“What’s this guy’s name?”
“Jeremiah Felangelli.”
“If he’s so rich, why’s he staying at a place like this?”
She shrugged. “He says he likes to keep a low profile. You should trust me.”
“What about my stuff?”
“It’s on its way,” she answered.
“I’m not going to be staying in this shithole, am I?”
She thumped him on the head. “Quit that. No; your stuff is on its way to Las Vegas. I told you, that’s where he’s from.”
“How is the State of Arizona sending me to live in Nevada? And why have I never met this Jeremiah Felangelli?”
“This is an unprecedented situation,” she admitted. “He has influence above me. And you’ve never met him because he wanted this to be spontaneous.”
“I don’t like surprises,” he complained.
“Life is full of them.”
***
Lonny walked out of the bar into a sunny California day, holding his head high. It had been a good audition. They’d liked his mix of classic rock. Looking back on the encounter, he thought the owner, a heavyset, bald man, may have had more than a professional interest in him, but Lonny didn’t mind. He wasn’t one to judge. It was San Francisco, after all, in the nineties; gay men were everywhere. More than one had passed him a phone number in the last six months. He would smile at them, and they’d throw a five in his guitar case. The bar owner gave him a couple free drinks, even though he wasn’t legally old enough to drink them. There was certainly no harm in being polite.
He turned down an alley, and he was no more than twenty feet in before a strange sensation overtook him. This wasn’t the first time a cold feeling of dread threatened to sap his strength.
“Shit,” Lonny mumbled quietly, taking the guitar off his back and gripping the neck like a club, for all the good it would do.
“Hey, buddy,” a voice behind him called.
The young man swung around to face the owner of the voice. To his surprise, the figure before him—and the reason for his feeling of dread, Lonny was certain—looked like an ordinary, middle-aged man, dressed in a suit—sans the tie. He was maybe a little taller than most, and he seemed pretty happy, but he didn’t look like a monster. Except for the fangs, Lonny noted as he looked closer; the fangs were definitely not ordinary. Then, the man’s eyes started glowing, and Lonny set aside any doubt.
Another voice, from the direction he had been facing added in a shrill voice, “You look positively delicious.”
And that’s why the feeling had been so strong. There were two of them. Instinctively, he wanted to spin around again and face the newest member of this party, but something told him that was their hope too and that the one he was looking at now had been the predetermined “pouncer.” And it seemed like the better strategy to push him farther down the alley than to push him toward the nearest exit. Looking very much like a frightened deer, he didn’t move a muscle, but he was trying to decide how to get out of this predicament the fastest. Indeed, he realized, he’d basically stopped breathing altogether.
Lonny was so focused that he didn’t see a third figure materialize from the shadows next to him. Somewhere in the back of his mind, however, he did notice the confused expression on the smiling face with the glowing eyes.
“Get down!” he heard his mentor’s scratchy voice command.
This time, his instinct served him well. He fell to his knees, briefly regretting just dropping his guitar, and threw his arms over his head. Two explosions, followed by a spatter of an oily goo that burned a little when it touched his skin and a thud, indicated to Lonny that Teacher had just dispatched the fanged man who’d been blocking his retreat.
He risked a peek behind him to see Teacher, robed, as usual, in his thick, black, woolen cloak. It covered his entire body to hide scars that he always told Lonny he’d obtained when he was young and his powers were developing. Teacher stood, with undeniable confidence, between Lonny and a terrifying creature that looked like a cross between a bear and an alligator. It towered over the two of them with an enormous, hairy, upright body and an elongated, scaled snout. Teacher dodged the snapping maw as he appeared to be sizing up his giant opponent.
But Lonny smiled because he knew something the big monster may not have realized quite yet: If it had solid construction, Teacher could blow it apart. Bigger just meant that there would be more stinging, noxious slime being flung around.
The next time that it bent low to snap at one of them, Teacher sidestepped it and wrapped powerful arms around its snout, forcing it shut. Shortly thereafter, Lonny started hearing popping sounds. At first, there were a few. Then, like microwave popcorn, the small explosions increased in rapidity and intensity. The beast fell to the ground, still in Teacher’s grapple, writhing as chunks of its mouth and
face blew away. Seconds later, it had ceased all movement, even though the explosions were still dying off.
Lonny thought he might be sick. After the exertion of enormous willpower, he staved off the inclination to vomit, but he couldn’t bear to look at any of his mentor’s handiwork.
“Are you all right?” Teacher inquired, finally letting go of the mutilated demon.
Demon was a word they were both loath to use. The Society of Minds taught that all reality could be explained through science and inductive reasoning. Whereas many who, if they saw what Teacher just did or how well Lonny could move people with his music, would say that those abilities were bestowed by some higher power, making them prophets, the Society believed that the simpler, more rational explanation was that biological things have mutations from time to time.
For that matter, to Lonny, even the concept of alien intervention made more sense than divine intervention. Demons? Angels? Prophets? No. There was no doubt that the things Teacher had killed were monsters of some kind, perhaps even otherworldly, but mythology didn’t need to be applied to the situation. There were those who had gifts of their own and would disagree, and they did, indeed, call themselves prophets. Lonny, however, didn’t think there needed to be a God and Satan or a Heaven and Hell for there to be an explanation of what he just witnessed.
Lonny took a moment to examine himself before responding, “Yeah, I think I’m fine.”
“Good,” Teacher said, “because we need to leave. I’ll make a call to have this cleaned up. You head back to your apartment—straight to your apartment—and I’ll meet you there.”
The young man nodded, reached down to pick up his guitar, and walked quickly back out of the alley. Even by cab, it seemed like a long way back to the apartment after just having been attacked by those two and wondering how many more might lie in ambush between him and safety.
***
Beyond the Shadows (To Absolve the Fallen Book 0) Page 1