“Right,” Brendan said. “And if we destroy that, all the tar everywhere shrivels up and dies, too. We’ve heard that part. But here’s my question: Why doesn’t Ansel just take care of this source himself?”
“I doubt Ansel is aware the blight has returned,” Samson said, and his eyes grew distant. “Even if he did, he would be no match for the power there. That is why we need you.”
“You keep saying the tar returned,” Brendan said. “The tar’s been around since I was a kid, and as far as I know, that was the first time it showed up.”
Samson folded his wiry arms and leaned into the table. “It was here once before. Long ago.”
“When?”
“Two thousand years ago.”
At that, Brendan fell back into his seat and snorted.
But Krystal leaned in. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” Brendan said, waving a dismissive hand at the gray-haired man. “He’s crazy. That’s what that means.”
Blue fire burned in Samson’s eyes. “I have watched civilizations rise and fall. I have outlived every friend and lover I ever had. I have seen the blight destroyed by my hand and Ansel’s, and now I have seen it return.”
Brendan barked laughter and slapped the table. “It’s a joke!” he said. “And we fell for it. We let him take us out of Newhaven so he could sit us down and tell us he’s two thousand years old.”
The waitress reappeared, carrying two trays.
“Three burgers and three beers,” she recited, passing out the food. With a nod to Krystal, she added, “On the house.”
After she left, Samson leaned in, almost conspiratorially. “I know how I must sound,” he said. “But I speak the truth. All those years ago, I studied what passed for sciences, as an apprentice to Merlin.”
Brendan snorted again. Krystal said, “Wait. The M—”
But Samson held up a hand, cutting her off. “We were not searching for a way between worlds then. We were only concerned with the movement of planets and the behavior of substances. But we found...” He ran scarred fingers over his gray stubble. “...something. Merlin called it a star, but this was no star.”
Samson paused, momentarily disappearing into his own thoughts.
“We learned we could speak to the universe, after a fashion. And the universe obeyed us.”
“Speak to the universe?” Krystal asked.
Samson continued without acknowledging her. “It began with simple things, like sliding a book across a table without touching it. Then we learned we could create matter out of thin air. We studied our new abilities and stretched ourselves to our limits.” Samson paused. Swallowed. “Then we discovered Tir Anhrefnus.”
Krystal froze, burger halfway to her mouth. “You discovered what?”
“Tir Anhrefnus,” Samson repeated. “Another world, parallel to ours. It is a dark place, sucked dry of all life but that of the blight.”
“Let me guess,” Brendan said. “When you punched a hole in the space-time continuum, suddenly the tar was able to come over.” The comment was half meant as a joke, only another way to poke the bear, but he had to admit the old man’s story was drawing him in.
“It was not our intention to allow evil into this world, but the blight is powerful and hungry. This was a door more difficult to shut than to open.”
“But you did, didn’t you?” Krystal said. “Shut the door, that is.”
Samson nodded. “It came at a great cost, but we purged this world of the blight and destroyed the portal to Tir Anhrefnus.”
“But now the tar's back,” Brendan said. “Why did you let it back in?”
“We didn’t.” Samson’s gaze settled on Brendan, so heavy he instinctively shrank in his seat. “You did.”
Brendan raised his hands defensively. “Seriously? I hadn’t even heard about this Tir-whatever place before today.”
“I do not believe you did it on purpose," Samson said. "You were likely not aware of what you were doing when you opened doorways between our world and Tir Anhrefnus. But you speak to the blight, and it listens. It follows you wherever you go.”
Brendan snorted. “Really?”
“I have tracked the spread of the blight since it first reappeared.” Samson’s voice dropped even lower. Brendan had to lean in to hear him over the noise of the tavern. “And its path led me to you.”
“What, did you follow little black footprints?” Brendan tried to laugh, but his mouth was dry.
Samson reached out and took Brendan’s wrist. “Did you not find it odd that all the clean cities you moved to became infected within weeks of your arrival?”
