by N. P. Martin
"For what?" No sooner had she said it when her head slammed back against the tree she was sitting against, and her blood-flecked face screwed up in pain, her teeth gritting as she grabbed her leg with both hands. Then, just a few seconds later, she seemed to relax, taking a few deep breaths to calm herself. "That hurt more than the fucking bite did."
“It’s the damaged bone and tissue regenerating so fast. It can pack a punch.”
Leona stood up and tested her weight on her leg. “That’s amazing.” She bounced all her weight on her left leg as if testing a loose board on the ground. “Thanks, Creed.”
“No problem,” I said, her gratitude bringing a smile to my face. “Now, let’s get the hell out of these woods before any more of those things turn up.”
32
A Soul With Itchy Feet
WE EVENTUALLY MADE it out of the dark woods without encountering anymore Razor Wolves, or anything else with teeth and claws, thank God. However, that didn’t mean the danger was over. On the contrary, it was just beginning.
Before us, rising into the night sky like an ominous monolith built by some unknown race, was a giant tower. The tower appeared to be made from massive stone blocks, and it seemed to stretch on forever into the inky sky above, making it hard to tell just how tall the tower was. There also appeared to be something many of the stone blocks. Or rather growing on the stone blocks. Something black and viscous looking that seemed to glisten like a giant slug in the moonlight.
“Jesus Christ,” Leona breathed. “That’s the most sinister thing I’ve ever seen. You can’t even see the top. I take it our target is in there?”
I nodded. “That’s Belger’s Sanctum.”
"Figures. You Warlocks and your weird-ass hangouts."
“My place isn’t weird. I live in a brownstone.”
"Yes, it is. You have books on the ceiling, not to mention a wolf, and last time I was there, I recall seeing a dead body in your basement."
“John Doe.”
“What?”
“John Doe. That’s what I named him.”
“Not very original, Creed. If you’re going to steal and use someone’s dead body in a satanic ritual, at least give them a better name.”
"What, so calling the corpse Fergus O'Hanlon would have made the whole thing more acceptable?"
“Who’s Fergus O’Hanlon?”
“No one. And by the way, I don’t do satanic rituals. Only hedge magicians who don’t know any better and death metal bands make reference to such things. And David Icke, of course. It was just a summoning.”
“Whatever,” Leona said, slamming a fresh magazine into her rifle. “We can discuss naming corpses and satanic rituals—”
“Summonings.”
“—later over a drink.”
“You don’t even drink.”
“Maybe I will later. If we get through this.”
"We will." I smiled. "You'd have a drink with me? I've tried to get you to drink loads of times in the past, and you always refused. You fear losing control."
She shrugged. “Maybe that’s what I need to do.”
I smiled again and shook my head at her. "I think you're still in shock after the Razor Wolf attack, but still, I'm holding you to that drink. I have the perfect bottle of whiskey—" A wave of dizziness stopped me from speaking any further, and I fell forward onto my knees as a great pain shot through my chest as if something was trying to pull my heart out with its bare hands. Clutching my chest, I collapsed onto the ground, barely hearing Leona call my name as she tried to hold me up but couldn't. It felt like I had a heart attack, but I knew that wasn't the case, not a natural one anyway. It was possible Belger had his dark reach inside me somehow, but I didn't think so. This was something much worse.
This was my soul trying to make a run for it, the bastard.
No, not yet…
The pain and pressure in my chest increased as my soul pushed against me, trying to break free, and if it kept up the pressure, it soon would be. I had to do something before ghoul status was thrust upon me and I lost everything. I doubted Leona would have any interest in dating a ghoul either. So throughout the pain, I focused on a spell that would fortify my body from the inside, preventing my desperate soul from pushing its way out. It took all of my concentration and enduring a further few minutes of pain before my soul got the message and settled back inside me again. “Well, that was pleasant,” I said, getting slowly to my feet.
"What the hell happened?" Leona asked. "You looked like you had a heart attack."
"Felt like it too. My soul was trying to escape. Safe to say it no longer recognizes me. Only my magick—which is fading, by the way, thanks to the curse—is keeping it in. I don't know how much time I have before the spell wears off and my soul makes a break for it again."
Leona stared at me, concerned. “You sure you’re up for the rest of this mission, Creed?”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Don’t have a choice, do I?”
We both looked towards the glistening black tower again. There was nothing surrounding it but dead grass and trees, interspersed with the occasional head on a spike pushed into the ground. Neither of us batted an eyelid at the heads, though, having seen much worse already.
“I expected to see people here,” Leona said. “Why are there no people?”
Walking towards Belger's tower, I held my hands out to my sides, palms down, trying to sense something. Then I stopped and looked at Leona. "It's because they're underneath us."
“Like an underground base?” Leona scanned the ground. “I can’t see any entrance.”
“It’s here.” I started searching the ground again, then stopped about ten feet from the tower, having sensed something hidden, not by the ground, but by magick. Crouching down, I put both hands on the slightly damp earth and closed my eyes as I tried to make the entrance reveal itself. It was a bit like picking a lock. The entrance was locked and made unseen by magick, so it was a matter of picking my way through the magickal layers until I could use my own magick to crack the lock. Which took longer than it should have due to my magick’s diminished potency.
