I studied my reflection in the wide mirror behind where Selene was seated. The stress of the last few days was starting to take its toll. My eyes seemed to have become careworn and looked as if they had started to sink back into my head. My already pale skin looked tired and thin. Luckily the effects wouldn’t be permanent.
I shook my head. “I really don’t know, I’ve never felt anything similar before. You didn’t feel anything?”
It was Selene’s turn to shake her head, no.
“It was like . . . “ I struggled for words. “I don’t know, it was like the elevator was just normal and beyond it the air was all squeezed together and compacted so that I couldn’t easily walk out into it. But it was more than that, that was just the emotional aspect manifesting as something almost physical.”
Selene nodded her head as though she could understand but I knew my description of what I had felt was nowhere near adequate. Trouble was I couldn’t think of any better way to articulate what I had felt at that time.
“What about Griffith, you get anything from him?”
“He’s been holding things back, but that could just be a natural part of his behaviour, he is a lawyer after all. He isn’t suspicious of us, just curious.”
Selene nodded again as if she had expected a response along those lines. She adjusted how her legs were hanging from the edge of the sink and ran a hand as far as she could down one of her legs. She purposely wasn’t looking at me.
“So are you ready for the next part of our little mission?”
I waited until she finished her intentional distraction and I could get eye contact. “What next part?”
“You really didn’t think I brought you here expecting you to be able to pluck guilt out of the first person we spoke to, did you? What are the odds that Ciriaco’s contact would be involved in whatever it is that’s going on? The whole firm couldn’t be in on it without there being leaks all over the place, a secret shared doesn’t stay secret for very long.”
“So all this was just . . .”
“A way to get us inside the building so that you can take a look around. Maybe see if there are any dead folks around here who know anything we should know. One of the best ways to keep a secret is to make sure the people that know about it can’t talk to anyone and spread it.” She eyed me. “Or rather keep them from being able to talk to most people.”
“And what if we are interrupted while I’m otherwise occupied?”
“That’s what I’m here for.” Selene responded with a cock sure grin. “Besides, even if they saw you what would that tell them? It isn’t like they would know what you were doing. Do you think anyone in this building has any personal experience with angels or knows what you can turn your talents to after you’ve been in the mortal realm for as long as you have?”
She had a point, but still; “I don’t want to do this.”
“Maybe not, but will you?”
I didn’t have to put myself through this. I had no explanation for what had affected me earlier, how would that affect me if I tried anything else? Not only that but did I trust Selene to keep me safe while I was out of my body in a potentially hostile environment.
I looked at Selene who was watching me blankly waiting for me to make up my mind. She couldn’t force me to do this if I didn’t want to do it. There was nothing she could do to me to make me. “Think of all the people you could save if some of these people are behind what’s been happening to those people. If these are the people who were helping that demon.”
Except that. Damn.
Bitch. I gave her a look and Selene knew exactly what I was thinking. She also knew that I was going to do what she wanted.
I hadn’t exactly come prepared for an astral experience, then again I didn’t exactly need anything other than myself and the will to do it to have one. Well I was here and Selene had guilt tripped me into having the will to do it so I guess there were no more excuses.
“Don’t worry,” Selene said softly and I thought there was genuine concern in her voice, or perhaps that was simply more calculated manipulation. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Selene hopped soundlessly from her perch and her hands slipped under her coat, they came out holding a twin pair of machine pistols.
“How did you . . ?”
“Let’s not waste time on pointless discussion,” Selene said. “I’ll answer your questions when we are away from here. Now hurry before Ciriaco runs out of ways to stall Griffith.”
Selene turned away and watched the door. “This is going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack. I won’t even be able to touch anything if I do notice anything suspicious. It will have to be laying there in plain sight for all to see.”
“They might not think they have to hide things that are in locked offices inside a building where they restrict access to certain people.”
She wasn’t going to back down so I saved myself from another argument and just got on with what she wanted. Even if this turned out to be a huge waste of time at least it would soon be over.
I sensed it as soon as I pulled myself out of my body.
Getting myself into my astral body happened the way it had a hundred times before, without difficulty. There was no pain, only the usual, minor, amount of disorientation. There was nothing different about what I was seeing that could account for what I sensed. I had been assaulted by clouds of black mist on the occasions when the remnant of the Drazi demon Selene had killed had tried to put me off, but here there was none of that. My astral form was simply standing in a bathroom next to my prone physical body with the alert form of Selene watching over me.
There was nothing here that would account for the overwhelmingly malevolent force that had suddenly sprung into being and started pressing in around me. I felt sure that the only reason I managed to remain erect in the face of such a weight of evil was because I wasn’t technically actually standing at all. If I had been able to feel this on my physical form it would have crushed me with its mass.