Brendan shook his head. “That’s just how quickly the tar spreads. One guy gets hit by a patch, and before he can get isolated, he’s infected two people, and then they’ve infected two more people. The world is coming apart at the seams.”
“I will not deny that,” Samson said. “But you are the blade around which the seams burst. Wherever you go, the blight follows.”
Again, Brendan shook his head. Harder this time. “No. This has gone far enough. Krystal, let’s get out of here. It’s a long walk back to Newhaven, but—”
But Krystal’s eyes shimmered with tears. “Brendan. Why are you so against this?”
“Are you kidding me?” Brendan waved an incredulous hand at Samson. “This guy shows up, tells us if we go on a road trip to find his buddy with a portal to another world, he can kill all the tar like he did two thousand years ago. And if that’s not enough, he says the reason it’s all here in the first place is because I'm some sort of pied piper for the tar.” Now he turned from Krystal to Samson, feeling his ears grow hot. “Is that about right? Did I miss anything?”
Samson didn’t respond, only matched Brendan’s stare with an icy one of his own.
“Is it really all that weird, Brendan?” Krystal’s voice quivered with emotion. “We’ve spent our whole lives living in fear of this...this stuff that turns people into monsters. Besides, you’ve seen what Samson can do. Have you seen anyone else kill someone with tar inside them?”
"That's not what this is about." Brendan knew what he was about to say, knew he would regret it, but he couldn’t stop himself. “This is about Uncle Jeff, isn’t it? You need something to hold on to, don’t you? Even if it’s a half-baked revenge scheme with a crazy person, that’s better than sitting at home and knowing he’ll never be on that couch for you to shovel bland soup down his throat again.”
He’d gone too far, but once the words started, they wouldn’t stop. No matter how much he wanted to bring them back, they kept coming out. He saw Krystal’s face fall with every syllable he uttered, until she practically melted into a puddle on the bench next to him.
Brendan smacked the table. The drinks and silverware rattled, adding to the surrounding cacophony.
“I need to go to the bathroom.”
5
The bathroom was as noisy and ratty as the rest of the tavern. The walls were old, cracked tile. A stench filled the room, so thick Brendan’s eyes watered. Someone had drawn an arc in chalk between two walls, marking off the far corner. Big, bold letters proclaimed this chalk the SAFE LINE, and sure enough, a patch of tar hung where the walls met the ceiling.
Big surprise—the promises of no infection scrawled outside the tavern had been a lie.
At least they’d had the decency of drawing a safe line, beyond which the tar could lash out and take him. How had the tavern's owners determined this patch's reach, anyway? Had they seen it at work? Had they learned its range by watching it take a victim? Or had they sent some poor busboy to creep closer and closer until his nerves failed him and then drew the line from where he stood?
The important thing was that Brendan stay as far away from the line as possible. If the patch had fed since the line was drawn, its reach would be longer.
Brendan leaned over the sink. His hands slipped on something sli
my, and he didn’t glance down to investigate. He hadn’t meant to hurt Krystal. He’d meant to get his point across, but the more he talked, the more he realized he’d have to hurt her to do it. The pain in Krystal's expression was almost enough to convince him to follow Samson all over the world if it took away her grief.
But he couldn’t let that happen to Krystal. He couldn’t let that happen to himself.
Krystal seemed so firm about following Samson, and she was his only real option for a mechanic. But was this any better? There was a good chance Samson was crazy, with his stories of Merlin and alternate dimensions. If not for that shotgun that killed infected, the whole thing wouldn’t ring true at all.
And yet Tiger Stripe had died. So had Uncle Jeff.
And Brendan had controlled the tar.
The last couple days had been unusual, but what if it was all Samson’s doing? What if Samson was controlling the tar, and he was using Brendan and Krystal for...what? What could either of them do that Samson couldn't?
Nothing made any sense.
The bathroom door swung open and banged against the wall. Five men filed in, each wearing black. When the last one arrived, he shut the door and locked it behind him.
That was when Brendan’s heart began racing.