After much wrangling on my part, an entrance finally revealed itself in the ground in the form of a large set of double doors, which thankfully were unlocked. Crouching down next to the doors, I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to contain my despondency at my sudden loss of power. Considering I still had to face Belger—who was undoubtedly running at full magickal capacity—and somehow steal his soul, things were not looking good.
“You alright, Creed?” Leona asked, standing beside me.
I took a deep breath and stood up, doing my best to come across as calm and assured, despite not feeling that way at all. “I’ll be alright,” I replied, turning to her. “Listen, you don’t have to go in here with me. This Belger guy is dangerous. I don’t want you getting hurt, or…” I trailed off, unable to say it.
"Hey, I'm a soldier, remember? This isn't my first rodeo and considering how weak you seem, you're going to need me."
“I just don’t want anything to happen to you, that’s all. This is my mess, after all.”
“Don’t worry, you’re going to owe me after this.”
“Owe you?” I said with a slight smile.
“What, you think I was doing this out of the goodness of my heart?”
“Well, yeah.”
She took a step towards me, her eyes firmly on mine. "Given the craziness of my job these days, I need someone just as crazy to help me make sense of it. I've decided you'll be that person, Creed."
“I thought I was that person.”
"Either way, you definitely are now." She leant her face close to me, our noses almost touching. "We both stay alive, we both get off this cursed island. Got it?"
Arguing with her at that moment would have been like trying to argue with a Drill Sergeant. Pointless. “I got it.”
“Good. Now open those doors so we can get this guy.”
33
Frank And John
LEONA AIMED HER automatic rifle at the doors as I pulled one of them open to reveal a set of concrete steps leading underground to a dimly lit corridor. As I let the door fall to the side, Leona, still shouldering her rifle, headed cautiously down the stairs, ready to fire at anyone or anything she saw as a threat. I closed the door behind us and followed.
The first thing I noticed as I walked down the stairs was the smell. Quite simply, it was awful. It was as if we had just broken into a tomb filled with bodies, their combined stench so strong it immediately turned my stomach. And it wasn't the just the smell of human offal, it was also the putrid stench of urine and excrement combined, thickening the air in the underground dwelling, so it felt like you were breathing ammonia instead of oxygen. At to that the cloying stench of disinfectant and your nostrils didn't know what hit them.
“Jesus Christ,” Leona said in a harsh whisper.
I stood beside her, facing a long corridor that was lit with the occasional strip light on the ceiling, one or two of them blinking on and off, making a high-pitched buzzing sound as they did so. There were also doors on either side of the corridor, dozens of them the whole way down. And people, coming and going in and out of rooms. Most of the people were men, but I noticed one or two women. Some of them were naked. Others wore blue butcher’s aprons and overalls. Every one of them had blood on them somewhere. A lot of blood in most cases. “What the hell is going on here?” I said, although I already knew what was going on. I was just too sickened to admit what it was.
Leona shook her head, her rifle lowered only slightly. She said nothing.
Then a door opened not far from where we were standing, and a torrent of screams came gushing out as if someone was in there going through unimaginable pain. A second later, a man wearing a blue butcher’s apron and nothing else walked out of the room and closed the door behind him, shutting out the screaming coming from inside.
Soundproofed rooms. To keep the screams inside.
Leona had her rifle aimed at the guy in the corridor, perhaps forgetting that we were invisible and he couldn't see us. I placed a hand on the barrel of her rifle and pushed it downward. As I did, Leona relaxed a little, though knowing Leona, she wanted nothing more than to put a bullet in the man's head, especially if she had worked out what was going on in that place, which I was sure she had.
We watched as the man (late forties, longish gray hair and lined face) in the butcher's apron leant against the wall and slid a hand into some hidden pouch on his apron, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter with a hand that still dripped blood. Blood ran off him from everywhere in fact, as if he had been rolling around in the stuff.
One of the door's opposite opened then, and another man walked out into the corridor. No screams issued from the room he came from as he closed the door behind him. This man was older, in his early sixties it looked like with impossibly dark hair for a man of his age. He wore white overalls that were stained everywhere with blood, and he smiled when he noticed the other man standing across the corridor. "Hey, Frank," he said to the other guy. "Looks like I'm just in time. Gimme one of those, will you?"
“Hey, John,” Frank said. “You having fun in there?”
They both smiled at each other as John came and stood beside Frank, taking the cigarette he was offered. “What do you think?”
They both laughed and Frank lit their cigarettes. “You got the girl, right?”
John nodded. “Oh yeah. How’s the mother? I bet that bitch can scream.”
“Fuck yeah. You should have heard her when I used the acid on her tits. Damn, that stuff can melt a fucking hole. What’s the daughter like? A screamer as well?”
“Silent type mostly. Terrific pain tolerance for a kid. I’m enjoying breaking her. She’s almost there. You know when they just seem to give in?”