I caught a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye on the wall of the bathroom above the basins where mirrors replaced the tiles. It wasn’t Selene because I could see both her and her reflection in front of me clearly, in my natural field of vision. I thought for a fleeting moment that I must have caught my own reflection in the glass, but of course in my astral form there was nothing to reflect.
I whirled my astral body around to get a better look at what I had seen. I might have caught a fleeting glimpse of a half imagined black mass but I can not say for sure because it vanished before the perhaps thing had a chance to actually register. If there was something there it might have been the origin of the malevolence I had sensed because as soon as it was gone the sensation of evil flicked out as well. It was as if both had never been there.
Whatever had happened I wasn’t sticking around to go snooping for Selene and Ciriaco, stuff them I had not signed on for this. This was something the likes of which I had never heard of and that could only be something very bad. This sort of evil was never supposed to come to the mortal realm, there were treaties, there were rules. The elders needed to be informed, even they couldn’t ignore this sort of incursion. If it had been an incursion, I was no longer entirely certain of what it was I had felt.
I drew in a stale breath as quickly as I could.
“That was qui-” Selene snapped her mouth shut the instant she saw the look on my face.
“Get me out of here. Get me the hell out of here right now.”
The memory continued to fade as we pulled away from the Delco, Diablo and Caine building. I glanced back at the tower and for a moment I saw more than just the tall office building. Superimposed over the clean lines of the modern architectural tower was the shadow of a gothic edifice. The flowing organic stonework loomed over the rest of the cityscape, shrouded at its peak by a crown of thick black cloud and lit by the sharp flashes of lightning which sparked between the clouds and the equally dull brickwork. The
shiny windows of the modern building were smothered by soulless holes.
The vision passed in the blink of an eye and I have to admit that it was more than likely just a construct of my imagination. Lord knows I had had given myself quite a scare back there. I had probably been sensing my own nervous fear and had gotten myself all worked up in some sort of self-inflicted emotional feedback loop. If anything that bad had managed to get a foothold in the mortal realm the elders would surely have learned about it and taken the appropriate action. There were treaties against that sort of thing. No, this felt different, this was human evil, pure and simple.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Ciriaco dropped me outside Selene’s office. He assured me that he would get somebody to take a look at my car and get it back to me. Then he was gone with a meaty roar from his pick-ups engine pulling out in a hurry and cutting off a mucky white van in the process.
“So what was all that about?”
We were alone in the stairway making our way up to Selene’s office, her building wasn’t in much better repair than my own, quite a come-down after the wealth of our last two visits. But a glossy exterior didn’t say anything about the character of a place.
I shook my head as we emerged from the staircase and into the corridor leading to Selene’s office/home. “I don’t know.”
“That seems to be your answer to a lot of questions lately.” Selene observed.
“Do you want to start breaking my fingers and see if that helps me come up with any answers?” I sniped back at her.
Possibly that wasn’t the best way to start my side of a conversation which I hoped would take me around to asking for a place to stay while my own place got fixed up. I must have been in a worse mood than I had noticed. What the hell, it felt good to hit out a little.
“Would it help?”
I couldn’t tell you whether Selene was serious with that question or not. I gave her a brief run through of what I remembered from my experience at the Delco, Diablo and Caine building. It wasn’t much and Selene’s reaction to the information helped to go a long way to convincing myself that what I had gotten had been influenced by my own feelings and imagination.
“You were in a building full of lawyers, what sort of feelings did you expect to get? Cotton-fields and candy-clouds?”
“It wasn’t like that, there was something different about this. It scared me.” I was trying to argue but I was less than convinced myself. It didn’t make for someone who could put forward a strong case.
“And you never get scared? Let’s just call this little expedition a bust and move on.”
I didn’t know whether to attempt to convince Selene that we needed to look deeper into Delco, Diablo and Caine. I had no idea what what I had felt might mean, it could be exactly as she suggested. Without a strong conviction myself it would be futile to try and swing Selene’s opinion.
I made my way to my apartment with my head still swimming. I was so caught up in my thoughts that at first I didn't realise there was anything wrong. I emerged from the stairs onto the second floor corridor where my apartment was located.
There was nothing wrong on the stairway. There was the usual litter on nearly every other step, and another drying vomit stain on the first few steps up from the first floor landing. Scrawls of graffiti, most of it obscene, still decorated the walls. I hadn’t had time to do anything about the graffiti on my walls and door before Frost had collected me this morning.
What wasn't normal was that my own door should be open. It took my brain long seconds to process what my eyes were seeing. By the time I realised I had walked the full length of the corridor and was standing next to my door.
I am a single young woman, to all appearances, living alone in what wasn't the best neighbourhood in the city. I had good locks on my door, two standard locks at handle and shoulder level and a chain lock for when I was in so that I didn't have to fully unlock the door to get a look at whoever might come calling. My locks had never stopped Selene entering at will, but whoever had done this wasn't as subtle as the bounty hunter. They had used brute force where Selene would have used skill.