“That’s a nice lookin’ mod,” said one of the men, a tall guy with a barrel chest and a massive dragon tattoo on his arm. The pigment shifted color, creating the impression that the creature writhed in a sea of flames. His other arm was a mod, the same age and quality as the waitress’s.
Brendan clenched his mod into a fist and took a step back. The safe line was a tangible presence behind him. He had plenty of space now, but if things turned ugly, it would pay to remember where it was.
“How much did that thing run you?” asked the man with the dancing tattoo.
Brendan said nothing. Despite his ruined mod, the guy doing all the talking looked formidable. None of the others scared Brendan. They were standard lackeys, scrawny and ragged, with gleaming expressions of recklessness. Nothing too dangerous, provided Brendan made no stupid mistakes.
“How much you think that bad boy would fetch us?” The man nodded at Brendan’s mod.
One lackey, a thin guy with a thinner beard, cocked his head. A sick grin twisted his face. “Oh, it would fetch a pretty penny.” His voice was high, and it reeked of booze.
The tattooed man smiled wide, stepped forward. “Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He turned to the men behind him. “And my buddies here...they kinda like the hard way.”
One of them chuckled and flexed his modded fingers into a fist. The mechanical joints made a shrieking, grinding noise.
The man said, “One way or another, you’re gonna give us that mod. We can disconnect it and take it cleanly, or we can rip it straight off your shoulder. Up to you.”
Brendan nodded slowly as if considering his options.
Before his head finished bobbing, he tripped the switch in his mod. The metal fist rocketed across the room.
At first, he was proud of himself. He’d gotten off a surprise hit on the biggest guy in the room, shaming all the intruders for daring to attack him.
But when he made contact, the sick, tooth-rattling reverberation along his arm told him he’d hit mod, not flesh.
The barrel-chested man laughed. His eyes lit up in neon green. Mods.
“So it’s going to be the hard way, huh?” said the man.
Bio-power whined high and loud, and the eyes of each lackey also flashed green. One of them reached for the light switch and plunged the bathroom into darkness. The room was pitch black, save for a thin line of gold under the door, and five pairs of glowing green eyes.
“Lights out, boys,” said the tattooed man.
And then the eyes disappeared, too.
6
Brendan drew his blaster and gave it a full charge against his palm even though he knew it would do him no good. He could point it in the general direction of any footsteps he heard, but the echoes in the bathroom made it difficult to pinpoint the source of each sound.
Still, he pointed the weapon into the dark.
There was a sharp scuffing, and Brendan fired blindly at it. Someone yelped, and a body slapped against the tile, but that was the only victory he got. The next moment, a lackey wrapped him up in a tackle. The blaster clattered free from Brendan’s hand, sliding out of reach. His head cracked against the ground, and the darkness spun around him. Trying to focus through the fog in his mind, he grabbed the lackey and threw him aside. The scrawny man slammed into a wall, propelled by the sheer force of Brendan’s mod.
Brendan barely had time to pull himself to a sitting position when a boot crashed into his jaw, sending him sprawling once again. His mouth filled with blood. Before he could recover, someone straddled his waist and began pounding his face. Every blow drove Brendan’s head into the tile, bouncing it against the hard surface.
Brendan reached up with his mod, trying to grab the guy’s throat, but this one had a mod of his own. He used it pin Brendan’s wrist to the ground. And still the blows kept coming.
There was a shuffling sound on the tile next to Brendan, followed by hot breath on his ear. Someone had lain down beside him.
The voice of the tattooed man said, “You about ready to give us that mod?”
Suddenly, the door burst open. The deadbolt tore away chunks of doorframe, leaving splinters in its wake. Light spilled into the bathroom around a familiar lanky silhouette.
Samson.
“Hey, old fella,” said the tattooed man. “We’re busy in here.”
But Samson didn’t respond. He held up one hand and swept it to the side.
And as his hand moved, Brendan’s attackers followed.