“Mine’s long past that stage. She’s accepted her fate.”
Leona aimed her rifle as if she was going to shoot them both. Once again I stopped her, shaking my head wordlessly at her as she glared at me. My eyes told her to wait.
“Hey,” John said. “You wanna swap for a while? You can have a go at the kid. I’d like to finish the mother off. Got some stuff planned in my head.”
“Oh yeah? Tell me more. What stuff?”
Smiling, John said, “Next level stuff. Maybe I’ll tell you later.”
“You’re a sick bastard, John,” Frank said, almost laughing, hyped up from whatever buzz he was on.
"That's why we're here, though, right?"
“You fucking know it.” They both did a little buddy shake with bloodstained hands. “Alright, John. You can take the mother. I’ll finish breaking the kid for you.”
“My man.”
“Hey, there’s plenty to go around, right? Belger always keeps us happy.”
“That he does,” said John. “That he does.”
They both finished their cigarettes and disappeared once more into each other’s rooms.
“Fucking sick bastards,” Leona growled as soon as the two men were gone. “Every one of those rooms…” She trailed off as she shook her head. “We can’t let these sick fucks get away with this, Creed.”
“That’s not why we came here,” I said.
"So we're just going to ignore this? Let them away with it? Fuck that." She shifted her disapproving glare from me to the door down the corridor that the man called John had just gone through. Then she let her rifle hang loose while she took out one of her Berettas.
Goddamn it.
Leona's blood was up. She wanted to punish those men for whatever they were doing inside those rooms. While I understood her need to exact justice on the loathsome pair, as I already said to her, that wasn't why we were there. What was she going to do, break down every door and kill them all? If I knew Leona, I'd say that's exactly what she planned to do, and maybe if I weren't so weakened and running out of time, I would have allowed her to do as she pleased. It wasn't like I cared if Belger's followers or clients or whatever they were died or not. If Frank and John were representative of the type of people who frequented the Devil's Playground, then they all deserved to be put down.
Just not now.
But before I knew it, Leona had stomped over to the room occupied by the man called John and whoever he was torturing inside. With the gun in her right hand, she pushed down on the handle of the sturdy looking steel door. “Unlock this door, Creed,” she demanded. “I know you can.”
I stared at her a moment, saw the look on her face that said she wouldn’t be swayed from doing what she thought was right. Sighing, I walked over to her. “Don’t forget this is my mission, Lieutenant Colonel.”
Her lips pursed, and her eyes narrowed in response to me using the authority card. On this mission at least, she knew I outranked her. “Just open the door, Creed.”
Seeing that she wasn't going to back down, I went for a compromise instead. "Alright, I'll open the door. But only this one. When we get off the island, we contact Brentwood, and we let The Division handle the rest. Deal?"
She stared hard at me for another moment, then said, “Fine. But I want the bastard in that other room as well.”
Jesus, she had a real hard on for those two. Not that I blamed her. “Just make it quick. I don’t have time for this.”
Using my magick, I had the door unlocked in a few seconds. Then I stood aside to let Leona do her thing. She opened the door and stepped into the room just as the woman inside issued a loud scream. A second later, a shot rang out from inside the room. I stood outside, unwilling to see whatever horrors the room contained.
Another shot rang out.
Then Leona emerged from the room a few seconds later, the porcelain skin of her face now an ashen gray color. She looked at me with eyes that had seen too much horror to bare. “Open the other door,” she said in a flat voice.
I didn’t argue with her, crossing the corridor and unlocking the door to the room in which the man named Fra
nk resided with his torture victim. Once again, I stepped aside to allow her access and Leona wordlessly entered the room, a kind of dead focus in her eyes. Then I heard her say, “Oh…my God…” to herself as if she was witnessing some unimaginable horror in there.
Then Frank’s voice: “Who said that? Who’s there?”
Bang! Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
Frank was dead.
Gunpowder smoke escaped from the room, the acrid scent assailing my nostrils along with the smell of human offal.
A final shot sounded.
Bang!
Leona all but staggered out of the room, the color completely drained from her face now. In the corridor, she leant over and vomited onto the floor.
Jesus Christ. How bad is it in there?
Not that I wanted to look, but some sense of morbid curiosity got the better of me and before I knew it, I had made the grave mistake of standing in the doorway so I could see into the room. Almost immediately, my mind was overloaded with images that were just too horrific to even comprehend at first. In the brightly lit room with the dark walls, my mind struggled to take in the scene. There was something like a dentist's chair in the middle of the room, and strapped to the chair was a small body that had been tortured and mutilated in ways that I couldn't even begin to describe. The girl's body was barely recognizable as human anymore. It just looked like a twisted mound of flesh sitting there, but even so, I still made out the features of the girl underneath all the blood and mutilation. There was other stuff in the room as well—a gurney loaded with tools, nasty looking torture implements racked on the walls (a chainsaw, a weed whacker, a huge drill)—but I hardly took those things in. Before I finally turned away, my eyes fell on the body on the floor. The man called Frank, full of bullet holes, blood pooling rapidly around his body and joining with the girl's blood already over the floor.