The right hand side of the door frame was chipped and splintered where the locks had been forced through. The door was open almost a quarter of the way so I could see a short way inside my apartment. There were no lights on inside, the angle of the walls on the apartments interior made it difficult to see very far inside.
I assumed that whoever had been in my apartment was long gone. I really should have known better than to make assumptions.
I had shoved the door the rest of the way open and stepped into the apartment by the time I realised there was even more wrong. There was somebody in here.
I should have turned and run back out of the door right then but my mind went numb. It was that hesitation, the sight of something so unexpected that freezes a human body in inaction. Soldiers and police train intensely to make sure they can react to the unexpected but most normal people end up stuck like a rabbit in the headlights, and in this respect at least, if few others, I was all too normal. I wonder what the graffiti artists would have made of that.
There were two of them. The closest was standing just inside the living room only two metres from me. He was taller than I was, a lot of men were. He had unkempt hair that hid most of his face from me. I could only make out pale skin, being what I was I was familiar enough with pale skin, and a chin peppered with more wispy hairs. His build was best described as average but in the baggy clothes he wore I couldn't really be sure. When the other figure stepped into the light I knew I was really in trouble.
I don't know why I didn't scream right then. Maybe the same force that kept me rooted to the spot had frozen my voice. Maybe, as Selena would no doubt suggest, I was just scared shitless. Whatever, I stood there silently, not moving and barely breathing, while the second figure revealed itself in the light. It was male like the first. Taller and thicker than the first he had the look of an ex-body-builder whose muscle had started the journey to flab. Where the first figure had been pale, what I could see of him at least, this guy's skin had been dark. Had been because it had faded and greyed because of something other than age.
It is the eyes that give a zombie away. That was why it hadn't registered with the first intruder because I couldn't see his eyes. Now, my contact with zombies has been pretty infrequent. Contrary to popular human culture zombies don't come out of the ground all green skinned and overly decayed unless they've been done there a long while. They do, however, bare the marks of what killed them. If someone has been shot, stabbed or otherwise mutilated the body will not have healed and will bear those marks. The first zombie I saw was a woman who had died as a result of strangulation. When she was raised the bruising around her neck remained visible as did the evidence of burst blood vessels in her face. But it was when I got a look at he eyes that I truly recognised she was a corpse. As the saying goes; the eyes are the windows to the soul. And when the soul is no longer there?
This zombie had that same vacant stare. There was no intelligence behind those eyes. No spark of humanity.
It was about then that I came to my senses and realised I should be running away as fast as I could. I turned on my heels and ended up face to face with a third member of the living dead. I hadn't heard this guy come up behind me, real zombies don't shuffle along like the do in the movies unless they have started to decay. When they are like this they can move with the agility of any living person.
Up close the dead eyes were even more unnerving, or maybe that was an illusion. Realising you are trapped between three zombies is unnerving enough in itself. Now I wanted to run and I couldn't.
There was something else that I had a sudden urge to do as well as run and this was something that was still within my power.
"Please don’t do anything rash, Miss Jones. We aren’t here to do you any harm. Do come inside where we can talk like civilised people."
The speaker, for all that he was an intru
der sitting in my apartment with a trio of zombies preventing me from leaving, did sound like a civilised person. There was no trace of an accent to that voice and his enunciation marked him as having a certain degree of education.
With my options severely limited, I could still try and escape, I decided to go in and see what he had to say. It was better than standing out here with the living dead anyway. If only I had listened to Selene when she tried to tell me that a gun isn’t any use unless you have it with you.
From the voice I expected to find a man of middle-age. His hair would be immaculately done, short, perhaps greying at the temples. He should be thin, lean even. He would probably have glasses, thin framed, perhaps just for reading. He would be smartly dressed, if not in a full suit and tie he would be wearing trousers not jeans, shoes not trainers.
What I got, when I shuffled my way past the zombies in the hall and into my living room, was quite a surprise.
I was right that he was getting on towards middle age. What hair he had was indeed short, barely more than a grey stubble around the back of his head. The rest of his head was skin, bald but not shiny. He was thick set and tall, fairly muscular. He reminded me somehow of a wrestler, perhaps it was the muscular body that stretched his white polo shirt. He seemed to be built for function rather than toned for looks. He was wearing pale chino's with grey trainers. Half-framed glasses perched on a small nose and their arms presses against the sides of his thick head digging into the skin. I though he could have chosen better suited frames but kept my mouth shut, heck for all I knew he might have thought my own glasses weren't the most flattering. Nah, something in women's genes makes us better at recognising what looks good than men, except gay men they seem to have the knack too. So this guy was a strong, intellectual, zombie-using probably straight man. See, you can tell a lot from a first impression.
Heaven can Wait Page 17