They flew across the bathroom, thrown by an unseen force. Each one slammed into the wall hard enough to leave a spiderweb of cracks behind. The men stirred, groaning. Only one regained his feet—the leader with the writhing tattoo. He drew a knife and rushed at Samson, weapon outstretched. With another wave of his hand, Samson sent the man tumbling backward, turning in the air until he crashed through a stall. He didn’t get up after that.
Samson stared down at Brendan.
“Let’s go,” was all he said.
Brendan stood, grateful, and retrieved his blaster before making his way to the door, which now hung crooked in its frame.
“Hey,” called a voice from behind.
Brendan turned. The barrel-chested man sat in the ruins of the stall, grinning. A pink sheen of blood covered his teeth.
Still grinning, the man said, “How do you like having an old man fight your battles for you?”
He chuckled, and the lackeys who hadn’t passed out joined in the laughter. Some begged Brendan to come back, challenging him to face them without his geezer friend.
Brendan wanted to shoot them all, mostly because they were right. The five of them had set a perfect trap, and without Samson’s intervention, they would’ve ripped the arm off Brendan’s body and killed him without a second thought. This wouldn’t have happened in Newhaven. No one would dare treat him like this there.
These guys needed to be taught a lesson, even if the lesson didn’t come from his blaster. There was another solution, after all. Deep inside a recently awakened part of his mind, he sensed the tar in the bathroom. He felt its hunger, radiating out from its corner behind the safe line. And he saw how close to that line the tattooed man had fallen.
Brendan should have left. He’d made it out unharmed, and the people who’d tried to steal from him had gotten what was coming to them.
But there was something about that smile.
Something about the refusal to yield respect.
Something about how the grinning, tattooed man regarded Brendan as just another clueless passerby.
Brendan glanced back, made sure Samson had already gone. He knew Sam
son wouldn’t approve of this, but he didn’t care. The tar’s hunger burned in his mind, and the tattooed man kept grinning that stupid pink grin.
With the same part of himself he’d used to infect Tiger Stripe in the basement, he reached for the patch of tar. He dug psychic fingers into its roiling body, and a thrill of excitement vibrated deep inside him.
And then, he began to pull.
The tar elongated, gathering into one long tentacle, reaching down from its place in the corner. It extended all the way to the safe line, just a couple feet from the tattooed man, and then it stopped. The line had been accurate; there wasn’t enough tar to stretch beyond. But even that wasn’t a problem, Brendan realized. He continued to pull until a tiny blob of tar broke free from the stretching tentacle. It floated through the air, a droplet of pure midnight following Brendan’s commands until it hovered above the tattooed man.
It wanted to consume him. Tiny though it was, the roar of its hunger was deafening.
And yet Brendan still heard the tattooed man’s pleading whimper.
“Please,” he said, realizing it was Brendan commanding the tar. “Whoever you are...whatever you are...I’ll do anything. Just...don’t...”
The power was delicious, and the tar was mesmerizing. Brendan watched it hover over the man, pulsing and rippling, waiting for Brendan’s command. A quiet voice in his head warned him he’d gone too far, that this was too great a punishment. A louder one told him he couldn’t turn back now. The tar needed to feed. To deny it would be disastrous.
So he guided it toward the man.
Now the tattooed man crawled away, feet slipping on grimy tile. The tar followed, as much by its own will as Brendan’s. Brendan realized the man was crying. He was saying something, but Brendan didn’t know what. A haze had settled over him, equal parts focus, hatred, and hunger. Nothing else came through.
Brendan guided the tar closer. It hovered inches from the man’s nose and howled in Brendan’s mind.
“I’m curious,” Brendan asked. “Was this the easy way, or the hard way?”
And then he let the tar fly.
The droplet hit the man full in the face, sending spiderweb-thin tendrils into his mouth and nostrils. His eyes grew wide, bulging in their sockets only momentarily before the color faded. The back-lighting from his ocular mod flashed bright green and popped, and then his eyes turned to black marbles in his skull. His entire body convulsed. Inky veins pulsated along his throat.
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